Hammer House of Horror S01E03 Rude Awakening

Welcome back to Midnight Viewing, the horror anthology podcast. I'm father alone. In this season, we've left the terrestrial bonds of North America and traveled across the Atlantic to Hampton, England, a sleepy, unsuspecting town that became the headquarters of Hammer Horror. That's right, we are looking at Hammer House of Horror and bye we I mean the projection was Mike White. You shouldn't have done it, Norman.

He should have over and over and over again. And on this episode of Midnight Viewing, we are looking at episode three of series one, Rude Awakening. This aired originally on September twenty seventh, nineteen eighty Written by Gerald Savory m and directed by Peter Sasty. This is his second episode after directing The Thirteenth Reunion. This one stars at Dnim Elliott, James Lawrence and Pat Haywood and Lucy Gutteridge as Lolly.

This is about a real estate agent whose dreams begin blending a little too seamlessly with reality. It's a dream loop episode. What do you think of this one, Mike. I had a lot of fun with this. I really liked it.

There was one thing I didn't care for it and I'm going to hit right up front here. Didn't care for the kind of on tonight's episode of Hammerhouse of Horror intro that they had. I think this is the first time I've seen this like recap and maybe it's not even a recap, maybe it's introducing us to the dreams. But I was like, oh, he's getting bring surgery. This must all be his fantasy while he's having brain surgery, because they just show a little tiny clip.

No, I don't think it is. But yeah, solid episode, and I freaking love Denim Elliott. And then it was so great seeing Hilary Flamond in this episode as well. It took me forever to recognize her. Oh yes, Lucy Guttridge.

Of course is Lucy Flammond in Top Secret the Zazz Boys follow up to Airplane. I actually thought she was French in the in Top Secret, so to see her here and realize that she was actually English was startling, but agreed denhim Elliot, Oh my god, I'm sure most Americans will recognize Dnham Elliot for his role in Trading Places. No, of course he was Marcus Brody. Marcus and Raiders are the Lost Stark. Let me just say this about Denham Elliot's performances Marcus Brody and Raiders of the Lost Ark first Indiana Jones Adventure.

He gave such weight to those proceedings in his little speech right before Indy goes off to Nepal. No one knows it's secrets. I'm like anything after before that whole thing lent like I said, so much weight to it. And then in the third film to turn him into a boob. Oh my god, what a betrayal.

He got lost in his own museum. Yeah, no, I completely you are echoing my thoughts exactly. That was between him and Sala. Salah was freaking solid man. He was the best digger in Cairo, super smart.

Oh let me speak to a man. I know he's connects him with the pirate and everything. I mean, he's great. And in the second movie or the third movie, it's yeah, oh, what is going on here? I mean, Marcus with dependus, my dude.

Then the sword, I was like, what. Exactly what I think of when I think of that? How ridiculous. I'm all for using Sala and Marcus as comic relief, just as long as they're not fucking idiots, which is what they did in that film, but people love that movie. I don't know anyway.

I agree with you about the cold open here. We haven't really mentioned this, but we've watched a lot of anthology series and so far, you're either going to get a narrator who's who In some cases, as Rod Serling tended to do sometimes on Night Gallery, he just spoiled a fucking episode. He would just tell you, by the way, it's vampires, Like, whoa Rod, what are you doing? Twilight's on eighty five sporadically had a narrator, but no Dark Side had no narrator. It would just toss you into the story you were going.

So this is our first series with a cold open where we get a bit of story and then a credit sequence and then oh, okay, here's where we are. This is what that meant. So this one, because the episode is so dreamy and its nature like, you could kind of get away with what they were going for. But really, what you said is exactly what I thought tonight on Heimer House of Horror, the Dream of Death. You know, it was just so silly, and because it sent up the shot of him with the brain surgery, I'm gonna be thinking about that through the entire episode.

Don't do that. No, no, don't do that at all, even showing him smothering his wife. I was just like, oh, okay, yeah, it was just a little too much. I didn't mind the montage of Lucy in all the different outfits, because that's the thing with this episode is all of these costumes that seem to get more and more outrageous until you come back to her in the real world where she is so drab and so dour, and meanwhile, you know, you've got her in that right yellow dress with the red fringe that makes it look like it's flames, or when she's doing the whole punk rock thing, where I'm just like, wow, okay, this is nineteen eighty. That would have been very much in keeping with the time.

So oh okay, yeah, this works. She looked damn great in that too. We get six different versions of Lolli. We get ditsy blonde Lollie, we get Susie Sue Punk Lollie, we have schoolgirl Lollie, which is a little bit disconcerting, let's say, then disco doll Lollie, and then we in our final Lollie, which, as you said, is this mousey bore of a lolli, the actual reality lolli, the what have you been convincing yourself of here, sir Lolli? Because Okay, So the episode is Denimli is a real estate agent.

