Tonight's film was "The Ghoul"(1975), provided by our friend Mr. Spinks at Youtube. Now, you may have heard me mention another movie by that name, starring Boris Karloff as an Egyptologist obsessed with reincarnation. That's an entirely different flick, made way back in 1933, and this evening's "Ghoul" is not a remake. It's still very ghoulish, however, and in this case the title may be more literal. You can look up the definition if you wish.
The setting is England in the Roaring Twenties. We've talked about the youth culture from that decade, back when we were watching Pre-Code films, and we mentioned that it was every bit as party-hearty as any subsequent generation, including the Hippies of the 60s and my fellow rock n' rollers from the Big Hair 1980s. So it is here, in the opening sequence. A group of young people are having an all-night blowout. They're dancing to jazz records and boozing up a storm. But some of them are getting bored. Two of the young men own cars. As the sun comes up, they challenge one another to a race : "To Land's End"! That's where the moors are, the boggy fens. It's a bit dangerous to race their high-powered automobiles near marshland, but again, these guys are young and feeling their oats (and, they're Veddy Brrittissh!)
Their girlfriends want to ride along - all the better for the guys to show off - so they crank-start their engines and begin to race, down an old dirt track through the countryside. The race is thrillingly staged and lasts several minutes. When they've neared Land's End at the Atlantic coast, the car in the lead runs out of petrol. I'd call it gas, but I'm trying to keep things as Brrrittish! as possible. The young man goes out in search of a nearby farm, or garage (pronounced GARE-odge), anywhere there might be a petrol can. Meanwhile, his girlfriend stays with the car.
She's surrounded by fog and can't see a thing. When she hears a noise in the marshes, she gets scared and tries to drive off, but she's had no experience driving a car and soon crashes, hitting her head on the windshield. She's knocked unconscious, and when she comes to, she's in a shed of some sort. It appears to be someone's residence because there's a bed (she's laying on it) and a small stove. But there are also a lot of tools lying around, rakes and shovels, and birds stuffed in cages. The shed has a bit of a Texas Chainsaw feel to it, and is disorienting to the girl in the same way the room with the caged chickens was to "Pam" in TCM. When she sits up and looks around, she sees she isn't alone. There's a creep sitting in the corner, played by the great John Hurt, who early in his career specialised in assorted weirdos like this guy.
"Who are you? Where am I"?!, the girl asks, to which Hurt replies. "I'm Tom. This is my house. You're safe now. I pulled you out of your car after you crashed. You can't be out in the moors all alone".
She explains that she and her boyfriend are stranded. He's out looking for petrol. "I'm afraid I haven't got any" says Hurt. But he's looking at her funny and his body language is slightly threatening. "Well then I've got to go", says the girl. "Thank you very much for your help, but I've got to find Geoffrey". Tom tries to persuade her not to leave, repeating his warning about the unsafe moor, but she isn't listening. So, after she walks out the door he throws a rock at her. Once again she is knocked unconscious. This time, when she awakens she is in a stately mansion, being attended to by a physician, Dr. Lawrence (Peter Cushing). He bandages her wound and pronounces her fit, other than a slight concussion. "This is my home", he tells her, "and I'm sorry to report that the man who initially found you is my gardener, Tom. He means well but he's something of a half-wit".
"I was only trying to keep her safe", protests Hurt, who is looking on. Indeed he is telling the truth, because for the young lady it's "out of the frying pan and into the fire" so to speak. Things were bad enough in Hurt's shed, but she has no idea what she's in for now. Despite the genteel surroundings and Cushing's courtly manner, it becomes clear that something isn't right in his tastefully appointed manse. For one thing he's got an extremely weird helper, an Indian woman named Ayah who does the housekeeping. She resents the girl's presence and spends a lot of time praying in Hindi to a bronze statue of Shiva the Destroyer. When Angela walks too close to Shiva, the woman has a fit. There's also something upstairs she doesn't want Angela to see.
Tom the Gardener says, "The Doctor will thank me for bringing her here", but Ayah disagrees. "No, it was I who brought her, through my prayers"! Ayah seems to run the house, and whatever is upstairs, the doctor wants no part of it. He's content to play his violin and read his books. But he too doesn't want Angela to leave, and he uses the same excuse, that it's too dangerous on the moors. "You could get stuck in a bog".
"But I have to leave sometime", says Angela. "I have to find my boyfriend". Doctor Lawrence convinces her to stay the night and Ayah shows her to her room, pulling a net around her bed to protect her from "insects". Really though, it's there to provide director Freddie Francis with a gauzy screen through which to showcase Angela's demise, because it's time for Ayah to let The Ghoul out of his closet. This is what her capture has been leading up to, and again there's a Texas Chainsaw Massacre quality to the whole affair : young people get stuck in the boondocks, a Weirdo comes along (the hitchhiker in TCM; Tom the Gardener here) who at first seems relatively harmless but is then revealed to be part of a larger and even crazier family.
The other couple involved in the race will eventually wonder what happened to Angela and Geoffrey and go looking for them, but they won't fare much better (though the other young man is a former Army officer and has a few tricks up his sleeve).
"The Ghoul" is very well made. It was shot at Shepperton Studios and has the look of a Hammer film. It has that mid-70s immediacy, if you know what I mean, that "holy smokes, now what do we do"! feeling, where everything was fine until the protagonists wander out where they don't belong. Stay out of the boondocks, people! That was the message of gritty 70s horror movies like TCM and "The Hills Have Eyes". Stay out of the boonies cause there's psychos out there!
John Hurt adds an extra dose of nut-job authenticity to his role as "Tom". He takes the movie to another level to give it that "you are here" feeling, the sensation that "this is really happening and there's nothing you can do about it". I don't want to say any more about what it will all lead up to, but you will be prepared for a Big Reveal, and on that score you might be........well, I won't say.
Oh heck, yes I will. You might be a little disappointed at the very end, and you might wonder : "Couldn't Freddie Francis have afforded a couple of hundred shillings worth of makeup, to make the Ghoul look a bit more ghoulish"? I mean, even in a low budget work like "The Brain That Wouldn't Die", they knew they needed a super scary monster at the end, and they went all out to create Mr. Potatohead, who was so frightening I still have nightmares about him. And, it couldn't have cost much to do his makeup, just a few bucks and some ingenuity. So, Francis could have done the same here but for some reason he did not. I'll say nothing more, because on all other counts "The Ghoul" is a very good horror film. It's scary, weird, creepy, you name it, and it gets Two Big Thumbs Up from me. See it for John Hurt if nothing else. /////
That's all for the time being. I had a nice hike at Aliso this afternoon and now I'm gonna finish my daily miles with a CSUN walk. I'll edit and correct this review a little later. See you at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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