Tag Archives: The Prisoner

Horror, Movies

[December 18, 1968] Sex, Drugs and Boris Karloff: Curse of the Crimson Altar

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by Fiona Moore

Much as I enjoy the jollity of the festive season, I’m also firmly of the opinion that there is nothing better than a ghost story—or, failing that, a horror story—at Christmas. So I was quite delighted to learn my local cinema would be showing the latest British horror movie, Curse of the Crimson Altar.

Curse follows in the footsteps of this summer’s Witchfinder General in being a film where the horror is not supernatural but psychological, suggesting that this genre may be coming into fashion. Although the biggest creative obstacle Curse has to overcome is that someone behind the scenes, or possibly in the censor’s office, has meant that the actual catalyst for the horror remains subtextual throughout.

At the start of the movie, we get a quote from an unnamed “medical journal” about the influence of psychedelic drugs on the human brain: “drugs of this group can produce the most complex hallucinations and under their influence it is possible by hypnosis to induce the subject to perform actions he would not normally commit.” Thereafter, we get no reference to drugs at all, but it should be fairly clear to the viewer how we should interpret the proceedings.

The plot involves an antique dealer, Robert Manning (Mark Eden), going in search of his brother Peter, who has disappeared on an expedition to hunt for salable stock, sending Manning a single candlestick, a witchfinders’ bodkin, and a cryptic note on notepaper from a country estate, Craxted Lodge in the town of Greymarsh. Arriving at the estate, Manning finds Lord Morley (Christopher Lee) and his niece Eve (Virginia Wetherell) gearing up for a local Bonfire Night-type holiday, celebrating the anniversary of the burning of a local witch, Lavinia Morley (Barbara Steele), the Black Witch of Greymarsh. They claim never to have met Manning’s brother, but invite him to stay with them while he investigates. Manning begins suffering from strange erotic dreams about Lavinia Morley and sleepwalking episodes, and, with the help of a local historian and occult enthusiast, Professor Marsh (Boris Karloff), discovers he is descended from one of the people who sentenced Lavinia to death. Someone is out for revenge, but who, and how, and why?

Lascivious Lavinia as played by Barbara Steele
Lascivious Lavinia as played by Barbara Steele

The movie boasts a lot of familiar names behind and in front of the camera, being scripted by Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman, creators of Doctor Who’s Great Intelligence and Yeti, and featuring Roger Avon, Michael Gough and scream-queen Barbara Steele in supporting roles. Gough in particular does a great turn as a manservant who is either under the influence of malign spirits, or else doped to the eyeballs, at all times. The casting of Lee and Karloff, both seasoned horror veterans who usually play villains but have turned their hand to more benign roles, keeps the suspense going as to who is behind the sinister events, and there's a cute nod to Karloff's role when Manning remarks that he feels “like Boris Karloff might pop up at any moment” shortly before, in fact, he does.

Michael Gough as a zombie manservant.
Michael Gough as a zombie manservant.

In many ways the story feels a little like an episode of The Prisoner or The Avengers, involving as it does a villain who is using psychedelic drugs and mind games to wear down an unsuspecting victim. The fact that the script can’t directly say that drugs are involved also helps to make the events more ambiguous, suggesting for most of the movie that Manning might really be haunted by the vengeful spirit of Lavinia Morley. The imagery of the dream sequences is very much drawn from British folk culture, with sinister figures in animal masks and references to the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

Unfortunately, the story is also a little uneven, with a long prurient episode featuring Eve having a debauched party with her young artist friends apparently going nowhere; presumably the intention was to suggest that Eve might be behind, or at least complicit in, the implicitly drug-fueled activities which follow, but it mostly seems to be included to cater to the crowd of people who like to tut about modern youth going wild while secretly enjoying the orgy scenes. Similarly I found the dream sequences more laughable than erotic, with supposed demons and witches walking around clad in strips of imitation leatherette. There are also some gaps in the narrative, which I won’t detail in order not to give away the denouement, and the ending felt rather rushed to me.

