Portmanteau Movies - the Kellogg's Variety Pack Of Supernatural Cinema...
For those who prefer their horror in little chunks.
So what was the first British horror movie? The film that deserves said title is either long lost or moldering away in some archive or another. The first British horror masterpiece, however, is somewhat easier to pin down.
Dead Of Night was made in 1945 by Ealing Studios, for many the spiritual home of British screen comedy. Starring Meryn Johns, Googie Withers and Michael Redgrave, the film took the form of a series of terror stories linked by a connecting narrative. This format would later be exploited to great acclaim by another production company, one who'd come to occupy a prominent location on the UK horror landscape.
Amicus Productions was the brainchild of two American execs, Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg. And while their company would make a few thrillers, it was horror - and more specifically portmanteau horror films in the vein of Dead Of Night - that would make Amicus the only entity ever to give Hammer supremo James Carreras sleepless nights.
Starting with Dr Terror's House Of Horrors, Amicus's anthology pictures starred the true giants of the genre. Take 1972’s Asylum, in which the first gentleman of horror Peter Cushing plays the enigmatic Mr Smith who hires Barry Morse's tailor to manufacture a suit that brings inanimate objects to life.
Directed by Roy Ward Baker (who marked his card for Hammer with a brilliant big screen adaptation of Quatermass And The Pit) and scripted by Robert Bloch of Psycho fame, Asylum also stars Herbert Lom, Britt Ekland, Charlotte Rampling, Richard Todd and, as the titular establishment's latest recruit, Robert Powell, soon to become one of the decade's biggest stars courtesy of Jesus Of Nazareth.
This blend of established talents and bright young things runs throughout Amicus's portmanteau series. Behind the camera, meanwhile, Rosenberg and Subotsky handed the directorial reigns to genre stalwarts such as Roy Ward Baker and Freddie Francis (later celebrated as one of Britain's top cinematographers) while veteran TV scribe Subotsky shared writing duties with the likes of Bloch and Christopher Wicking.
This array of talent - combined with such impressive story sources as the short fiction of Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes and classic EC Comics such as Tales From The Crypt and Vault Of Horror - should explain why Amicus's pictures did such solid business and built up so sizeable a cult following.
That movies like Torture Garden, The House That Dripped Blood and the aforementioned Dr Terror aren't more universally acclaimed might stem from Subotsky's unfortunate insistence on all of his anthology films including a comic episode. The writer-producer's reason for doing so might have been that the inspirational Dead Of Night contained one such element. That that story - a golfing anecdote penned by none other than HG Wells - was the weakest aspect of an otherwise spine-chilling movie was alas wasted on Subotsky.
But even with the uncalled for comedy, the Amicus productions could still get under your skin. Particularly troubling were a brace of stories from From Beyond The Grave, one featuring David Warner as a man who purchases the sort of mirror they don't sell at Ikea and the other starring the great Scottish actor Ian Bannen as a husband to an appalling wife (Diana Dors) who falls under the spell of an unnerving father and daughter, essayed by the none-more-unnerving Donald and Angela Pleasence.
With their bizarre casting (Dr Terror features Record Breaker Roy Castle and DJ Alan 'Fluff' Freeman) and frugal production values (look closely at the hand that terrorizes Christopher Lee in the same picture and you can see the marks left by the rubber mold), the Amicus portmanteaus were possessed of a strain of eccentricity that identified them even more as being British. And while the company hasn't made a movie since 1980's The Monster Club, in a very real sense Amicus is still with us.
Indeed, there's a certain TV show that Subotsky and Rosenberg saw the breakout appeal of literally decades before anyone else did. Such was their confidence that - under the auspices of sister company Arau - they made the phenomenon in question the focal point of not one but two motion pictures. And just what was the programme in question? Dr Who, a show that's often at its best when it's celebrating British screen horror.