Hammer House of Horror S01E06 - Charlie Boy

Welcome back to Midnight Viewing the horror anthology podcast. I'm Father Malone. In this season, we are stabbing our voodoo doll blades into the nineteen eighty UK horror series Hammer House of Horror. Here to help me do something with this house's goddamn unfinished basement is Mike away from the projection booth. I like my fetish dolls in Zoomie Variety myself.

Don't you mean? Guard of bouts and Stockings? Charlie Boy season one episodes. This aired originally on October the eighteenth, nineteen eighty Written by Francis McGehee and Bernie Cooper, and directed by Robert Young. Gotta mention Robert Young here for a second.

Robert Young, who got his start with Vampire Circus, which is one of the more bizarre nineteen seventies period piece supernatural horror movies You're ever going to see, was also responsible for the majority of a television series that I fucking adore from the UK in the early eighties called Robin of Sherwood. It was a reimagining of Robinhood, but as if Robin were a forest worshiping green man and he worshiped a horned god named Herne the Hunter and his little band of merry men were just a bunch of fucking crazy revolutionaries. It was fantastic. First season starred Michael Prade. He was great and if you look closely as a young Will Scarlett, you will find a young Ray Winstone.

And the entire series was scored by Anyway, we're not talking about that anymore. We're talking about Charlie Boy, which this one stars Lee Lawson, Angela Bruce, Marius Goring, and Francis Kouka. This is a story of a nephew who inherits a fortune, but everyone screws him out of a possible production company that they had all agreed to except for his lovely bride. Oh they get a they get a fetish doll out of it. So if I inherited that fetish doll, that would be enough inheritance for me.

How about you, Mike, Well, we've seen this kind of story done before, I think, especially with like Night Gallery, where it's this whole like the Mysteries of the Jungle and taking something from another culture and not understanding it and using it for evil or it has an evil purpose. And in these settings, because Ron Sterling never believed anything shouldn't take place in an old world mansion when it came to voodoo. Oh definitely. And yeah, it's funny because there are so many paintings in this so I was definitely in that night gallery headspace through a lot of this too. And you get this kind of older, staid British guy who's just like, very pompous and everything.

And he's also kind of the pop weavil of the story too, where he knows the history behind these things. And at first you're like, this guy doesn't believe anything, and then later on you're like, oh, no, he does believe that Charlie Boy is capabable of this stuff. I really like this. I thought that this was a newer, fresher take than I'd seen in a while of a story that could easily have just become rap. And there's one part towards the end that we'll talk about as far as what I thought there was a twist coming up, and I'm glad that they didn't go for that twist.

But yeah, I really enjoyed this episode me too. I have been thinking about it for days. It is so skillfully directed, It is so wonderfully paced. It does everything correctly. Whereas we have seen this story dozens of times now in various forms.

I was thinking of Portifoy for the first part of this episode, the pilot episode of Night Galler. Oh yeah, yeah. In addition to all of the sort of clumsy voodoo things, they sidestep all of that. I was so scared. When we come to get collect the inheritance and he's collecting these paintings and they're like, oh, this is his collection of African art.

I'm like, oh no, where are we going to go here? Please be delicate and it's nimble, it's definitely handled. Oh god. And it could have gone so bad because especially because the main character, his girlfriend is black. So I was just like, oh god, if she ends up in tribal dress or like a leopard skin toga, I am going to be so upset.

But they don't do that. She ends up being like one of the smartest characters in the whole thing. And not to say that our main character is any sort of a sloucheeter. And that's the thing I like, is that these people actually seem to be kind of smart. They're not just like, oh, I don't understand anything.

That's going on, like it does take him a little bit to figure out the mystery, but he eventually figures it out. And luckily people don't just sit there and question him all the time. Well no, no, no, it can't be that. I mean, of course there's some resistance, but after a while, you know it's like, no, this seems to be happening. This fetish doll seems to be controlling everything that's going on.

Yeah. Here at Hammerhouse of Horror, they their characters figure stuff out. When we would, yes, I mean, there would definitely be in any supernatural situation a moment of that's not really happening, right, But at the same time, you would come to when there's no other fucking reason that your door is slamming and the walls are bleeding, it's time to go with supernatural. And they do that appropriately here. Yes, Yeah, and I like that there's kind of a supernatural thing at the beginning when he accidentally cuts off a guy and the guy's got this big scar, and there's a moment where you know, it's just all this kind of dual road rage do U E L and that d U A L all this road rage stuff going on, and when they finally confront this driver who just about crashes into them head on, which I thought was foreshadowing, and we'll talk about that.

