Dracula (1958)

It is always good to go back to an old film favourite and find something new, and a recent viewing of the Hammer Studios 1958 take on Dracula provided just such an opportunity.

Made nearly 30 years after Tod Browning's equally ground-breaking,iconic and financially successful Universal version starring Bela Lugosi, director Terence Fisher crafts something just as distinctive and unique, helped both by a first rate cast and a punchy script by Jimmy Sangster, one that never forgets that the audience wants to be entertained. Sangster takes the basic premise from the Bram Stoker novel but tinkers with the story quite significantly, stripping the plot to the bare essentials, moving the action from England to Germany, changing some characters (Jonathan Harker is upgraded to Van Helsing’s undercover sidekick, and is fully aware of the Count’s night-time activities), and playing down or eliminating others, such as Dr Seward. 

The main theme of Good v Evil is left in place, along with the absolutist, black and white definitions of each, and this film taps into many of the tropes associated with vampires and Hammer films, such as the gloomy castles, frightened villagers and lush Gothic ambience. However, despite the changes from the source material, the underlying themes are still in place too, and as any media studies student knows, vampires are about two things - addiction and sex. The former is undisguised, with the vampires depicted as slaves to their craving for blood, and Van Helsing explicitly comparing it to narcotic dependence.

Sex is there too, in an overt rather than explicit manner. The main source of the sex is the Count himself, with Christopher Lee lighting up the screen as six feet five inches of charm, testosterone and magnetism. Of course, if you go with the "neck biting as intercourse" theory, he is not only seducing other men's wives, but other men too, (in the climax between Van Helsing and Dracula, after their initial skirmish, look quickly and you can see Van Helsing checking his neck to make sure he hasn’t been penetrated by the Count). This imagery gives a queasy undertone to the sight of Harker’s fiancée Lucy, turned into a vampire by Dracula, trying to abduct her niece and seduce her brother,.

The lurid sexual tone is backed by an equally violent one, albeit tamer than we see nowadays, with lashings of very red blood, and a new slightly extended gruesome sight of Dracula disintegrating, thanks to some recently rescued footage taken from a previously lost Japanese version of the film.

The other thing that I had not properly appreciated is the energy, intensity and swashbuckling demeanour of Peter Cushing. His version of Van Helsing is a world away from the elderly, more academic characterisation by Edward Van Sloan in the Browning film, and the final battle between him and the Count could almost have come right out of an Errol Flynn film.

Konga (1961)

A deliriously mess of a film, Konga represents an all too rare UK based attempt at a giant monster film. With a great performance from Michael Gough, some endearingly awful special effects, and a script that mixes a range of influences from King Kong to Poe, we get a film that is ridiculous but never less than entertaining.

After disappearing for a year in Africa, Dr Charles Decker comes back with a baby chimp and some crazy ideas about a way of growing plants and animals to an enormous size. As he slowly loses his mind he decides to use his discoveries in order to get rid of his enemies – but has he created something way beyond his control?

Despite the British setting and cast, Konga was actually the brainchild of American producer Herman Cohen, the man behind 50s horror hits such as I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, and How to Make a Monster. Cohen moved to the UK to make the delightfully lurid thriller Horrors of the Black Museum, which also starred Michael Gough as an arrogant sadist with a taste for murder, albeit one who works in journalism rather than science, and the film proved to be a big success. When asked to make a follow up, Cohen opted to move into more fantasy rooted territory.

Although King Kong is the most obvious influence, judging from the posters at least, the only element borrowed for Konga is the presence of a giant ape, and that does not show until the final act. A more obvious source is the Edgar Allen Poe story “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, from which it borrows the idea of a primate being trained to carry out the murderous wishes of its owner. However, an interesting twist on this comes when Decker's assistant Margaret also trains Konga to bump off what she sees as her rivals for the Doctor's affections. This makes Konga become something akin to the "Monsters from the Id" from Forbidden Planet.

Gough chews the scenery from the outset, but also gives Decker an oily, sinister aspect that stops his performance becoming grating. Make no mistake, he is definitely evil - he shoots his pet cat dead "in case" it interferes with his experiments - but Gough never resorts to foaming at the mouth theatrics, instead playing Decker as cool and sometimes charming, which would make for a chilling character if the situations were not so ridiculous and the dialogue not so portentous.

With such a dazzling lead, the other characters in the film are inevitably going to get overshadowed. However, Decker's assistant Margaret is fairly memorable, utterly devoted to him, turning a blind eye to his crimes, and only getting on the moral high ground when she learns he has been eyeing up one of his students. And, this being set "Between the end of the Chatterley ban, and The Beatles' first LP...", Dr Decker's students are hilariously dated, with lots of sensible sweaters and Trad Jazz.

However, just as entertaining as the star and the script are the special effects, especially the Gorilla costume. Despite starting (and ending) the film as a chimpanzee, one of the side effects of Dr Decker's growth serum is to, once he reaches a certain size, turn Konga into a gorilla. Herman Cohen had previously worked on "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla", and while I am not sure if it the same costume (or the same man in the costume), it is certainly a similar quality. Elsewhere, we get some ridiculous man eating rubber plants, straight out of Little Shop of Horrors, and when Margaret gets picked up and thrown around by Konga, it is very obviously a miniature doll.