Another tedious sex party, ho hum. Another tedious sex party, ho hum.

All in all, I’d say this is a solid if uneven horror story that keeps the viewer guessing for a long time, and suggests that the non-supernatural horror based in British folk mythology is here to stay.

Three and a half stars.

I’d also like to devote a little time to the B feature on the night I saw Curse of the Crimson Altar, a short and cheap SF-horror from 1964 entitled The Earth Dies Screaming, directed by the supremely talented Terence Fisher. The scenario is straight out of John Wyndham: a test pilot, returning from a high altitude flight, discovers that almost everyone else on Earth has been killed—apparently through some kind of gas attack, as the few survivors are people who, for one reason or another, were not breathing the atmosphere at that point. Less Wyndham-esque are the eerie, silent robots now stalking around the deserted Earth, who bear such a strong resemblance to Cybermen that one wonders if it is simply coincidence or if Doctor Who’s design team had been at the movies before working on “The Tenth Planet”. The robots also have the ability to turn anyone they shoot into grey-eyed, mindless creatures who do their bidding.

See what I mean? That's a Cyberman, that is.
See what I mean? That's a Cyberman, that is.

Our hero joins a band of survivors seemingly calculated to provide optimum drama (society woman; hedonistic good-time couple; sinister man in a mac; teddy-boy mistrustful of anyone over 30 and his heavily pregnant young wife) and collectively they attempt to figure out how to survive and to stop the robots, despite the conflicting agendas in the group.

While suffering a little from uneven pacing and characterisation (the teddy boy, for instance, suddenly overcomes his suspicions of the establishment for no reason other than plot convenience), this is a pleasingly eerie 62 minutes. I quite like the sub-genre of apocalypse stories that just focus on a small group of people trying to cope with their changed circumstances, and the parallels with the aftermath of a nuclear war are clear without being didactic.

Three stars.



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TV

[March 12, 1968] Be Seeing You (The Prisoner)

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The weekly news is up!  Please watch, enjoy, and mail in your comments to the station!


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Television and Films over the last few years have been littered with spies. Many of them have been forgettable but one was ahead of the pack: Danger Man.

Example image of Danger Man showing McGoohan as John Drake

Starring the brilliant Patrick McGoohan as John Drake, it took a more cynical and grounded look at the world of secret agents, compared with the more fantastical exploits of James Bond or John Steed.

We were meant to be getting a new series of Drake’s adventures, produced in full colour for the American market. Instead, we heard, he was concentrating on a new espionage series, The Prisoner. I had expected some cross between the former show and The Fugitive. What we got was quite different.

Shot of The Village where the residents are chess pieces on the board

After resigning, the un-named McGoohan is transported to a village. There he is assigned the Number Six and the authorities try to either probe him for information or get him to do their dirty work. So far this could have been an episode of Danger Man similar to "Colony Three". But there are much stranger elements.

Firstly, the whole village is not simply an island prison, it has the unnerving sense of enforced jollity. Which makes it more unnerving. I found myself reminded of the planet in Doctor Who’s Macra Terror, with both having that holiday camp feeling with dark tensions underneath.

Number Six goes down to the beach to look at another resident who has been dragged ashore by Rover.

Then, we have Rover, the Village’s loyal “Attack Bubble”. It should not be scary for a giant roaring soap sud to be scary, but the way that people are trapped within it, straining to get out makes for a terrifying image.

There is also the governance of The Village, where (in spite of a system of elections and councils) the power lays with “Number Two”, a figure who changes each week (or even multiple times in a week) with their own different experiments.

Number Six dressed as Sherlock Holmes on a fairground ride.
Just another day in the strange life of Number Six

As the series progresses it gets stranger in its plots. We have duplicate number sixes, dream journeys, trips to Old West, not to mention the world’s strangest martial arts. Over the seventeen episodes McGoohan moves us from a man trying to escape into the surreality we would more expect from The Corridor People or Do Not Adjust Your Set.

