TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Leofwine_draca I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying this troubled production after hearing so many bad things about it. Sure, it's not a brilliant film by any means, but it's nowhere near as confused as it's made out to be and there are plenty of things going on to retain the interest. The film is one of those old-fashioned adventure yarns, set in a foreign country as a plot with our British heroes encountering mad cults on a Greek island. It may be nonsensical at times but to make up for these lapses there are also some fairly exciting moments to be had too. And above all this it's still worth watching to hear Edward Woodward's hilarious speech equating vampirism with sexual perversion - psychological mumbo-jumbo at its most unintentionally funny! A good cast also helps to compensate for the negative aspects of this film. It's nice to see that one of the heroic leads is black, something very rare for a film from this period. I can't actually think of another British horror film where the protagonist is. Patrick Macnee is on hand to lend a much-needed air of authenticity but sadly falls off a cliff after being struck by polystyrene boulders in one amusing moment. Patrick Mower is good as the tormented man who falls under the curse of the cult while Edward Woodward and Peter Cushing both put in good cameos, Cushing excelling in a scene in which he is called upon to cry, totally convincing us in doing so.Other things to look out for include the typical awful fashions; some out-of-place music playing over the action and a weird, psychedelic orgy which gives the film the opportunity to show lots and lots of gratuitous naked women. There are also a couple of smashing action bits in there too, the first in which Sekka is forced to take on four thugs single-handedly, the second being the fraught rooftop finale which ends in tragedy. Also catch the dramatic speech at the end, literally show-stopping. The vampirism angle is actually kept to a bare minimum in this film, the menace working best when it is unnamed and faceless. This film actually reminded me of RACE WITH THE DEVIL, with tourists being hunted down by rabid cult followers. It's flawed, yes, but interesting to watch for all the above reasons.

ferbs54 Perhaps I should state at the outset that my only reason for renting out the 1970 British film "Bloodsuckers" is that it stars two of my very favorite English actors, Peter Cushing and "The Avengers"'s Patrick Macnee, appearing in a theatrical picture together for the first and only time. Well, I suppose that helps to explain my double disappointment with this film, a horror outing without a single shiver, and moreover, one in which Cushing and Macnee share not a single scene together. A fairly incomprehensible, ineptly put-together goulash of a film, "Bloodsuckers" (aka "Doctors Wear Scarlet" and the title under which I saw it in its current Something Weird DVD presentation, "Freedom Seeker") turns out to be something of a labor to sit through, and a picture that will truly be of interest only for the hard-core completists of those two great actors.In the film, Richard Fountain, an impotent professor of Greek mythology at Oxford University, gets into major-league trouble when he becomes involved with a hard-partying, jet-set cult while on vacation in Greece, and comes under the mind control of a vampiress named Chriseis. (Fountain is played here by Patrick Mower, who three years earlier had portrayed another hapless Brit who falls under the spell of an evil cult in "The Devil Rides Out"; Chriseis is portrayed by Imogen Hassall, who had appeared with Macnee in the 1967 "Avengers" episode "Escape In Time.") To avert an international scandal (Fountain is also the son of the Foreign Secretary), the British government sends its agent Tony Seymore (Alexander Davion) to retrieve Fountain, and he is accompanied by the professor's fiancée Penelope (Madeline Hinde) and best friend Bob Kirby (Senegalese actor Johnny Sekka, "the British Sidney Poitier," who had appeared with Macnee in the 1968 "Avengers" episode "Have Guns--Will Haggle"). Once in Greece, they are aided in their search by the British military attache Derek Longbow (Macnee, here in his first theatrical film since 1957's "Les Girls"; he wouldn't appear in anything outside of television until 1980's "The Sea Wolves"), while back at Oxford, provost Dr. Walter Goodrich, Penelope's father (Cushing, who also appeared in the infinitely superior horror films "Scream and Scream Again" and "The Vampire Lovers" that same year...as well as the 1967 "Avengers" episode "Return of the Cybernauts"), frets and worries. But even after Fountain is ultimately saved from the clutches of the drug-addled vampiric cult and brought back to England, it would seem that his problems are far from over....As "Maltin's Movie Guide" so correctly suggests, "Bloodsuckers" sports many segments in which narrator Seymore spits information at us in machine-gun fashion to fill in the gaps of what was almost certainly cut footage in post-production. The entire film feels choppy and unfinished somehow, and while all the performers try hard to put the conceit over, Julian More's script sadly lets them down. It is an unfleshed-out mess, dribbling out bits of Greek mythology here, pseudo psychology regarding impotence and susceptibility to vampirism there, in place of a coherent story line. Director Robert Hartford-Davis, whose only other pictures I have seen are the indescribable "Gonks Go Beat" (1965) and the blaxploitation thriller "Black Gunn" (1972), does a lousy job at keeping things coherent here, and those previously mentioned cuts and splices surely don't help. To add to the befuddlement, many scenes are shot way too darkly for home viewing, especially on this SW DVD. In addition, the film seems to pile on weirdness for weirdness' sake; thus, we are treated to an extended sequence showing the cult popping acid, smoking pot, shooting dope, having sex and sucking blood, under stroboscopic lights and via a zooming camera, as well as an hallucination on Penelope's part that signifies...well, absolutely nothing. The film dishes out at least three scenes featuring some well-choreographed fisticuffs, but these are unfortunately undermined by the remarkably cheesy action music supplied by Bobby Richards. On the plus side (and I always endeavor to find SOMETHING to like in even the most egregiously drecky of films), "Bloodsuckers" sports some very nice-looking scenery, both of the Oxford countryside and the Greek islands, and one truly shocking sequence. In this scene, the Macnee character is involved in a literally cliffhanging situation that should stun all longtime fans of the immaculate and imperishable John Steed; a scene, moreover, that is intercut suspensefully with one in which Kirby fights the beautiful Chriseis to the (un)death. But other than this well-done two minutes of screen time, "Bloodsuckers"--or whatever other title you happen to catch it under--does not offer much. It is a film that will surely disappoint the casual viewer, and even fans, like myself, of its two great male leads.As for this Something Weird DVD itself, the good news is that "Bloodsuckers" shares the disc with a 1965 B&W Filipino movie entitled "Blood Thirst," a surprisingly effective, noirish horror thriller set on the streets of Manila. Unfortunately, when viewed back to back as a double feature, it becomes even more apparent to the impartial viewer that "Bloodsuckers" really DOES suck.