Lucy got origin asal Lollly is his secretary basically, and he's dreaming that he's been hired to sell this manor home, the lower moat estate. What's lower than a moat? Yeah, And so he keeps having dreams about his secretary in like increasingly outrageous outfits, but the entire time completely in love with him. It's almost like a haunted house episode for a while. Because of that property, he keeps going back to it, and there's this whole thing of you know, how to get there.

He's like, well, I've got this map, and it's like, well, where did the map come from? And it just keeps it's a moving target. But we see him go there, like right off the bat, and that's when we get the line that I said about you, why'd you kill her? And it's this weird almost like I thought it was coming from inside the suit of armor, and the suit of armor does move at one point of just like okay, this is confirming. And then there's a dumb waiter that opens and a body falls out, and you're just like, what the hell's going on?

And then it just gets stranger as we go along, which I was really there for when he goes into the telephone box and the gas starts coming in and so I was just like, oh, all right, this is pretty cool. I like the repetitive nature of it. I always like a good time loop kind of thing, but this whole idea of like him waking up and then what was the dream as he's still in the dream, and just the way that you're trying to navigate this with our main character. I really like that. I like when we get as little information as our main character.

Any episode of any series or movie for that matter, that intends to give you dream logic fails really hard every single time. This one's more pointed because they're telling a story. Nevertheless, this more often than not feels like dream logic put on screen for me, particularly whenever it gets really frantic and stuff. The scene you're talking about the first time he goes to that house where the voice is speaking through the pneumatic tube through him, and it's like and because it's going through the tube. It's got this crazy vibrato on it.

Oh my god, I thought that was horrifying. Yeah, that was awesome. And you know, I'd like to point out that he's being investigated throughout his dreams by this police commissioner. That's James Lawrence and who is in I don't have guilty pleasures as movies, but Monster Club is not a good movie. But it's a movie that I adore.

And he's in that first story. He's the shad mock in that, which is a character who's supposed to be so hideous that he has to hide away from the eyes of men. But it's just James Lawrence in pale with some with his lips made up a little bit more so, it's that guy, just a little paler. I just wonder sometimes how James Lawrence and felt like watching the movie. Oh am, I really that bad that I thought I was gonna look worse than I did.

He's a handsome man, I thought, I mean a little unusual looking, and then yeah, I like that he's the guy that's selling the house, so that when he shows up as the police commissioner, what's he trying to do? What's he trying to put on. You're like, no, this was the house that he was trying to buy. So I again, they keep pulling the rug out from. Under you, and that is his voice coming up through the pneumatic tube.

And when his wife's body is coming up, the line is first course is coming up, mister Senley. And again you get some good nudity in this episode as well. Thanks Unexpected TV. Yeah yeah, Lucy Gutterage in a dream just gets into a phone box with him and drops off for clothes. It's it's not sexy.

It doesn't feel exploitative. That's the other thing I've noticed about this. As much as they've been pandering with the nudity, it would seem, it doesn't feel like mandering. It just feels like part of the story or. Brought three episodes in, I'm super impressed.

I'm so excited to see the rest of these the next ten plus. This episode has the weirdest headboard I've ever seen. It's like a child's drawing of a mountain, like a pink, furry mountain. It's all misshapen and weird. I've seen this episode twice now, and both times I'm livited to that just wondering who put that there, what was the decision making?

Did they not think we were going to focus entirely on that as an audience. Well, it goes very well with that weird purple blanket that they have and the pink sheets, and it's just such a strange splash of color in that room, which is more like muted blues and grays. And then he's got almost I don't know if it's like cheetah print or what's going on with his pajamas and I didn't mind, Like I know when we would talk about that, necessarily Tails from the Dark Side, but especially Twilight. It's on Toby five and Night Gallery where you would have these herodin women and you're just like, oh, here's another one. Oh, here's another one.

But with this one, I'm like, no, this fits. We need to know, we need to know very quickly that you just don't like this woman and you know him, Oh, well, I asked you for a divorce, and it's like, not in this reality, you didn't, and you really need to check yourself, like which reality you're in, And he just is so not aware that things are changing. And I think that having Lucy Gethridge in the different outfits really helps because of the whole are you not seeing this? And the answer is no, he's not seeing it. This is all so normal for him, and that really helps us again as the audience, to figure out like what's going on, or figure out a little bit more.