He just sits there and doesn't say a word, like he's a freaking zombie, and I'm just like, oh my god, are we in supernatural town. It's like, no, No, He's just an asshole, that's all. But it made me think and it kind of put that feel of supernatural in there, even before Charlie Boy really started his antics. Yeah, that whole scene, all I could think is, Wow, Graham is learning a valuable lesson here. Never cut anyone off.

He did it so casually, and in fact, in the follow up scene, the first thing he says is I won't use the car for a couple of days, and I thought, good, stay out of the car, you fucking menace. And really it's it's that casual thing that sets the whole thing in motion, right, because it's his casual wish for revenge against that fella. Mm hmm, oh yeah yeah. And I like that he doesn't know that it's happened for the longest time, We as the audience, get that privilege of seeing what happens to this scarfaced man. You know, the guy that they keep talking about, you know, he looks like a villain.

And I'm like, yeah, he does look like a villain. And I'm like, oh, this is great. We get to see it. He has no idea. And then when they show him the photograph, the headline, you know, again more newspaper stuff like the last time we talked, I'm like, this is great.

I love that now he's catching up, Like we as the audience, are more advanced than he is. The direction in this episode is really off the charts, Like that sequence you're talking about where there's murder going on and it's intercutting with him and the and his girlfriend like making love while that image of their bodies entwined is like superimposed over the voodoo dolls eyes. This was so crazily good man. Yeah, this show. I have just been so impressed with it.

We're what six episodes in and I'm like, no clunkers, Really, this is fantastic. And you know, not only that, like in and around the same scene, they give us a moment of exposition where he brings up the photograph where we basically get all of the potential victims and all of the players involved here and the camera slowly pans from each person's face to each person's face, and we hear flashback dialogue. So it's setting up what everyone wanted and everyone's motivations, and then the fucking cherry on top it unfreeze frames and we go back to that fucking the rest of that conversation. I thought that was so masterful. Yeah, that was really well done and totally unexpected.

When that happened, I was like, what's going on right now? And then as it carried on and came out of it, I was like, oh wow, I think I just watched a little bit of genius right there. Here's my note, motherfucker. That was awesome. I love his high fi set that is embedded in the wall, and his television is embedded in the wall, very Elvis Presley.

I was like, this guy's got it going on. This is some stylish living with that salmon colored hate that he's got too. I was mesmerized by that sunken television that and of course wondering the whole time, like so what do you do when it breaks? You have to get the same set forever. What also impressed me is that's an apartment.

It's not even a house right. Right, Well, I mean it was probably it looked like a thirty two inch TV and that's pretty high tone luxury at that time. Oh. Absolutely, Yeah, he's living well beyond his means. I think, well that's kind of the point of the thing where he's trying to create a advertising company and everyone has agreed to be part of it until they don't, and that's really what sets him off.

And his intention is to kill all of the or just get get what he's doing. I don't think he ever intends to kill anyone, although let's talk about his brother Mark, because that motherfucker we meet him punching a horse. Yes, yeah, I am glad he gets what's coming to him, because he really should be nicer to that horse. Like he's a dan Ackroyd character come to life, right, Like this is Winthorpe from Trading Places made flesh, like the real deal, And oh my god, I I don't understand the English class system as firmly as it is entrenched as it is. Like I understand it in theory, but anytime you hear it spoken aloud, the know you're she's working above her station, like you should know your place.

Kind of a thing. Oh my god, it just makes me want to take pitchforks up. Yeah, no, absolutely, and yeah, it's it's it is. I mean it's funny because we have our own class system, but we just I guess we use different terms. Yeah, we're poor and we're fucking super well yeah.

Right, yeah, yeah exactly, Yeah, there's less distinction. Yes, we're not invited to weird pedophile parties, thank goodness. It always my favorite part of that movie, The Aristocrats was Eric Idol's take on the joke was like, I didn't understand why it was popular in America because you don't have aristocrats. I love it. Our main character reminds me of oh gosh, the guy that would like scalp tickets and fast times at Ridgemont High him, who we also saw in an episode of it was the Shoes episode from the Dark Side.

Yes, tails from the Dark Side. Yes, he looks a little bit like that. He also looks a little crisk tan to me. I think it might just be the floppy hair with the middle part, but I like this guy. This is another one where I was just like, I don't really recognize anybody that's in this, which is remarkable because the other part of the deal that he's trying to set up the guy, the little guy with the long blonde hair.

