(Please note: this post was supposed to be up on the weekend of the 14th to the 16th of June to be a part of the Hammer/Amicus Blogathon, and is thus of course five weeks overdue. Apologies for the glitch in the Matrix that led to me overshooting and emerging from the Vortex at this late set of Space-Time co-ordinates.)
Horror was not all Hammer, of course, in the Britain of the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. While Hinds and Carreras' colossus bestrode the silver screen, seeming to rule over the genres of horror, science fiction and fantasy for those two decades there were other - admittedly smaller in stature - studios producing films for the fulfillment of the fandom (or "relish for the palate of a jaded motion picture public", as the publicity for the 1915 release of Paul Wegener's seminal titan of terror The Golem phrased it). Tempean Films, formed by producing duo Robert Baker and Monty Berman, produced a steady stream of dramas and thrillers before following in Hammer's wake with 1958's Blood of the Vampire (Henry Cass), Jack the Ripper (Berman and Baker), The Trollenberg Terror Quentin Lawrence) and 1960's The Hellfire Club (Berman and Baker) - the duo would then team with writer-director John Gilling to form Triad Films in order to make Gilling's 1960 retelling of the infamous bodysnatchers Burke and Hare in The Flesh and the Fiends.
Tony Tenser's Tigon British Productions maintained an output of horror/sci-fi movies from the late 1960s, such as Michael Reeves' superlative twin-spin of 1967's The Sorcerers and 1968's Witchfinder General, Vernon Sewell's 1968 The Blood Beast Terror and Curse of the Crimson Altar, The Haunted House of Horror (Michael Armstrong, 1969), Blood on Satan's Claw (Piers Haggard, 1971) and The Creeping Flesh Freddie Francis, 1973). Tom Blakeley's Planet Film Productions gave the world the 1965 Devils of Darkness (the final film to be helmed by the prolific Lance Comfort), and the 1966 and 1967 Terence Fisher directed duo Island of Terror and Night of the Big Heat. Former Hammer lenser Freddie Francis formed Tyburn Films in the mid-70s with his son Kevin Francis, releasing The Ghoul and Legend of the Werewolf in 1975.
But the main rival to Hammer for the crown of British cinema's kings of the cinefantastique was Amicus. Formed by New Yorkers Milton Subotsky and Max J Rosenberg, Amicus (from the Latin for 'friends') started out with an output such as the pop music showcases It's Trad, Dad! ([aka Ring-a-Ding Rhythm] Richard Lester, 1962) and Just for Fun (Gordon Flemyng, 1963) before forsaking the popular beat hits of the likes of Helen Shapiro, Craig Douglas and Bobby Vee to sow their seed in a darker vein.
Amicus would become famous among the Among-We of the Famous Monsters of Filmland for their refinement of the portmanteau horror film, producing such winners as Freddie Francis' Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965), Torture Garden (1967) and Tales from the Crypt (1972), The House That Dripped Blood (Peter Duffell, 1970) and Roy Ward Baker's Asylum (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973). Betwixt these devilish delights, however, they would keep up a varied roster of drama, fantasy and science fiction - and it is to the latter category that we turn. I believe i first came across The Terrornauts (not literally, don't be disgusting) whilst perusing a piece on the rather splendiferous website wearecult.rocks by the reliably brilliant Dr Laura Mayne (which i recommend checking out, if you have the time or inclination) which included some of the original wishful-thinking concept art for the film and contrasted them with the rather tragically mundane realisation in reality. Being then - in the wise, wise words of Go West - the king of wishful thinking (just in general, rather than to do with Dr Mayne herself) and cognisant with the feeling of dreams hitting bland reality with an ecky thump, of course i thought it looked well worth investigating.
Opening at the headquarters of Project Star Talk - very much the British 1950s/60s British Rocket Group lash-up "make do and mend" version of SETI - we are introduced to our core cast of the intrepid Dr Joe Burke (Simon Oates) and his trusty companions Ben Keller (Stanley Meadows) and Sandy Lund (Zena Marshall), who are striving to make radio contact with intelligences beyond the surly bonds of Earth whilst being hampered by the hectoring and overexpectant of results Dr Henry Shore (Max Adrian, previously the vampire doctor [not the vampire Doctor - that's Jon Pertwee in House That Dripped Blood] in Amicus' previous Dr Terror). Dr Shore's lack of belief in Burke's project and constant demand for results ("It better happen in the next three months!") builds to his threat to close down the project for good.
After staring wistfully at a painting of an eerie alien landscape that he's - rather egocentrically, really: how many people hang a painting they did as a schoolkid in their workplace? - hang on the lab wall signed and dated 'JOE BURKE, 1940', Burke (and hair, standing on end) begins receiving a signal. A steady, repeated signal from outer space that he swears he finds familiar. He relates, in flashback, a tale of his childhood when his archaeologist uncle, on a dig in southern France (something in le Cro-Magnon, perhaps?) discovered amidst the bones of bygone ages a strange black box. This cosmic cube not being found an objet of historical significance, it was given to young Joe, who began to experience strange dreams (as we all do when young) of an extraterrestrial planetscape - complete with binary moons that wheel in the alien sky. And dodgy matte work that ensures that the smoke from volcanic eruptions on the surface pass behind one of said planetary bodies. Oh dear. Even my dreams have a better effects budget than this. Yet it was this childhood dream that led him to be a doctor, on his stellar search for speech from Spock.
"This will cause a sensation!" cries Charles Hawtrey (a phrase he may well have used off-screen in his down[low]time) as the officious auditor Joshua Yellowlees, sent to check the project's accounts as they transmit their reply to the signal's source. As they do so, a rather wobbly robot slightly resembling Lucifer from the original Battlestar Galactica if he'd been built by some drunken Robot Wars contestants jerks into life within the asteroid. It (let's not presume the gender of a dodgy droid) triggers the launch of an extremely poor model - sorry, a spaceship, which follows the transmissions from the satellite heart and beams up the entire project (including Burke, Keller, Lund, Yellowlees and gossipy tea lady Mrs Jones [Patricia Haines]). More than three feet high and rising, Joe tries to reason out their perilous situation as they head towards the suspiciously hospitable asteroid in artificial gravity, whilst Mr Yellowlees cries "Mrs Jones!" as if some hybrid 'twixt Frank Darien from Hellzapoppin' and Leonard Rossiter from Rising Damp.
Summoned before Rubbish!Lucifer (or maybe it's a bit more like the robot from Logan's Run... something Seventies, either way), our leads are handed a box that isn't a bomb ("They always ticks before they explodes" as Mrs Jones so sagely informs us) containing food like rewarded lab rats in an experiment before being ushered into a bizarre series of tests like Takeshi's Castle meets The Crystal Maze on crack. Given another black box with which to ride on time, Joe goes back, back to his beginnings - to the strange new world of his adolescent dreams to encounter some green shower cap-clad lads who are a bit sacrifice-happy. Paradise ain't half as nice as it might seem. Finally receiving what the aliens are trying to transmit, scales fall from Burke's eyes in a blinding flash of knowledge of an interstellar war and the deathbed pleas of a dying race to stop the Enemy from space (but not the Enemy from Space, that'd be breaking Hammer's copyright).
Imagine the climax of Blake's 7 season two cliffhanger 'Star One' enacted, with the ragtag team of heroic humans facing down the intergalactic alien invasion fleet comprised of the guy from Doomwatch, a Bond girl, that one guy, a charlady and Charles bloody Hawtrey off the Carry Ons.
What?
Yes. Exactly.
Carry On Contact. It's not 2001, but it's tons of fun.