Number Six on the operating table with a probe pointed at his head.
You WILL enjoy The Prisoner

These offbeat choices may have put some people off but I enjoyed them, albeit with a couple of caveats. It would sometimes go too much into trying to be direct satire, rather that something more broad and nebulous, particularly in McGoohan’s directed episodes. These tended to work less well as it felt like to author was trying to pontificate to the audience and never gave a sense that this world had an existence outside of serving these points.

The other, is that, all these choices played against trying to give a solid finish to the story. For example, we are shown two characters and told that they both represent forms of rebellion. One we are not sure if we have seen before (the actor appeared previously but the character may be new) and the other only a couple of times in a position of authority. In a less experimental format I could see these challenges being overcome and a tighter solution put together.

A group of hooded and masked people dancing.
All the different factions celebrating the show.

However, as an experiment it is still one I enjoyed seeing and exploring the fascinating setup from McGoohan and co.

A high four stars


by Fiona Moore

Lots of people who tuned in to The Prisoner and watched to the end are, apparently, disappointed. Those people are missing the point. The Prisoner isn’t a spy series, or an sf series, or a metaphor… and yet, it is all of those things. The Village is a real place… and yet it’s also a state of mind, a cloying conformity that, as the series itself demonstrates, could be found in London or the Wild West as much as in Portmeirion, where the series was actually filmed. The point many critics are missing is, The Prisoner is first and foremost a Rorshach test.


Make of him what you will.

Even the most straightforward episode of The Prisoner can be interpreted through multiple lenses. Want to see it as a spy series, a kind of Manchurian Candidate with extra surreal elements? As a spoof of spy series, dialling the conceits of Danger Man or James Bond up to maximum so the viewer is confronted with how ridiculous they actually are? As a Jungian exploration of one man’s psyche, and how it crumbles under the strain of atomic-age paranoia? As a metaphor for childhood, and the way in which we go from complete dependence on our parents to adolescent rebellion to (one hopes) a more balanced adulthood? As a twisted, op-art version of the Tibetan afterlife, as the soul refuses the temptation to return to the Wheel of Samsara and eventually seeks peaceful oblivion in Nirvana? You can find all of those in there. But you’re also never going to find one interpretation that fits the series throughout, because that’s not what it’s all about.


Is this the real Village?

The fact that the series’ ending is chaotic and strange is, therefore, perfectly in keeping with that. You could see “Fall Out” as a commentary on rebellion, or on nuclear proliferation, or on the relationship of the id to the ego and the superego. You could also just sit back and let the imagery flow past you, and draw from it the meaning that personally speaks to you, that allows you to relate the series to your own life and the personal and political struggles you face in the turbulent and strange times we live in.


No, it doesn't have to make sense.

The point is not to over-interpret, or to seek a prescriptive meaning for the series. Does it always succeed? No. But does it fail? Only if you wanted a story with a nice neat ending, where The Prisoner is (definitely) John Drake and Number One is some bald-headed type in a Nehru suit stroking a fluffy cat. Otherwise, I’d say just turn on, tune in, and enjoy where the ride takes you.


The Prisoner and friends enjoying the ride.

Six..er..four out of five stars.




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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 12, 1968] The Power of Cinema (The Power, a movie)

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KGJ News has a new episode for the week!

All you need to know in just four minutes:


by Fiona Moore

Having had the opportunity to attend a premiere of George Pal’s latest movie, “The Power”, as the guest of a friend who works at Borehamwood, I’d recommend it for any fans of the current crop of mind-bending, psychedelic, nightmare movies.

An image I'm not going to remove from my brain easily

The story (which takes place, according to the chronon at the start, “tomorrow”) revolves around a facility whose purpose is to test the limits of human endurance, with the specific aim of identifying people with the qualities required to live in space. One of its directors, an anthropologist, has been conducting tests on his fellow board members as a pilot project for a survey of the wider population, and discovered that someone in his sample possesses more-than-human talents, including the ability to bend others to their will, to create illusions in the mind, and even, apparently, to use these powers to kill.

