For goodness snake.

Continuing my exploration of this Hammer box set with The Reptile from 1966, directed by John Gilling.

A couple inherit a charming cottage in a village where people are dying from a mysterious black death. With the help of the ever reliable, and ever present, Michael Ripper they investigate and find that a local doctor may be hiding a dark secret about his daughter and a strange curse they have brought back from India.

Jacqueline Pearce who would go on to play the sinister Servalan in Blake's 7 provides some youthful beauty as the daughter before she has to don the rather poor Reptile make up in her were-snake transformation. Apart from that there's a fair bit of digging up bodies to try and find out how they died, before the secret is revealed and the big house goes up in smoke.

It's a brave attempt by Hammer to create their own monster myth but it's all a bit dull and the revealed Reptile is just not very scary. Apart from Michael Ripper the cast are fairly anonymous and it all drags a bit to its 90 minute ending. A mere two out of five Indian sitars and on to the other picture that was shot on the same sets at the same time, Plague of the Zombies.

Neck in line for the throne

It took Hammer eight years to persuade Christopher Lee to don the cape again for Dracula: Prince of Darkness. Once again Terence Fisher directed, sadly no Peter Cushing this time, so Andrew Keir fills in as Father Sandor.

Four British tourists find that there is no such thing as a free lunch when they stumble upon Dracula's castle and the supposed hospitality of his loyal servant Klove. Before long one of them is hanging upside down bleeding over Dracula's coffin leading to a lovely special effects sequence as the Count's body rebuilds itself. The rest is mostly familiar stuff with the usual Vampire conventions. Keir provides a reassuring presence as the new Vampire hunter, and Francis Matthews makes a good lead. And of course there is a marvellous turn by cult horror legend Barbara Shelley who gets to utter the great line "There will be no morning for us" before her husband provides the liquid component for Dracula's regeneration and she joins the ranks of the undead.

In usual Hammer fashion it rattles along in a tight 90 minutes leading to a splendid chase and the finale as Dracula is trapped on thin ice with Sandor firing bullets to crack it and send him plunging to a watery doom. Quite why Dracula allows running water around his castle is perplexing but best not dwelt on. The other strange thing is the decision to have Dracula remain mute throughout the film. Depending on who you you believe this was either due to Lee refusing to say the lines, or the writer Jimmy Sangster not writing any for him. Either way it does detract from Dracula's established urbane menace which is a shame.

It's a four star film mainly for the performances of Lee, Keir, Matthews and Shelley. This is my first film from a Dutch box set of Hammer classics which also includes the Quatermass movies which kickstarted the Hammer story. Next up may well be some British zombies.

Wolf Whistle and I'll come to you

Hammer completed a foursome of horror archetypes with Curse of the Werewolf in 1961. Terence Fisher directed again and Oliver Reed making his first credited film appearance as the unlucky lycanthropic Leon.

This time they turned to the ur-text for the Wolf man mythos, The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore, but decided to relocate the action to Spain. And there is an awful lot of back story to get through before we finally see Reed in his full shaggy glory. So we have an evil Marques tormenting a poor beggar who turns a bit lupine after a long stay in the dungeons. In the process he attacks Leon's poor mute mother who then has to escape the rapacious clutches of the ageing Marques before she gets taken in by a friendly couple who discover she is pregnant. Then we have the boyhood of a werewolf as her strange child howls at the bars of his bedroom window, and may be responsible for tearing the throats out of a nearby herd of goats.

Of course this is a Hammer horror so we get some familiar faces turning up, including the ever reliable Michael Ripper, and Warren Mitchell as the local gamekeeper with a Spanish accent direct from the east end of London. Once Leon has grown into lean and hungry looking Oliver Reed we get plenty of Kensington gore and glimpses of some hairy hands but it's not until the last 15 minutes or so that we get the full wolf man make up.

Sadly it's probably the weakest of the first four of the classic Hammer horrors. The strange Spanish setting doesn't really add anything, and the delay in getting to the full Werewolf is rather tedious. But Oliver Reed does make Leon a sympathetic and rather pathetic figure who at the end is begging for the silver bullet to end his rampage, and of course there are plenty of heaving bosoms and Kensington splatterings along the way which do help a bit. Let's give it a middling 2.5 out of 5 great dane ears and move on to the return of the Count.

