Editorials
Gaslighting Thriller ‘Taste of Fear’ is One of Hammer’s Best [Horrors Elsewhere]
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
Hammer Productions was unmatched when it came to gothic horror during its prime. And while it is best remembered today for its openly macabre offerings — those vintage films including the likes of vampires, witches, and other classic monsters — Hammer branched out into thrillers in the early 1960s. Or as they are referred to these movies in a bid to bring in more viewers, the company’s “Hitchcocks.”
By the time Hammer’s most prevalent writer, Jimmy Sangster, got around to writing the first in what would soon be a line of psychological thrillers, he had grown tired of gothic horror and needed a creative reprieve. So while Taste of Fear (originally “See No Evil” on paper) lacks the ghouls, gore, and fantasy of the screenwriter’s other works, it never lacks in invention or style. Under this banner of suspense, Sangster delivered human threats and singular stories in sympathy with those pulpy thrillers that came before them.
Taste of Fear opens in familiar territory for ardent Hammer fans; the popular Black Park in Iver Heath is substituted for Switzerland. The body of Miss Penelope Appleby’s best friend and nurse, Maggie Frensham, has been recovered from a lake after taking her own life. A few weeks later, Penny (Susan Strasberg) is on a plane to France to reunite with the father she has not seen in ten years. Strangely enough, he has been called away on business, so now Penny must contend with her stepmother, Jane (Ann Todd). Until her father (Fred Johnson) returns, Penny grows more and more suspicious as to why he would take off after urging her to visit. Not helping matters is then a series of spectral scares in and around the remote estate; only Penny sees her father’s dead body in multiple places on the grounds. Helping Miss Appleby solve this mystery and assuring her she is not losing her mind is the family chauffeur, Robert (Ronald Lewis).
By the time Taste of Fear had come out, Hammer had already transitioned to color. Enthusiasts continue to celebrate the visual opulence of Hammer classics like The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula (1958). However, the choice to go black and white was a curious one for the majority of these ‘60s thrillers. As it turns out, monochrome not only elevates the desired effect of these films, it also evokes the mood of movies of similar character, such as Psycho and Les Diaboliques. No palette is better at understanding Penny’s paranoia and terror than a black-and-white one. As she wanders the estate, she enters the darkside of both the property and the human psyche. An average swimming pool now seems like a sea of darkness, and the shape of knick knacks and antiques are eerily silhouetted in tenebrous rooms. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe and director Seth Holt worked diligently to match the visuals with the disturbed story.
Something like Taste for Fear neither calls for fancied effects nor does it demand excessive sets and wardrobe. By comparison, it is a simpler and more practical production after coming straight off of Hammer’s extravagant and colorful films. The sharp editing as well as the astute sound design do a lot of the talking when needing to create drama. By putting benign noises in a different context — the hushed flickering of candle flames in a deathly silent and pitch-black room, or the ominous clattering of windows in the middle of the night — Holt summons a great deal of tension. Adding to the fright is Strasberg’s nerve-shattering scream whenever she is taken by surprise by the dreaded corpse of Penny’s father. Johnson is horrifying without even flinching. The camerawork, on the other hand, refuses to remain still and keeps the audience on its toes.
It would be a disservice to divulge the tectonic twists of Taste of Fear, but the enduring quality of this film comes exactly from those revelations and how they are performed. New viewers are advised to experience it all firsthand, whereas the informed know all too well Sangster outdid himself here. As with a number of these kinds of films, the motivation for terrorizing Penny is money. Robert theorizes Jane and a fishy doctor, Christopher Lee’s Pierre Gerrard, have orchestrated this whole scenario to scare Penny out of her inheritance. Proving that would require them to first confirm Penny’s father is indeed dead.
Sangster risks his entire story by presenting the biggest twist at the film’s outset. He slips it right under viewers’ noses, no less. Taste of Fear essentially spoils itself without anyone knowing. It is a bold stroke of genius that pays off in the third act and after rewatches. Until then, Doctor Gerrard becomes the biggest suspect in Penny’s father’s disappearance. Lee applauded the movie, and he absolutely loved playing something other than a villain after portraying Dracula in other Hammer films. Even so, his history as a bad guy naturally leads to distrust when figuring out the real culprit.
Taste of Fear, or Scream of Fear in the U.S., does not get talked about quite nearly enough when the subject of Hammer is brought up in horror circles. While categorized as yet another gaslighter, this creepy film stands heads and shoulders above a good many of its peers. From Clifton Parker’s unsettling score to the sinuous story, everything about this “Hitchcock” makes it one of Hammer’s best works to date.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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