Tom May Yes, "Incense for the Damned" is a rather shoddy piece of work; you can tell that right from the off with the ludicrous choice of yellow lettering against a grey background for the title sequence.However, there are hints of what might have been; as David Pirie in the "Time Out" Film Guide and other commentators here have argued, a Roman Polanski or Mario Bava could have done great things with the basic material and with more adept use of a budget. Robert Hartford-Davis (who went on to disown this film) does not marshal whatever meagre resources were available to him with any panache. In fact, technically it is a mix of the ludicrous and laughable: the aforementioned titles, endless half-hearted scenes of fisticuffs and one of the most inane voice-overs in the history of cinema, dispensing exposition with all the perfunctory baldness of Iain Duncan Smith on auto-pilot. "Sunset Boulevard" and William Holden this is most definitely not! It is a shame that so much is bungled and botched; there was scope for an enjoyable occult romp, and potential even for an edgier exploration of vampirism and sexuality. The all-too-brief scene with 'guest star' Edward Woodward hints at a much more interesting film, with his straight-faced thoughts on the links between vampires and masochism: 'Sado-masochism, my dear man, is no joke [...] Some get their excitement from statues, what we call the Pygmalion syndrome. Other men can only make love in a coffin..." There is nothing as interesting in the way the narrative is developed, with Imogen Hassall's voluptuous Chriseis entirely uncharacterised, and the enigma of Patrick Mower's protagonist Richard Fountain untapped.The premise has promise: young Oxford undergraduate cannot cope with the expectations and restrictions of university life and turns to the dark arts, in a bid to get revenge against Cushing's provost (who is again an under-developed character with little screen time) and the system. This theme only comes into focus with Fountain's outburst at the University 'formal', and then the effect is bewildering rather than illuminating, as one might expect it to be in Simon Raven's original novel. Mower is given poetic, pithy lines about the dons - "smooth deceivers in scarlet gowns" - but the source of his anger is barely addressed. Little is done with the classical allusions that are occasionally shoe-horned in. We are told that Patrick Macnee's character 'was fond of Greece', but this never comes across in the actual script: another case of Hartford-Davis's "Tell Not Show" approach.The dialogue provided in Julian More's script is a mixture of the sharp and ridiculous, suggesting an imperfect adaptation of the novel, capturing some but far from much of its style. There are hints of a satirical approach not taken up - Cushing's "Bloody socialist ministers" jibe at the then-Labour government. The dialogue is far from the worst problem with the film, however, as many scenes retain an amusement value due to an absurd melodrama inherent in the dialogue; for example: 'You've got your witches' covens in Mayfair, voodoo in Soho! How do you explain that? Logic!? Science!?' No excuse, however, for hoary old chestnuts of hokum like these: "Suppose it was murder..." "I think I'll just go for a walk..." Too often, the film mutates into a tourist video for its Greek settings, and it wastes time on the most tedious 'orgy' you will ever see in 60s/70s British cinema and the many inexcusably risible fight and pursuit scenes. With such a cast and potentially potent elements - sexual deviance, Oxbridge, vampires, anti-establishment - it is ultimately very disappointing. Hartford-Davis was right to disown it, as surely he recognised how much better it should have been. "Show not tell" should have been the watchword. Having said all of that, this film remains watchable; its saving grace being that it is only 79 minutes long, and it does gradually get less boring after the desultory titles and voice-over, with one starting to appreciate that wasted promise.

The_Void Incense for the Damned is a huge mess. The director, Robert Hartford-Davis changed the name he would be credited as for this movie, and anyone that sees the film will see why he did that.The movie tries to be a horror movie and a social satire, but it succeeds at being neither; it just can't get away from the fact that it's a trashy load of rubbish. The plot is meandering, and is loosely strung together by a narration, which seems more like a way for the movie to save money from it's poor budget than anything else. It follows the story of Richard, an upper class Oxford University student that has got lost somewhere in Greece. A group of his friends then set out to find him, only to discover that he has come under the spell of a female vampire, and then, believing they have killed her, the group take Richard back to Oxford, unaware that he is now a vampire also.This movie bills Peter Cushing as one of it's main stars, but in actual fact he appears in the movie for a combined time of about five minutes. Furthermore, Edward Woodward appears in the film, just before he would go on to make the best British horror movie of all time; The Wicker Man. However, his appearance is little more than a cameo. Patrick Mower, who was in The Devil Rides Out, also appears in the film, and he is an actor that will be best known by British people for his role in the rubbish, yet popular soap opera; Emmerdale. The movie also features performances from Patrick Macnee, who would later appear in The Howling and Alexander Davion, who appeared some years earlier in the British horror; Plague of the Zombies. The cast is very much B-movie, but all are somewhat experienced in the horror genre. The fact that the cast is B-grade is evident through the acting if nothing else; which, with the exception of Cushing and Woodward (both of which also aren't great) leaves a lot to be desired.Overall, Incense for the Damned is a waste of time that manages to be neither memorable nor interesting. I even recommend that Peter Cushing fans skip this one.