"Burke and Hare" (1972) d/ Vernon Sewell

The West Port Murders, carried out over ten months in 1828, by a pair of enterprising body brokers named Burke and Hare, have inspired a slew of genre movie variations to date, from 1945's The Body Snatcher with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, to The Flesh and The Fiends (1960) with Donald Pleasence and George Rose, and even Freddie Francis' The Doctor and The Devils (1985) with Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea. Tonight's review is another, the last film directed by Vernon Sewell, the man responsible for Blood Beast Terror and Curse of the Crimson Altar (both 1968), with Derren Nesbitt and Glynn Edwards as the titular duo. This one's played mostly for dark laughs, but you'll have a hard time missing Danish Hammer-pastry, Yutte Stensgaard and dark angel/French Mauritian, Francoise Pascal. Far from a laughing matter, either bird.


These two'd nick your goldfish and pop back 'round for the stringy-wastey bits.
Burke (Derren Nesbitt) and Hare (Glynn Edwards), beware of 'em, the pair of 'em. Life on the dirty streets of Scotland in the 1800's was hard enough with disease and poverty rampant among the flock, and then these two low types decide to go into nefarious business tah-gedder,  robbin' corpses o' their final eternal peace and sellin' 'em to Dr. Knox (Harry Andrews) for up to eight bob, as specimens for the dissection table at the medical college, all sneaky in the middle of the night-like. Luckily, there's a brothel nearby, with working girls like Janet (Yutte Stensgaard) and Marie (Francoise Pascal) to...ease the tensions and put good again the humour of young doctors-in-training; one virginal goober ready to fall in love with the very prostitute that deflowers him, after having had a peeped upon romp with a soldier in a kilt, no less.


"Did that feel like sixpence worth to you?",  muses Marie (Francoise Pascal).
Needless to say, Burke and Hare expand their business horizons from the freshly deceased to live victims, with Hare holding them down while Burke smothers them, and though the body count begins with sickly old codgers already on death's doorstep and butch, belligerent, booze-soaked barflys who nobody's gonna miss, they're soon setting their sights on club-footed neighborhood waifs and they're also not above icing a fire-displaced hooker or two, should the opportunity arise. When the love-struck student sees his beloved Marie on Knox's slab, he investigates the clues that inevitably lead to our dastardly duo, partying it up on Halloween after having sped a little old lady out of her existence, her body tucked away in a chest. Finally, we're told that Burke is ultimately hanged for his crimes, while an exonerated Hare was set on by a lynch mob and thrown into a lime pit, after which he died a penniless, blind beggar. Cue groovy titular pop tune by The Scaffold and that's another one for the books.


"Don't bother to bring bovver to our brothel, brother.",  jibes Janet (Yutte Stensgaard).
The breathtaking Pascal, a fellow Libran who first surfaced to genre fans in the orgy scene in 1970's Bloodsuckers, would famously appear in Jean Rollin's La rose de fer (1973) and in numerous television roles over the years on BBC, from Coronation Street to Mind Your Language. Man, she transcends adjectives, she's so hot.(Oh, Dub, yer so good to your readers) Sadly, this would be Yutte Stensgaard's last appearance in front of movie cameras,only popping up in an episode of the British television horror anthology, Dead of Night (ironically, her episode was among those lost when BBC purged its back catalog in the seventies) , before dropping off the radar completely. Thankfully, her full talents are on display here, for posterity's sake. Ahem. Two's the magic number tonight on the scale, as well, a body worth snatching once or twice, for sure.


"Stop bloody breevink awready, Papa fancies 'avink a new bowlah!"

"Curse of the Crimson Altar" (1968) d/Vernon Sewell

Despite bearing little resemblance to H.P. Lovecraft's short story 'Dreams in the Witch House', which tonight's review is supposed to be based upon (though I find it more similar stylistically and in tone, to 1970's film version of Dunwich Horror, which combined trippy psychedelic visuals of the day with indescribable horrors in the same fashion), this seldom seen late gothic effort from Tigon Studios full of witchery and human sacrifice proves lively and entertaining enough to satsify even the most jaded genre die-hard in the end. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have a cast headed by the likes of Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele, Michael Gough, and Boris Karloff in front of your lens, either, as this one can boast.


"Isn't anyone going to paint psychedelic flowers on my belly, too?"
We meet an antiques dealer named Robert Manning (Mark Eden) as he departs for his hometown of Greymarsh, where it seems his brother Peter has vanished, though the audience sees him signing into a witchcraft circle upon the uber-repetitive hard sell of a sultry green witch named Lavinia (Steele), ritual-shanking a sacrificial chick, then getting branded by a muscle creep in a leather loincloth and matching antlers (!) before his cinematic sibling even realizes he's gone missing. On route to Craxted Lodge, Manning interrupts some young sophisticates as they hunt down a bit of strumpet in a cat suit through the woods. These groovy kids and their exotic kicks...Upon arrival, he crashes something of a high brow hallucino-orgy before finally meeting Morley (Lee) to inquire about his brother, remarking that the lodge's ambience leads him to expect Boris Karloff to pop up any minute. He's then introduced to the invalid Professor Marshe (Karloff, ha-ha.), the area's foremost authority of witchcraft and the occultish arts, who likes neither his attitude nor his limited appreciation for fine brandy. Despite the spooky vibes he's catching, Manning agrees to stay at the lodge while he scrutinizes his brother's whereabouts, and Morley's attractive young niece, Eve (Virginia Wetherell), while he's at it.


"Konga!! Put me down, Konga! Dreadfully sorry, old chap, wrong movie..."
Thanks to the meddling of Morley's half-witted manservant, Elder (Gough), Manning begins to uncover the mystery behind Peter's disappearance, and it's connections to the town's current festival commemorating the stake-burning of the lodge owner's green-hued ancestor for witchcraft. Fancy that. He begins having vivid dreams of said ancestor goading him to sign something, then dagger-shivving him when he refuses, with his missing brother and some en-masked cultists in attendance. Before anyone can point the accusatory finger at the chatty green bird, we find out her spirit is being invoked through a zany kalaideoscopic lamp, and that Manning stands as the last descendant of those who sentenced Lavinia to death, and what's more, neither Eve nor the wheelchair-bound Marshe is aligned with the lanky mustachioed warlock looking to even the ancient score. In the end, the lodge burns to the ground with Morley inside, and as the relieved survivors look on, he transforms into the witch among the licking flames from atop the building.


"Lord Satan has informed me that, unless we recruit more cult members, he shall be forced to downgrade us to 'The Crimson Get-together'."
Curse would stand as the last of Karloff's films that he would live to see premiere, famously contracting pneumonia on the set, before tackling roles in four low-budget Mexican horror films, with just half of one lung. Despite suffering from weak script and direction, I'd still consider it one of the better efforts from Tigon, and dare I say, a must-see for any fans of the actors involved, as they're all much better individual pieces than the film itself is, on the whole. If you want to see the same general idea executed at a much higher level, look no further than 1960's City of the Dead/Horror Hotel. On the scale, let's call this one a deuce.


Why, yes. Yes, I would. Flames, ceremonial headdress, green skin, and all.