After the anthropologist meets a strange death in a gravity-simulating centrifuge, leaving behind a cryptic note appearing to blame someone named “Adam Hart”, our hero, Tanner (George Hamilton), investigates, while his mysterious antagonist seems to be constantly one step ahead of him, killing off board members one after the other and framing Tanner for the murders, though never quite managing to do in Tanner himself. The final confrontation of the film reveals the true reason for his miraculous survival.

Can *you* spot the bad guy?

The film’s weak points are largely in the scripting area. The plot is thin, though, to be fair, the action is so non-stop you don’t really notice. I was able to guess who the culprit was fairly early on, just through process of elimination and through considering the sorts of roles various actors are usually cast in, and there’s a party scene two-thirds of the way through which is simply interminable. Although the concept of an institute aimed at testing human endurance is interesting, the link to the space programme is fairly sketchy and seems mostly included as a way of justifying the centrifuge scenes. The idea of an ubermensch who is “the next stage of human evolution” is also well-worn: the film is based on a 1954 book of the same title by Frank M. Robinson, which may explain the use of a conceit which will, these days, strike the well-read sci-fi fan as more than a little bit dated.

The characterisation is also fairly light and boiler-plate. There’s the handsome young man, the pretty girl, the bow-tied scruffy scientist and his unhappy alcoholic wife, the seen-it-all cop, and so on. The casting is about what you’d expect, including as it does George Hamilton, Michael Rennie, Suzanne Plechette and, erm, “Miss Beverley Hills”. While all the performances are solid, none particularly transcends what you’d expect for a thriller movie.

On the other hand, handsome people do get their kit off a lot.

The thing that saves “The Power” from being just another schlocky thriller is the imagery. George Pal treats us to genuinely nightmarish sequences of mental manipulation, such as a scene where a character is trapped in his own office, the doors and windows apparently disappearing every time he turns around. Another powerful sequence has Tanner unable to get off of a fun-fair merry-go-round, with the images flicking back to the centrifuge which was the site of the original murder. There’s one scene which will ensure you never trust one of those ubiquitous dipping-bird toys ever again.

George Hamilton about to have an encounter with a dipping bird.

Pal also cleverly plays with the mental-manipulation conceit. For instance, at one point Tanner is lured through a desert by the image of an oasis, which the viewer interprets as another obvious illusion—until we discover that it is all too real, and is a target area on a USAF gunnery range. At another, Tanner sees the familiar words of a “DON’T WALK” sign turn into the sinister command “DON’T RUN”, and, several scenes later, is startled to see the words “DON’T RUN” on a newspaper headline… only to realise that the headline refers to a political incumbent warning off a potential rival from taking him on in an electoral race, and the use of the phrase is simply a coincidence. The landscapes around our hero also take on nightmarish qualities, with even the ordinary setting of a suburban garden becoming like a lush, mysterious jungle, and the scenes taking place in the desert seeming genuinely alien. The film’s ability to take ordinary, even pleasant, settings like fun-fairs, toyshops, conferences and parties and turn them into sinister, terrifying sequences recalls The Prisoner in places.

There are other good things that stand out in the movie. German, Japanese and Eastern European characters appear without their ethnicity being a plot or character point (although the German does briefly sermonize about how living under the Nazis has given him insight into the dangers of charismatic supermen). There are several female characters with names, even if they do only talk to each other fairly briefly, and Suzanne Plechette’s love interest character is disappointingly flat and dull, her most memorable scene being a censor-baiting coitus-interruptus with Hamilton. It’s also worth re-watching the early scenes once you know who the villain really is. As noted, the film also maintains at best an ambivalent attitude towards the idea of supermen, and the question of whether or not they can be good people: Tanner at one point muses that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Mrs Van Zant is Japanese, and why shouldn't she be?

“The Power” is, in sum, surprisingly good…for an SF horror blockbuster, with a few nice twists and an entertaining approach to the concept of the mind-manipulating superhuman being. It certainly sets a new high standard in visual effects and unreliable storytelling to challenge future filmmakers in this area. It's still plot-thin and character-lite, however.

Three out of five stars.



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