BY SARA REINEKE
While navigating through the labyrinth of
collectibles, comic books, and dealer tables at the New York Comic Con this
past October, I came upon a vendor selling copies of old horror films. As is usual,
I had to stop for a moment and thumb through the boxes of DVDs and Blu-rays
labeled simply as “Classic Horror.†There were, of course, the standard bearers
that you would expect to find; such black and white Universal classics as The Wolfman (1941) and Frankenstein (1931), as well as such latter-age
British horror favorites as Vincent Price’s Theatre
of Blood (1973).
Continuing to flip through the boxes, I was
surprised to see The Horrible Dr.
Hichcock (1964), a mostly obscure Italian horror film that I had never had
the opportunity to see. In truth, I’d
never even heard of the film before – and before you scold me for my ignorance,
please keep in mind I’m only nineteen years old. Even Jason and Freddy Krueger are old-school
to me. Still, I admit my immediate
thought was that this copy of The
Horrible Dr. Hichcock was likely misplaced. Was this little known film deserving of having been sandwiched between the
revered classics of Universal and Hammer Studios?
Shortly afterwards, the Olive Films Blu-ray of The Horrible Dr. Hichcock dropped into
my mailbox. Now that I’ve finally gotten the chance
to watch the film, I realize the suspenseful and eerie tale is indeed a worthy addition
to the canon of “Classic Horror.â€
Olive Films new Blu-ray release of The Horrible Dr. Hichcock brings – if
you excuse the expression – “new life†to this now half-century old and
unsettling melodrama. Dr. Bernard Hichcock
(Robert Flemyng) seems an OK guy. He’s a
celebrated and much admired surgeon, but also a tortured soul hiding a perverse
secret. He’s completely given to necrophilic
fantasies, of which his wife Margaret (Teresa Fitzgerald) is strangely
accepting and willing to indulge her husband’s strange desires. However, things
take a tragic turn when the not-so-good Dr. unintentionally kills her with an accidental
overdose of the anesthetic, emphasizing that there can in fact be too much of a
good thing.
The film then flashes forward several years. Dr.
Hichcock returns from a long absence from the village, returning to his old stately
home with a new paramour: the understandably jittery Cynthia (played by Italian
“Scream Queen†Barbara Steele of Black
Sunday and Nightmare Castle fame).
It isn’t long before things again turn weird as Cynthia begins to see the
apparition of Hichcock’s former wife walking the estate grounds. She is tormented by the spirit.
Despite the film’s somewhat confusing plotline,
the movie possesses what I like to call “the Universal Horror aesthetic.†The film is rife with the atmospheric
elements I look forward to in every classic horror film: eerie fog, misty graveyards,
a creaking near-abandoned manor, and a devilish doctor who, more likely than
not, is up to something no good. As these elements are all welcomingly in place
here, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock was deservedly
slotted in the “Classic Horror†section at Comic Con. Or perhaps it was the
moments of suspense and mystery that, when moodily combined with Roman Vlad’s ominously
eerie score, left me guessing about who (or what) might be waiting behind every
corner of the dreary house.
There are many such memorable moments of mystery
and apprehension in The Horrible Dr. Hichcock. I found the film somewhat reminiscent of The House on Haunted Hill and The Haunting, as there are so many
twists that the audience is constantly forced to change their minds about what might
happen next. Whether due to a less than cohesive script or specific choices
made by director Robert Hampton to keep things from being too formulaic, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock succeeds in
keeping the audience engrossed and guessing. Though I found the ending to be
slightly confusing – some elements of the film’s story threads were not explained
to my satisfaction – this is a movie that’s worthy of a second viewing. Until then, I am content to say that The Horrible Dr. Hichcock has definitely
earned a place of honor in my personal library of classic horror.
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