You know, I just said how much I like that. We just know how much is going on because of him, but we also get to know how much he doesn't realize, just by his non reaction to these things. If this one ninth Galleries, you would have been the most henpecking, you know, at him, Harold in of a character, and instead what we have is just an old woman that he's been married to forever that he's just sick of because he wants to marry his secretary or you know, be with the secretary. But she doesn't come off terrible. What's funny to me is this is his reality he's constructing, and even in his reality, she's compacked herself.

You know, when we first meet her, she wakes up from the dream and he's like, oh, I'm just gonna go into the office immediately, and it's not even done yet, and she's like, well, what time does she get in? He's like, well, what do you mean? And it's heartbreaking, Like I'm now immediately on her side, whereas right every other anthology series we would have been like, oh god, yeah, get away from that fucking ghoul. Oh yeah, and you're just like, oh man, he is just harboring all of these fantasies so hardcore, and it's yeah, completely unfair to her at all. So you're just like, Okay, yeah, she's being portrayed as the herodin right at first, and yeah, very shorthand you know, the whole ripping off of the covers from the bed and just her tone and everything.

And then you're like, yeah, I do like that. They give us that twist where it's like, oh no, actually, she's probably living a pretty miserable life with this jackass of a husband. Now, the Haunted House segment of the show that you mentioned, the second time he goes to the house, he finds it. The second time he goes the house is not there, it's a cow pasture, and now the third time the house is fully there and their staff and it really feels like the nineteenth century, maybe even the late eighteenth century, which kept me guessing because this might just be an eccentric English family, and she mentioned stuff. She corrects a popular misquote which is the from the Maltese falcon, which is the stuff dreams are made of, And at one point she says it's such stuff as dreams are made on, and then says that's the correct way to say it, which means she would have to know the Maltese falcon quote that got into pop.

So I was just like, I don't know what's going on, and it didn't really matter because it was a dream. And in fact, the end of that particular dream where they chase him down and hang him, that to me felt I said, this has great dream logic, that felt like total nightmare logic. I was swept up in that. Oh my god, masterfully done. The director of this episode.

I'm gonna have to get more into his movies. There's one I just downloaded called like Blood in the West or something like that that I'm definitely going to be watching because he's really impressive. The whole hanging scene was truly terrific. As in terror, there was so much I was just like, this is horrible. I can't believe that we're watching this.

This is just amazing. Right after he's like, I think I hear something in the wall, and she's like, oh, yes, a young woman was walled up in there years ago. And then she gets really crazy psychotic on him. Ooh right, and she's trying to give him like different cigarettes, and I was just like, is that When she says Turkish cigarettes? I was just like, is that marijuana?

Is that what we're doing here? No, she has a box with three different types of delicious looking cigarettes. Yeah, oh one a nightmare blah blah blah. And then is it the police commissioner that actually hangs him? Is that him?

Yes? Again? Okay, yeah, he does have a great face. When they finally get to the last dream, which is let's go look at this block of apartments, which Lolly joins him on his excursion there. I just want to point out some of the graffiti that was clearly done by the production person, because it's all in one kind of marker no matter where they go up and down those stairs.

So sex pistols for Sally that was one brown, just the name Brown with an E on the end, Scotland Forever England A day Longer. And then finally my favorite Rumpy Pumpy, Rumpy Pumpy makes multiple appearances on the walls of this soon to be decimated flat or a block of flats. Yeah, that's a nice image too, the whole thing of the wrecking ball and it's like, oh, are we on the right building? It's oh, well, of course, and then here comes this wrecking ball and it's that for me, is seems like a dream I could have or a nightmare I could have, where it's like, why are they destroying this building that I just went all the way to the top of and there's no you know, it's like such a faceless idea. When it comes to the person operating the wrecking ball and everything, it's like, you don't see that person, There's no kay, stop this, there's nobody to recognize it.

It's just an immovable force at that point. Yeah, and his escape down the stairs, well, I think they've reused the same shots a little too much. It's still fucking harrowing. There's a one shot where debris is exploding down the stairs as Denham Elliott himself is rounding a corner. I just thought that was spectacular, man, you know what.

It reminded me of the behind the scenes footage would see if Empire strikes back of stage, hands standing off camera throwing things at Mark Hamill. Yeah, oh yeah, that's a really good point. That is exactly like that. Yeah, when he's there and the Emperor's yeah, that's good. Oh so, now we discover in this dream that he has a tumor on his brain, which leads to my favorite line in the entire thing, where he asks it's serious, then.

Might be and he's not doing it with the wink. Yeah, he's doing it very seriously, which is nice, and because it is an outrageous line. And I love that. They're like, look, you need surgery right now, and he's like, okay, let's go do it. And the wife's like, no, this might be the end.

He's like, yes, let's go do it. He's getting divorced one way or the other. A good skull cap on him as well, really really good. Yeah, Oh my god, fucking hammer people man speaking of just a buffet of potential nightmare subjects waking up during surgery. Then they throw that in there, Jesus christ Man, and they pronounce him dead.

