[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Spiral Staircase (1946)

A beautifully stylish piece of Gothic horror. Surely an influence on Dario Argento with it's fantastic tracking shots and avant garde photography. The Spiral Staircase is a classic old dark house film crossed with a Giallo movie twenty years before the Italians decided to make them.

The film features a black gloved killer who murders young disabled women. Helen a young mute girl who works as a live-in companion for a wealthy bed ridden woman fears that she will be the next victim and the killer could already be in the house.

The cast featuring Dorothy McGuire, George Brent, Elsa Lanchester and Ethel Barrymore is uniformly superb, especially McGuire who goes the whole film without dialogue, having to convey her thoughts and fears through other means.

The house itself, a large many bedroomed almost palatial affair, is one of the "stars" of the film. Shadowy, cavernous and creepily eerie, the cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca, under the direction of Robert Siodmak brings the place to life, (or perhaps death) giving it an almost foreboding personality in it's own right.

All in all, The Spiral Staircase is a terrific example of suspenseful Gothic thriller which is guaranteed to keep you guessing right to the very end.

Highly recommended.

The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974)

Dracula is dead and well and living in London as Christopher Lee plays the great vampire for one final time for Hammer in this unpredictable (if you've never seen it before) horror thriller.

Set in a contemporary London this pretty much follows on from Dracula AD 1972 (1972) as we meet Peter Cushing's Lorimer Van Helsing once again along with his granddaughter Jessica (Joanna Lumley stepping into Stephanie Beecham's shoes) and Michael Coles police inspector, as the three team up once more this time attempting to prevent Dracula releasing the bubonic plague into the world.

Director Alan Gibson moves things at a cracking pace in a film reminiscent of The Sweeney crossed with Hammer horror. The scene where Van Helsing finally reveals Dracula in the swanky apartment of D.D. Denham is among Hammer's finest.

I've now come to the conclusion that a film i saw on tv back in the heady days of BBC double bills which featured a full on occult ritual with blood and naked girls must have been this even though i could have sworn the setting was a cave and not a country house.

One of my personal favourites from the studio that dripped blood.