Judge Dredd The Mega-History

I stumbled across a brand new copy of this book in the antiques shop for a mere £2 and couldn't resist the lure of a great Mike McMahon cover. Written by Colin Karman and Peter Acton and published in 1995 to tie in with the expected upsurge of interest from the Stallone movie.

Obviously this history of Dredd's creation and his development as a character is somewhat out of date now but it makes for an interesting read as another Mega project to collect the best of Dredd gathers speed. Featuring interviews with all the key editors and creators this well written book details the various factors affecting British comics in the late 1970s including the controversy raised by Action. From there the story progresses with the familiar tales of Mills, Wagner and Ezquerra's initial concepts for the strip, and the convoluted back and forth that led to that first episode in Prog 2.

The authors detail the development of Dredd's character concentrating on the epics that defined him and his world and set many of the rules and concepts that still affect him today. In terms of longevity and impact on popular culture it is probably fair to say that Dredd has now outstripped Dan Dare as the most important single character in British comics history, so it is nice too have a book looking at just his stories from the pages of 2000AD.

There are lots of illustrations from the Prog including covers and full pages of art, as well as concept sketches and nice visual details. The creators are given plenty of room to tell their own stories and it all generates a certain amount of nostalgia for those early days of the comic with young artists coming in off the streets and establishing their place in the pantheon.

And, of course, a book about the development of Judge Dredd also becomes a history of John Wagner. His impact on the last 40 years of British comics can not be underestimated and this book does him justice.

Overall, this was a great read even though it is now 20 years old, and makes a good companion piece to Thrill Power Overload. There are still copies out there on Amazon marketplace and it's well worth tracking down.

Megazine 358 vs 2000AD Prog 1923

The last Prog before the next jumping on point and two Nick Percival covers provide a good opportunity to revive some head to head reviewing.

Covers. Nick Percival's Mean Machine vs Howard Quartz.

Two fantastic images from a master of creepy covers. Howard Quartz is great and we all love speech bubbles on a cover, but that Mean Machine face with the ghostly image of the boy he was floating above the title is just heart breaking. My views are coloured by the story it accompanies but that face really tells the tragic tale of what was done to Mean. Best Megazine cover of the year so far.

Result: 1-0 to the Meg.

Judge Dredd: Perps, crimes and videotape by Alec Worley, Carl Critchlow and Annie Parkhouse  vs The Cop by Al Ewing, Ben Willsher, Adam Brown and Simon Bowland.

I am really enjoying what Al Ewing and Ben Willsher are building with their Megazine story. I like to see Dredd using his detective skills and the Synthi-Caf moment is a nice touch. But over in the Prog we have visitors to a zoo terrorised by Megalodon Sharks with robotic legs. Come on, we all love 2000AD for stuff like this and Carl Critchlow renders it beautifully. It's a one off story but a pretty good one.

Result: 1-1 Game on.

Tharg's 3Rillers: 1% by Eddie Robson, INJ Culbard and Ellie De Ville vs American Reaper by Pat Mills, Clint Langley and Annie Parkhouse

Tricky. This particular 3Riller has done nothing for me although I love Culbard's art. The story about some Banksian Smatter or a grey goo outbreak just didn't grab me, but it's up against the incomprehensible American Reaper which looks staggering but static. So Culbard's colours will win this narrowly.

Result: 2-1 to the Prog.

Survival Geeks: Steampunk'd by Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby, Neil Googe, Gary Caldwell and Simon Bowland vs Angelic by Gordon Rennie, Lee Carter and Annie Parkhouse

Survival Geeks looks good and features another great 2000AD moment with Gundam Gappa taking down Cthuhlu but I can't shake the feeling that the writers are laughing at us and not with us. Over in the Megazine the Angel gang prequel suffers from the one month gap between episodes and the shifting time frame fractures the story making it hard for me to follow. It will almost certainly read better in one continuous chunk but having recently experienced Mr Rennie's contempt for the opinions of his audience I can't be bothered. So my man-child fanboy vote will go to Neil Googe's artwork for Survival Geeks.

Result: 3-1 to the Prog but the match has gone stale in the middle section.