Every nightmare here is horrifying. Oh yeah. It's like he can't say anything, or if he does, they're just ignoring him. Yeah, oh god, yeah, the waking up during surgery thing. I know that they keep a lot of patients a week during brain surgery, which just seems freaky as fuck to me.

And I guess you're not feeling it, but like, do you want to be conscious? Do they need you to be conscious? Please know? Yeah? And the great images of the doctor and the nurses pulling off their masts.

And then we've got, you know, the three familiar people, the police person, the commissioner, the wife and the I almost said girlfriend, good old lollie. And they've got that white makeup on their faces and their lips are a little bit more red. Looks really nice against that dark green of those the British surgery uniforms. That's his shad mock look right there. Now, speaking of other nightmares, can you imagine attempting to smother someone with a pillow and failing?

Oh jeez, no, well just I mean he doesn't, but like there seems a moment where it might go the other way, and just that conversation afterwards, Oh god, honey, I think you were trying to murder me. Oh no, no, no, it was just helping you. Yeah, And then he just is so unhinged when he comes in and we finally realize that we're in the real world, and just that manic energy he has and just like having no problem whatsoever. Once the police commissioner comes in, just oh yeah, yeah, I murdered my wife this morning. It's like wow, all right.

By this point, you know, forty to fifty minutes into the episode, he is just unhinged, and I was like, Wow, this is fantastic. And again just Denim Elliott being able to go from so dour and put upon and then just with this I'm sorry I keep using the word manic, but just his energy level at that point it's fantastic. Yeah. My last note here is, oh no, he thinks he's dreaming. Fuck.

I love this series. That's even worse than anything because now we know when even when he's talking to his wife when he woke up, he's like, I asked you for a divorce and she's like, what are you talking about? Right, He's like, no, remember you remember, don't you? Like, no, man, you need to pack it in. And then yeah, of course, because he's still thinking that way, he goes out and buys diamonds for this woman who has zero interest in him who actively dislikes him, seemingly like how could he have convinced himself of that?

And then to just confess, Oh, man, what a good show. I'm surprised. So I didn't think that he bought the diamonds. I thought that they were his wife's and that he was just giving the necklace that was hers over to the secretary. Which, by the way, that was great where everything packs up and she leaves and then comes back and grabs the diamonds, because I was like, what are you doing.

She's taking a moral stand there. She's not going to take those diamonds from that murder. Nah. Fuck that grab those diamonds. Oh that's such a great shot too.

Yeah, And just that whole thing where they're like, oh, you're going to commit murder on Friday the thirteenth, and he's just you know, comes in and it still says twelve on the desk, so he thinks he's safe, I guess. But yeah, because it's like it's the haunting aspect that we've talked about, but then it's almost like this premonition because the whole thing hinges on, Oh, you're killing her. You killed her on the thirteenth he's like, but it's not the thirteenth, and it's like, don't worry, it will be. You'll wake up on the thirteenth and that's when you'll do this. And this episode proves why is any of this happening?

Doesn't fucking matter. As long as you're telling us a good enough story and we're having a good time. I don't know why this happened. I give a shit. Well, yeah, it's like we've talked so many times on all of these shows where it's like, what is the forces of the universe that are doing this, or what's the logic that you know this is living by, because we get so many of those things where it's like, oh, this monster, but the monster can only do X, Y and Z, but then suddenly does A, B and C by the end of the thing, and we're like, well, how did this happen?

And questioning all of these things. Yeah, I didn't question anything when it came to this, because it just kept me entertained. And even now as we're talking about I'm like, I don't care. This was just a great story, so so well done. Hopefully the next one will be as good.

Maybe not. On the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we are taking a look at Hammerhouse of Horror episode number four, that's growing pains. It's an evil Child episode. Maybe we'll see till then. Where can people find you, Mike White, when they're on the prowl for you?

Oh, when they're prowling for me? Now, okayh they can crawl on over to weirdwaymedia dot com and find all the stuff that I work on, some of the stuff that you work on, some things that other folks work on as well. But yeah, look for the Projection Booth or the Chabby Detective or back episodes of this one. As for me listening to Midnight Viewing, we're on toys a week. In fact, the next Friday, we're going to be continuing our Star Trek Fest with the greatest Star Trek film of all time, in fact, the greatest piece of Star Trek entertainment, committed to Cellu Alloyd, Star Trek five, the Final Frontier.

I was just going to sing RORO. Say you don't do that. Don't do that? You know what they should have sung instead, or he's a jolly good fellow. Until next time, folks, We'll see you here at Midnight Viewing,