[Foxbat]

The Pete Walker Collection

Starring: Susan George, Sheila Keith, Jack Jones, Leo Gen, Judy Huxtable, and others.
Directed by: Pete Walker
Region 2 DVD

Anchor Bay presents us with a coffin shaped boxed set containing five movies by Pete Walker who is (arguably) one of the great shapers of British Horror. Unlike Hammer and its contemporaries, Walker avoids leaning on the Gothic trinity of mad scientists, monsters and the supernatural, he instead brings us the mundane normality that is middle class life in 1970s British culture. But beneath this veneer of Home Counties suburbia there lurks a dark beast that lives behind the twitching net curtains of those middle class dwellings. And in this sense, Walker is less Hammer and more leaning in the same direction of David Lynch when he unearthed what lay beneath the white picket fencing in America in shows such as Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet.

But Walker also likes his horror straightforward and in your face. There is not a lot of subtlety once the action begins.

The collection starts with Die Screaming Marianne starring Susan George a few months before her infamous role as the victim in Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. This movie is more intrigue and less downright horror as it tells the tale of Marianne on the run from a mysterious figure called ‘The Judge’.

Next up is House Of Whipcord which begs the question – what would it actually be like if we took the law into our own hands. A blind ex-magistrate and an insane ex-prison governess do just that. The main significance of this movie is the appearance of Sheila Keith who plays a hard-faced and sadistic warden -easily believable and incredible scary. Keith would go on to deservedly become a stalwart on the British horror scene.

Frightmare sees Keith back again, this time as a newly freed asylum intern…..the trouble is, she’s still absolutely crazy and soon goes back to her old ways…..lets just say that Walker was being imaginative with a drill long before Driller Killer appeared on the scene.

House Of Mortal Sin looks at the results when a sex starved, crazy priest finally loses it for good. For the third time, Sheila Keith makes an appearance as the sadistic lead villainess and, as usual, steals the show.

The Comeback stars seventies crooner Jack Jones (never heard of him) and has some nice set pieces of more straightforward horror. It is probably notable for the appearance of Bill Owen who later went on to great fame in Last Of The Summer Wine.

All in all, not a bad bunch at £29.99. The film quality is not the greatest and it looks like most were just straight transfers from other mediums with little or no tidy up but they are still all quite watchable. I think the most notable thing when viewing a collection like this is how what was once so shocking is now not even blinked at.
And with that in mind, I have to say that this collection is not for those of you out there brought up on the latest CGI or brain blasting sound effects. These movies were made in the days when slide rules were the tip of technology and the only digits worth counting were your fingers(if you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask somebody over 40).

Still, if you are a bit of a connoisseur of Horror and fancy a tipple of vintage British seventies screen screams, this is definitely worth having a look at.