Halloween: Love watching horror movies? Listen to this podcast exploring British films

Michael Gwynn in a scene from The Revenge of Frankenstein. Pics Courtesy/Wikimedia commons

As Diwali festivities commence in full force we decided to take a break from the fanfare when we stumbled upon an interesting podcast called Queen is Dead. It pulled us out of the Diwali and Halloween clash, and sent us out for a delicious discussion on the Hammer Horror films of the 1950s and 60s. The third episode in the Halloween series, Hammer Horror Films 101 is a dissection of the staple British horror films of the mid-90s and the cultural echo that they left behind to guide future filmmaking on how horror developed as a genre on screen.

Christopher Lee as Dracula

The podcasters, Varun Bhakay and Dhruv Goyal are seasoned cinephiles in the matter and very deftly guide the listener across the cinematic landscape of the Hammer production company. Taking inspiration from existing literature, the Hammer Film Productions brought out classics such as The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), The Two Faces of Doctor Jekyll (1960), and the Dracula and Frankenstein series to the public. The last two have been the definitive must-watch in the genre.

A scene from The Hound of the Baskervilles

Dracula occupies the majority of the conversation as the podcasters pick up the various elements that made it such a landmark film in history. Right from the Gothic mise-en-scene to the measured horror and camera restraint in depicting violence and gore, Dracula mastered the formula of a ‘transgressive' tonality in its first foray into the horror space. It is a very ‘classy' horror film in its production and treatment of the subject, which as the podcasters quite enthusiastically reveal later, does not translate into the filmmaking of Don Sharp's Rasputin, the mad monk. Based on the life of the infamous peasant-mystic whose controversial relations with the Czars of Russia and a notorious personal life made him the stock of a psychic-horror imagination, the film evokes neither terror nor interest for such a rich subject matter. The lack of a cinematic synergy and the obviousness of its horror make it a very rudimentary production of Rasputin's lore.

Throughout the episode, the podcasters playfully drop in Bollywood references such as Shantipriya's revenge sequence in Farah Khan's Om Shanti Om, the impact of Makdee (2002) and the absolute non-seriousness of Jaani Dushman (2002) before teasing us another insightful discussion on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining in their next episode in the Halloween series.

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