Tweet
Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
Released on: October 29th, 2024.
Director: Ted Hooker, Jack Cardiff, Freddie Francis
Cast: Mike Raven, James Bolam, Mary Maude, James Booth, Francesca Annis, Jack Palance, Diana Dors, Julie Ege
Year: 1971/1973/1974
Purchase From Amazon
Cruel Britannia: Three Killer Thrillers From The UK – Movie Review:
Vinegar offers up a triple feature of vintage British horror with their two-disc Cruel Britania boxed set. Here’s what’s inside:
Disc One:
Penny Gold:
Directed by Jack Cardiff and released in 1973, Penny Gold follows Inspector Matthews (James Booth) as he's tasked with investigating the murder of a woman near Windsor Castle, the victim being a woman named Diane who was killed by someone in a trench coat and whose safe was broken into after her death. Matthews is assisted by a younger detective named Roger (Nicky Henson), who is just as into soccer as he is into solving crimes.
As the pair start to follow the various leads that they uncover, they start discovering and eliminating suspects until they start to wonder if the murder wasn't committed by Charles Blachford (Jospeh O'Conor) who has ties to an antiquities dealer in Amsterdam who is after the especially rare stamp from which the film takes its title. As it happens, Diane's twin sister, Delphi (Francesca Annis), is in Blachford's employ and may or may not have some insider information as to the wealthy, older man's involvement in all of this. Meanwhile, a few others connected to the case turn up dead, clearly indicating that the killer is still at large.
A moderately enjoyable crime thriller, Penny Gold never quite takes off the way you hope it will despite a strong opening, but it'll hold your attention throughout its running time. The film benefits from a really strong cast, with James Booth in particular doing a great job as the surely detective out to crack the case. He and Nicky Henson share a good chemistry together in this picture, with Francesca Annis bringing an alluring and interesting persona to her supporting role.
The plot unfolds at a decent pace and the film features solid production values. Cardiff, better known for his work as a cinematographer than a director, hands cinematography duties over to Ken Hodges and he does a solid job behind the camera. The movie looks good from start to finish, with some interesting framing devices employed, particularly during the murder set pieces featured in the movie. Bonus points for including a monkey
Crucible of Terror:
Directed and co-written by Ted Hooker, Crucible Of Terror starts off with a fantastic opening sequence in which a mysterious artist creates a sculpture by encasing a beautiful naked woman (Me Me Lai) in plaster before pouring molten metal into the breathing hole. From there we jump from rural England to urban London where the metallic sculpture is the signature piece of an art gallery display showcasing the talents of a reclusive artist named Victor Clare (Mike Raven). A couple, George (Kenneth Keeling) and Joanna (Melissa Stribling), are interested in the piece but the gallery operator, Jack Davies (James Bolam) won’t sell it. With the show having been quite a success, Jack decides he’d like to get more of Clare’s work and so he talks to his son, Michael (Ronald Lacey), who tells him to go visit his father on his own – which is inevitably exactly what he does.
Jack talks his wife, Millie (Mary Maude), as well as Michael and his wife, Jane (Beth Morris), to accompany him on a weekend trip out to the countryside to try and talk the reclusive Victor Clarke into selling Jack more of his artwork. Unfortunately, they realize once they arrive that there’s something very wrong with Victor, in fact, he’s quite insane as is his wife, Dorothy (Betty Albridge), a strange woman who wanders around in pigtails and who won’t let go of her dolly. When Jane is stabbed to death that night, the three remaining guests find that they’re in for far more than they originally bargained for.
Crucible Of Terror starts off amazingly well, what with the lovely Ms. Lai getting her human sculpture on and all, and then slows to a fairly dead halt for a good twenty to thirty minutes before finding its footing again. Once the action moves to Victor Clare’s home and Raven is given the opportunity to really just kind of go for it and so he does. His performance is the best part of the film, and he was obviously quite enjoying playing the part he was assigned in this picture. His whacked-out performance fits right in with the lunatic vibe that the movie goes for in its later half, though as interesting and amusing as this can be, there are some head-scratching moments that don’t necessarily make sense. Take Clark’s wife for example –she’s probably in her late fifties yet she wanders around dressed like a little girl and acting like one too and we’re never told why, though we can tell from Clark’s reactions to her that he’s not particularly impressed with whatever has happened to his wife, which is further exemplified by his eye for naked female subjects.
Crucible Of Terror is pretty ropey as far as the story goes, but it’s got a whole lot of style and some great, colorful atmosphere in its later half. As the film nears its close, all bets are off and Hooker throws in some fun and unexpected twists. There are some solid gore effects in the film and the cast of interesting British horror regulars all do fine with the material. An odd, quirky score helps things out quite a bit and the camerawork is actually fairly impressive. In an interesting twist of fate, after Mike Raven’s film career failed to set the world on fire, he retired and worked as a sculptor and artist until he passed away in 1997. Supposedly he’s buried in a grave that he dug for himself on Bodmin Moor.
