A Thrilling Development: Kiss Me and Die (1974)

aka “The Savage Curse”

“Thriller”, season 2, episode 3

For some general remarks about the British TV show “Thriller” and its stylistic setup, please take a look at my first write-up of an episode.

American Robert Stone (George Chakiris) supposedly comes to one of those small English villages for a bit of rest and relaxation and a bit of photographing. He’s rather good at becoming friendly with the people living in the village too, quickly and effectively becoming a part of the local pub culture. But then, in truth he isn’t a tourist, but is working in the investigative business, so he is supposed to be good at these things. At the moment, Robert is on a rather personal mission, looking for his brother who was last seen in this charming little hamlet before he mysteriously vanished.

Robert is quickly drawn to the mysteries of the local manor house (always a good place to look for the creepy stuff when you’re in the UK). As his brother before him, he is very quickly smitten with Dominie Lanceford (Jenny Agutter), who is rich, utterly charming in a gothic romance heroine way, and seems just a little bit eccentric. Her uncle Jonathan (Anton Diffring), on the other hand, while perfectly polite, even friendly, is clearly crazy as the bird of your choice, apparently spending most of his day exhorting the virtues of Edgar Allan Poe to whoever wanders near him. Given the Poe connection, I’m sure there’s nothing problematic at all going to happen at a masked ball, and taking up the offer of some amontillado is certainly not dangerous at all.

But then, one of the charms of this particular episode of thriller is that Robert is completely clueless about Poe’s work – he clearly hasn’t even seen the Corman movies – and rightfully seen as a barbarian not knowing some of the best parts of his own culture by Jonathan. Therefore he is a perfectly valid target for Poe-style shenanigans, as well as the sort of main character whose denseness really makes a Poe reader groan. Detective or not, Robert’s a bit of an idiot, not just for repeating – doppelganger-like, as Poe would approve of – his brother’s doomed love affair but also for not taking a look at Poe’s work even though he quickly starts to think that something is very wrong with the Lancefords.

Despite of its typically low budget, the episode/film, as directed by John Sichel does make quite a bit of the Poe connection, putting effort if not money into the most excellent masked ball as well as the expected premature burial. This is also one of the Thriller entries that spends quite a bit of time in outside locations in its first acts, and so can work in some rather good suspense sequences on actual film stock.

This one’s really rather lovely, with fine early work by Agutter, a cracking gothic villain turn by Diffring, and a plot that clearly enjoys playing with Poe and gothic tropes.

A Thrilling Development: A Place to Die (1973)

“Thriller”, season 1 episode 7

For some general remarks about the British TV show “Thriller” and its stylistic setup, please take a look at my first write-up of an episode.

Dr Nelson (Bryan Marshall) and his wife Tessa (Alexandra Hay) come to one of those very traditional British villages so he can take over the position of the local general practitioner. His predecessor seems to have left his position in a bit of a hurry, but I’m sure there’s nothing at all to fear here. The villagers, at least, may be a bit weird - and tend to a foot deformity they just aren’t willing to show their new doctor – but otherwise they are certainly very welcoming indeed. They seem to have taken a particular shine to Tessa, acting rather, well, worshipful towards her. So worshipful in fact that Tessa quickly becomes uneasy with the attention (her husband, as is tradition in these cases, does take rather longer). Indeed, the villagers believe her to be prophesied to take a very special role in their Lady Day celebration, a celebration, it has to be said, that seems to be rather far removed from the traditional Christianity their choice of feast day suggests.

If all of this sounds to you rather a lot as if this episode of Thriller (as directed by Peter Jefferies and written by Terence Feely) is dabbling in what we’d now call folk horror, you’re completely right. Indeed, it’s interesting how much this innocent little TV movie fits into genre borders created much later, featuring pretty much all the elements you’d include if you’d make a folk horror by the numbers movie today. Obviously, this never gets as explicitly nasty or strange as Blood on Satan’s Claw and isn’t as subversive and clever as The Wickerman but there’s quite a bit of rather disturbing stuff very effectively suggested, particularly in the final act. Jefferies (your typical British TV hired gun going by his IMDB credits) does also manage to squeeze some very moody moments out of the little production values he has – again particularly in the final act.

The film’s biggest strengths and most interesting aspect is how effectively it mixes the weirdness of the villagers, their behaviour and their beliefs with the mundanity of their world and lives, so that our protagonist’s housekeeper apparently can’t see any strangeness in her position as both a cult member and a worshipper and the woman who keeps the couple’s house clean; the big star of the ritual and village fool (or really, Fool) of the place is mostly spending his time carrying groceries; and the final ritual does not take place in a stone circle or something of that kind, but the village shop. The utterly mundane and the murderously weird are apparently inextricably entwined in Merry Old England.

