A couple of films about fathers and daughters tonight. First up, Hands Of The Ripper, the 1971 Hammer version of Pygmalion. But, with less singing. A psychiatrist takes a disturbed young woman into his home with the idea he can cure her of her disturbed nature. He doesn't know how deep that disturbance runs. The young woman is the daughter of Jack The Ripper, she had experienced deadly mental trauma when she was a child.
Eric Porter plays Dr John Pritchard and Angharad Rees plays the grown up Anna. Keith Bell plays Dr John's son and Jane Merrow plays Keith's blind fiancé Laura. Jane's an interesting actress, she's got 84 credits on the IMDb as an actor, most of which are on TV. She seems to do a lot of one episode appearances and from the 1960s onward she's been in some interesting programs. At least, some of my favorites, anyway. Shows like Secret Agent, The Baron, The Saint, The Prisoner, The Avengers, Man In A Suitcase, Mission Impossible, Mannix, UFO, Cannon and many more. She's still acting in her 70s.
Some say it's the most gruesome and gory of the Hammer films. It's fairly bloody but hardly much by today's standards. What's more horrifying is Dr John's lack of getting this murdering crazy women into restraints. He covers up the murder of the maid and others, all in the name of psychiatry. Of course things go south fast as Anna gets more active. She starts channeling Daddy and it's stabby-stabby time right soon. She's got a trigger and those kissable cheeks lead directly to the slaughter house. Hardly anyone gets out of this alive. The more I think about the movie, the more I like it, even though it's not a great horror film. It gets a 6.3 on the IMDb so you know it's got it's fans. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a horror fan, but to those so disposed, I'd say dig right in. I got my copy for four bucks over at Hamilton Books. They have a DVD sale section and sometimes there are things there that are good prices. Plenty of their selections aren't that good a deal.
The Flesh And Blood Show is a 1972 horror film directed by Pete Walker. I didn't know the name and I see from his IMDb listing there isn't anything that I recognize. The only cast member that I recognized was Robin Askwith. I'd seen him in movie's like If...., Queen Kong and Britannia Hospital.
A group of actors get hired to do an improve play. They are sent to Cromer in Norfolk to rehearse in an old abandoned theater by the ocean. They have no place to stay so they stay in the theater. Strange things start to happen and people begin to get murdered. The surviving actors try to figure out what's going on before they too wind up dead.
It was better than I was expecting, not that I was expecting much, certainly it was better than that last batch of films crammed on one disc I just mentioned. It mostly kept our interest, hardly anyone fell asleep, can't be bad.
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