Disc Two:
Craze:
Last but not least, 1974’s Craze, directed by none other than Freddie Francis, stars none other than Jack Palance as Neal Mottram, the owner of an antique store who has a serious interest in the occult and black magic of a sort. When the movie begins, we see him making a human sacrifice to an African god named Chuku, much to the dismay of the naked woman he slaughters, a topless dancer by trade.
Mottram's dedication to Chuku, which he believes will bring him wealth and power, requires more than just one simple sacrifice, however, and there are others involved in all of this. When the witch that leads the coven shows up to get her Chuku idol back, Mottram proves he isn't one to let opportunity pass and soon enough, she's dead too.
The cops start to realize that there's a murderer about, and grouchy Sergeant Wall (Michael Jayston) is soon working the case. Meanwhile, Mottram's partner/lover, Ronnie (Martin Potter), realizes what Mottram is up to and tears him a new one for doing what he does with the door wide open. Mottram, however, is undeterred and after finding some cash stashed in an old dresser, he assumes that Chuku is smiling upon him which causes him to go out into the streets in search of more, fresh victims before hooking up with Dolly Newman (Diana Dors) to serve as an alibi while his murder streak continues.
How much you get out of this one will depend a whole lot on how much you appreciate Jack Palance’s scenery chewing abilities (and his questionable British accent!). He’s a lot of fun to watch here, skulking about and killing off various supporting characters to appease his god Chuku, but the plot is pretty wonky and it winds up being pretty predictable. Still, there’s some sleazy pleasure to be gleaned from giving this one a watch, as Palance goes about his murderous business offing various females along the way.
In addition to Palance and a foxy Dors, we also get supporting work from Trevor Howard and Suzy Kendall, which rounds out the cast nicely, and everyone in the cast just goes for it. Again, the manic Palance is the highlight here and he’s definitely entertaining if not exactly subtle, but everyone else in the movie does solid work here too, which makes it easy to overlook the fact that the plot is pretty goofy and the production values less than stellar. Overall, this is an entertaining mix of sleaze and weirdness that fans of stranger slasher-style shenanigans and cult-themed horror pictures should appreciate, warts and all.
Cruel Britannia: Three Killer Thrillers From The UK – Blu-ray Review:
All three films are offered up in AVC-encoded 1080p high definition and framed at 1.85.1 widescreen. Crucible Of Terror is taken from a 2k scan and restoration from a 35mm vault positive, while Penny Gold and Craze are scanned and restored in 4K from the 35mm original camera negatives. Crucible looks a bit softer than the other two, but all three transfers are quite good, showing nice detail and great color reproduction throughout. Black levels are strong, and skin tones look nice and lifelike throughout. There are no problems with any visible compression or noise reduction issues and the images retain natural film grain throughout. These are nice transfers, through and through.
Each film in the set gets a 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track in its native English with optional English subtitles. No problems to note here, the audio for each film sounds just fine. The tracks are properly balanced and there are no problems with any hiss or distortion. There’s decent range as far as the scores are concerned and the dialogue is always easy to understand.
Penny Gold includes a commentary track with writers/film critics Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw covering how they both came to know the film, details on how the different cast members wound up in the film, lots of information about Cardiff’s career as well as the film’s producer, its release history, some of the filming locations and other details related to its history. Crucible Of Terror includes a commentary track with writers/film critics Kim Newman and Stephen Jones that goes over the details of the film’s production history, offering up lots of information about the cast and crew that worked on the movie, some of the ideas that the movie explores, thoughts on what works and what doesn’t, details on the direction and release history and lots more.
The rest of the extras are on disc two. Here, we get a ten-minute interview with actress Judy Matheson titled Happy Gatherings where she covers how she landed the role, thoughts on her look into the movie and on her character, memories from the shoot and how she feels about the movie years after making it. We also get an eleven-minute interview titled In For A Pound where actor Richard Heffer talks about his enthusiasm for working with Cardiff, how he wound up in the movie, what it was like acting alongside his co-stars and other details.
Craze gets two commentary tracks, the first with writers/film critics Kim Newman and Stephen Jones that spends a lot of time comparing the movie to the novel that inspired it, The Infernal Idol by Seymour Henry, as well as offering thoughts on the performances, details on the film’s release, locations and more. The second commentary track is with filmmaker David DeCoteau and historian David Del Valle and it’s more analytical, dissecting the film while still offering up a fair mix of trivia related to the production’s history, with a lot of thought given to Palance’s performance and his character.
We also get an archival career-spanning interview with actor Michael Jayston that runs fifty minutes. This goes over how he got into acting in the first place, what it was like working his way up the ladder, getting bigger and better roles in both film and television productions, memories of various people that he worked with over the years and plenty more.
As to the packaging, Vinegar Syndrome provides a hard slipcase and slipcover combo designed by Luke Insect that also holds a full color forty-page perfect bound book that is limited to 5,000 units. The book includes essays by Simon J. Ballard, Jon Dear and Adrain Smith.
Cruel Britannia: Three Killer Thrillers From The UK – The Final Word:
Vinegar Syndrome’s Cruel Britannia: Three Killer Thrillers From The UK release is a good one, presenting three worthwhile films in very nice shape and with a solid array of extra features covering their history as well as the backstory of those involved in the productions. Recommended!