FRIGHTMARE
(1974)Director: Pete Walker
Image Entertainment
FRIGHTMARE
(1974)By the mid 1970s, the gothic affairs of Hammer had all but petered out to make way for a new era of grisly urban horrors. With HOUSE OF WHIPCORD, director Pete Walker made the transition from frivolous sex romps to a more thought-provoking dark tale of moralistic fanaticism gone wild. With FRIGHTMARE, Walker again collaborated with talented screenwriter David McGillivray to create one of the most unconventional and original British horror films of the period. In making the film, Walker's intention was for the audience to leave the cinema feeling angry and frustrated after seeing it. You'll have to decide that for yourself.
The film immediately opens up with a black and white pre-credit sequence, taking place in 1957. It is there that we see a wayward fellow (Andrew Sachs, better known as Manuel on "Fawlty Towers") seeking help at a trailer home. After being invited in by an offscreen character, we see the side of the man's head hideously devoured. An English couple, Dorothy (Sheila Keith) and Edmund Yates (Rupert Davies) are charged with the shocking crime and are sentenced to rehabilitation in a psychiatric ward until they can be positively cured.
Over 15 years later the Yates couple have been released and reside in an isolated country farmhouse. Meanwhile, their daughter Jackie (Deborah Fairfax) and her delinquent younger half-sister Debbie (Kim Butcher) are living together. Jackie can't control Debbie who hangs out with a gang of leather boys and even gets involved with the murder of a barman. Jackie tells of her troubled half-sister to Graham (Paul Greenwood), a young psychiatrist that she becomes romantically involved with. But she does not reveal that she is secretly delivering parcels of butcher's scraps to her stepmother in the middle of the night.
Dorothy is still psychotic and still craves human flesh. Even though her husband and her stepdaughter do everything to hold her in check, the old woman has been advertising her services as a medium in order to lure unsuspecting victims. Even the young Debbie gets in on the act (like mother, like daughter), revealing a dysfunctional affinity in the family despite the generation gap.
Aside from the clever story by McGillivray and Walker, what makes FRIGHTMARE so good is the performance by Sheila Keith as Dorothy. Keith--veteran of many Walker outings--has an outward grandmother-like appearance, and she brilliantly plays it up as a seemingly sweet old lady ready to snap at any moment, as her character often does. Seeing her strike victims with a hot poker, a pitchfork and an electric drill is a sight to behold. Rupert Davies (veteran of half a dozen 60s British horror flicks) is also great in his final screen role (he died in '76). As Edmund, he plays a cowardly, yet devoted husband who took partial blame for his wife's crime, and stays loyal despite her incurable madness.
Previously available on video through defunct labels Monterey and Prism (as "Frightmare II"), Image's full frame DVD is a vast improvement over those versions. The colors now look very pleasing to the eyes, and the image is very sharp. The film has many low-lit sequences, but the disc thankfully exhibits them with great detail. The mono sound is fine. Unfortunately there are no extras, but the packaging is very handsome, and I do hope that Image continues to unleash the works of Pete Walker to a new generation! (George R. Reis)