A Thrilling Development: Nurse Will Make It Better (1975)

“Thriller”, season 4, episode 2

Charley (Linda Liles), the daughter of Edgar Harrow (Cec Linder), an American diplomat in England living in quite the country manor, is a bit of a firecracker. She’s breaking hearts left and right – particularly those hearts her more seriously minded sister Ruth (Andrea Marcovicci) seems invested in – and goes through life with the clear conviction everything in it belongs to the rich and hot like her by rights.

So it’s not much of a surprise that she can’t cope at all when a riding accident she’s at least half responsible for herself leaves her paraplegic. In fact, her behaviour is so extreme, it’s not terribly easy to feel much compassion for her. It is also driving away one nurse after the other.

Until, that is, Bessy Morne (Diana Dors) arrives. Bessy easily – and with a bit of magic – manages to build a rapport with Charley, and, like an evil Mary Poppins, soon starts to exert a rather negative influence on the rest of the household, too, particularly the youngest sister Susy (Tiffany Kinney). And look, if Charley is a good girl, reads the nice big book of witchcraft dear old Bessy is going to provide and agrees to a certain pact, she might even manage to walk again.

Only Ruth and Harrow’s chief of security Carson (Ed Bishop) seem to understand that something very bad is going on, but they won’t really start to do something about it once the body count starts. On the plus side, there’s also an alcoholic priest (Patrick Troughton) in play who might eventually come in useful.

In the coming weeks or months (I’ve never been too great at planning, I have to admit), I am going to dip into episodes of the British 70s TV show Thriller (not to be confused with the US 60s show, of course). Produced and to a large degree written by the great Brian Clemens (of the Steed and colleagues Avengers and so much more fame), this was an anthology show with episodes of about seventy minutes length each, usually with some American actors involved to make it easier to sell the show there, and generally with thriller (what a surprise) and – more irregularly – supernatural horror plots. There’s an obvious debt to Hitchcock style thrillers on display, of course, but I wouldn’t at all be surprised by an influence of the – often great - non-supernatural thrillers made by Hammer which were of course themselves inspired by Hitchcock.

This being a British TV production of its time, the show does tend to some of the visual weaknesses TV production in the country was already starting to lose when this was made, namely the often slightly confusing contrast between 16mm exterior shots and interiors shot on video, which does tend to make even the best set look a bit more flimsy than it should.

However, thanks to usually fun acting and clever and unapologetically pulpy scripts, that sort of thing is rather easily overlooked in the better half or so of the episodes I’ve seen by now.

Nurse Will Make It Better really is a case in point there. This is one of the absolutely supernatural entries in the series, with no improbable last act reveal to make things “realistic”. Instead, this one ends in a scenery chewing duel between Patrick Troughton (in what feels like a bit of dry run to his character in The Omen) and Diana Dors absolutely made-up as evil Mary Poppins (though she is in truth the devil herself, which is pretty awesome). A duel that Dors absolutely wins with a performance that manages to be so camp and silly that it actually becomes creepy again.

Which really is the way the script handles most of its business. Clemens is not at all afraid of using every simple and cheap (that is, affordable on his budget) trick in the books to make his tale of a sexless seduction of the not so innocent interesting and fun, first building the family up in short and deft strokes, and then letting it implode via the obvious fault lines once Bessy gets her claws in.

There are some genuinely creepy scenes here, in particular most everything concerning Bessy’s influence on Susy, a couple of cleverly staged murders, and some neat business where characters see something horrible Bessy hides in a little chest, but the audience can only go by their reactions on what it actually is, making a virtue of the fact the show couldn’t effort many special effects. The acting is very on point, too. Marcovicci makes a very likeable heroine who wins out in the end because she loves a family that gives her a lot of reasons to hate them, and channels this love into practical action, and Liles and Kinney really seem to have fun witching it up.

While the direction – by Shaun O’Riordan, a British TV stalwart – certainly can’t go all giallo or 70s cinematic horror on us thanks to the problems of mostly shooting on video under very constrained budgetary circumstances (the lighting in the show as a whole tends to be rather bland, too), there’s quite a bit of clever blocking and framing to produce tension or demonstrate the lines of influence here.

It’s a fun little film – given its running time and structure, that does seem the proper word rather than episode – giving dear old Bessy her due very nicely.