A crippled thriller

Fear in the Night (1972)

Next film from the Hammer Collection continues on the psychological thriller path. This time a young teacher travels to the countryside with her husband to teach in a local boy school. She is however attacked by a one armed man before she leaves and that traumatizes her. Once they arrive to their new home things look great and life is beautiful, until she's attacked by the same one armed man again. Things start to look suspicious in the vacant school and the head master, played by Peter Cushing, happens to be missing an arm. I really loved the mood of this one and the strong cast carries the movie past the quite boring plot after the strong start and before the brilliant end third. I was surprised to see even traces of giallo style in this one, kind of like a mix of Hammer and Argento (the good Argento when he was still doing great movies). If the two thirds of the movie after the start would have been a bit more interesting, this would be one of the best Hammer movies. Now it's just a bit too uneven, but none the less it's surely worth watching if you're into Hammer movies. The picture quality of the DVD was fairly good. There's a commentary with director Jimmy Sangster and a trailer on the disc, no subtitles as usual.
75%

Oh the horror, it's another Frankenstein

The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)

Another Frankenstein movie from the Hammer Collection. This is the weakest of the Hammer's Frankenstein series and quite a dull movie all together. It's the only movie without Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein and it's basically a remake of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), those don't help it that's for sure. The younger version of Dr. Frankenstein doesn't really fit the part and the rest of the cast isn't anything great either. There are some attempts for dark comedy in it, guess as an effort to save the poor ripoff story, but it isn't really funny either. The monster itself was fairly nice, not the best I've seen but there have been worse also. Still there are some good moments in the movie, especially during the last 30 minutes, but it's not really worth it to watch the movie just for those. The picture quality is quite good, there's a commentary with Jimmy Sangster, interview with Veronica Carlson, posters and stills gallery on the DVD as extras, no subtitles as usual.
37%