Bob Byrne's Twisted Tales by (err) Bob Byrne vs Tales from the Black Museum: Rising Angel by Michael Carroll, Nick Percival and Ellie De Ville

I never get Bob Byrne's Twisted Tales until someone explains them to me and I've got letters after my name and everything, but it doesn't matter because it's never going to beat Carroll and Percival's stunning story about the last days of Mean Machine. This is everything that Angelic is not, Michael Carroll is a great writer who spots something that has been missed over the years, the innocent gentle soul who was the victim of Pa Angel's abuse. Nick Percival is a well known horror fan and his artwork is perfectly suited for the creepy caretaker of the Black museum and the portmanteau film style of his terrible tale. Carroll and Percival's previous collaboration Trauma Town was a gripping study of Dredd's psyche and here they work similar wonders on the remnants of the Mean Machine as he tries to do some good after a lifetime of enforced evil. It's a terrific piece of work and I wish I could award it more than a single point.

Result: 3-2 to the Prog

Interlude: Michael Molcher's obituary for Brett Ewins is beautifully written and very moving, as is Rufus Dayglo's lovely image that accompanies it.

Savage: Grinders by Pat Mills, Patrick Goddard and Ellie De Ville vs Harlem Heroes by Michael Fleisher, Steve Dillon, kev Walker and Simon Jacob.

Beautiful black and white line work by Steve Dillon in this second volume of the Harlem Heroes. Slice D'Altroy looks an awful lot like Abslom Daak though. Meanwhile Bill Savage contemplates his future as the political fallout from the resistance victory continues. Patrick Goddard gives another master-class in monochrome art, including his recreation of some classic moments from earlier savage volumes. Sometimes you just want a brain in a jar and if I can't have Artie Gruber in the original Harlem Heroes then Howard Quartz is the next best thing. It's an easy win for Savage.

Result: 3-3. A tie, which is probably fair as both the Prog and the Meg are producing top stuff at the moment. But if I had to cast a deciding vote it would be to Mike Carroll and Nick Percival for the Mean Machine story and that terrific cover. If you are only reading the Prog then you're missing out on some great British comics in the Megazine.

Big Finish - Dark Eyes 4

The Dark Eyes series has been a huge success for Big Finish and here is the fourth and final box set, written by Marc Fitton and John Dorney, and directed by Ken Bentley.

Liv Chenka is back, as is the Master and the Daleks, and they are joined by Sontarans as well. Paul McGann is as engaging as ever as the Eight Doctor and Alex MacQueen attacks the bad guy role with his usual relish.

The final tale of Molly O'Sullivan and her dark eyes is all explained but along the way there are some interesting interludes most notably in the first story A Life in the Day which tells a remarkable time loop story with a touching love affair at its heart. It is probably the best thing in the whole box set and extremely well done.

Elsewhere a different actress plays the older Molly with considerable success and there are the final pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of the origin of the Eminence. I may have missed this in an earlier story but I was stunned when I realised how a scientific acronym gave the Eminence its name. Very clever writing indeed.

I've enjoyed each of the Dark Eyes box sets and this one was no exception. A solid 4 out of 5 time loops.

Mummy Dearest

Third of the original Hammer colour horrors was their version of The Mummy from 1959, again directed by Terence Fisher and starring Cushing and Lee.

By this time Hammer had arranged a deal with Universal which allowed them to use the titles and characters from the original films. So the plot is initially very similar to the Karloff film, particularly the back story about the high priest and his love for the princess and the lookalike heroine. Again the Hammer version keeps the locations fairly limited around Cushing's house and a nearby swamp. There are also some comic turns from Michael Ripper and a few other Hammer regulars.

Peter Cushing gives his usual fantastic turn as the hero but yet again Christopher Lee steals the show as the Mummy, and this time we have a fully mobile and murderous member of the living dead swathed in those crusty bandages. The Mummy walks and he looks suitably terrifying. Lee really put his whole body on the line for this role, apart from having his head completely buried in the make-up he also sustained a number of injuries. He did his back in carrying the heroine Yvonne Furneaux, sprained his ankles on hidden pipes while wading through the studio swamp. the exploding squibs that created the effect of bullet holes caused burns, and then he dislocated his shoulder crashing through an incorrectly rigged prop door, a moment which I think you can see in the film. It was a good job he was already wearing all those bandages.

Unfortunately when Lee is not on screen this one becomes a bit dull and is the least chilling of the first three Hammers. Three out of five death scrolls I think, but I can't leave it there. Let's dig up some more Hammer and find out how the Frankenstein and Dracula franchises continued. Watch this space.