Starting in the late fifties and on through the seventies, England’s low budget Hammer film studios became known for a series of profitable reboots of classic gothic horror franchises, but the busy film studio actually produced all kinds of movies. This two-disc set gives us a mixed-bag of thrillers bringing the mean, lean, and graphic (by early sixties standards) Hammer touch to pulpy adventure yarns as well as featuring the considerable acting skills of go-to bad guy/monster man Christopher Lee as the chief villain of three of the four pictures.
The set gets off to an unfortunate start with “The Pirates of Blood River” — an insufferable bore thanks to some plodding pacing and an insipid performance by leading man Kerwin Matthews — Lee’s bad guy pirate, no Jack Sparrow, can only do so much. Fortunately, there’s more of Lee, actual ships, swordfights, and all-around piratical fun in “The Devil Ship Pirates.” The second disc brings us a pair of politically and ethnically suspect flicks set in English colonies. “The Terror of the Tongs” is a casting nightmare from the point of view of ethnic sensitivity, with innumerable Hong Kong Chinese characters played by English, French and, in one shocking instance, an actual Chinese actor. (Burt Kwouk – Kato from the original “Pink Panther” films — who, naturally, is killed five minutes into the movie). Still, it’s a surprisingly nasty and perversely entertaining film with some amazing low-budget production values and another strong bad guy performance from Christopher Lee (no relation to Bruce), speaking perfect English in a sort of practice run for his later performances as super-unPC villain Fu Manchu.
If “Terror” is the set’s Harold, “The Stranglers of Bombay” is it’s Anglocentric Kumar. It’s an fitfully entertaining, occasionally creepy tale of a stalwart British officer (Guy Rolfe) fighting Indian thuggees – those fanatical, kill-crazy bad guys who tried to overrun British India in “Gunga Din,” tried to off Harrison Ford and friends in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and who, led by Leo “Rumpole of the Bailey” McKern (!), viciously tried to take Ringo’s famed ring finger, in “Help!”
With four commentaries – three of them featuring Hammer standby screenwriter Jimmy Sangster — this is a must for those obsessed with the famed studio’s history, but definitely optional for others. (Only one commentary, “Terror of the Tongs” is all that engaging, even by film geek standards.) Still, there are worse ways to while away a series of weekend afternoon. For all their flaws, these movies are far more noble time-wasters than most of today’s multiplex potboilers.