I was like, boy, he seems like he should be familiar, but I'm just not recognizing his face. Yeah, I guarantee you these are people we all saw in minor roles and everything, except Angela Bruce, who's the female lead here, and she's she's a brigadier on doctor who Oh nice? All right? A lot of the episodes starting with Jesus, I'm I know she was definitely around in the Sylvester McCoy era, but I think she got to start when I basically had checked out, which was the Colin Baker that's the sixth the doctor when they gave him that ridiculous outfit, and I was like, come on, man in the stalk of Salary, that's five. But I like the stock of Zellary.

Who's the next one? Then? Because I remember Sylvester McCoy right, of course, I remember Paul McCann. Uh. It's one turn as Doctor who against Eric Roberts as the Master.

Colin Baker is the one in between, and he was the one with all of the with the coat with all of the question marks, on it. Oh, he had sort of a tight blonde fro, much like our young man here. All right, all right, yeah the frow is what got me. Yeap lasted two seasons. Nobody liked him.

I thought he did a great job as the doctor, but he was saddled with the most ridiculous plot lines. Yeah, poor guy. Yeah, because I've seen him in other things. I like him. He's really good.

I have a friend who was at a convention and he was just sitting quietly by himself and nobody was bothering to talk to him, and she went and fucking talked to Zerra for hours. So all right, cheers doctor, all of you doctors, and Brigadier's who's great here. I loved her in this. She's awesome. Yeah, and I just just basically happenstance that she's in that photograph that ends up being Charlie Boys marching Orders and the design of Charlie Boy.

Yeah, so good. We actually have over on one of my video. Shehelves I've got a little African fertility got ess and it looks so similar to him, but with like without those crazy teeth. He looks so good and I love all the nails pounded into. Yeah, I thought without the crazy teeth, it would probably not look out of place anywhere.

That's what gives it a sort of sinister look. But yeah, all of the blades tucked in, it just seems sort of ornamental. And then you realize you could just slide one in and take it out. And that was another fucking cut. Oh my god.

I'm sorry to keep gushing about it, but they're intercutting him stabbing the thing for the first time while those guys are stabbing his first victim, and he slides his blade in and then we cut to a blade being pulled out and I thought it was the same knife for a second and I thought, oh my god, it's the statue itself bleeding. But no, that's actual victim blood. Yeah, that was very nice. I like that, And I like, you know, you're talking about his brother Mark, is it that? Yeah, his demise which comes really quickly there after, so appropriate.

And just to see the blades that he's about to meet, and I'm just like, yeah, those look like they're gonna hurt a lot. Yeah. Man, Like, hey, look here here's you running fast. Here's a fence. Hey, here's a plow.

Look at that plow blade. Let's cut back to you now. It's just so fun. Oh yeah, yeah, oh man, It's like the guy who owns the plow can hear it coming and is powerless to do anything so good, and he gets thrown so far by that horse. We talk about the music in this episode for a second, This jazzy, swingy, beautiful score.

It gets wild, it gets crazy cool, and it seems like it should be the most incongruous thing ever. It seems like it seems like it could be on an ironic level, and it's not. This isn't dancing around to a happy tune and stabbing somebody. This is like hyped up happy jazz that seems somehow appropriate when a crossbow is about to unleash itself onto an unsuspecting man. What wonderful tension we have there, just all of the wrong footing with that crossbow.

Because as soon as you see that crossbow go off the first time, you're like, okay, well this looks dangerous, and we're gonna set it up in the most painful way with the guy pulling back the thing, slowly turning that lever, putting that arrow in, and then just conveniently leaving it there before that jazz score starts and we got that poor little boy and I'm like, it's a little boy kind of get it. I hope to god he doesn't. So many potential targets. What a great little moment attention. Meanwhile, the jazzy thing is letting us know that everything's gonna be all right.

God, yes, oh man, and yeah that score. I was just like, what is happening right here? And you know, kind of to my earlier point, I was just so glad that they weren't doing some sort of weird tribalism thing where it's just like a bunch of freaking because I think that was kind of the thing with one of those Night Gallery episodes where like you hear the drum beats in the forest kind of thing and you're like, oh, here comes something. But that they take this out of that cultural milieu and just let this thing be evil, regardless of a culture it's from. That's great.

You're right. It would have been all too easy, and it definitely would have happened on Night Gallery where at a certain point Angela Bruce her eyes would have fluttered open and she would have had some voodoo symbols on her and she would have started stabbing people or something. And this has no interest in any of that. It's just another curse. The doll is just a mcguffin, and and Charlie Boy is a beautiful mcguffin to behold.

Oh god, damn. I want to talk about the wrong footing when it came to that twist that I thought was coming, because towards the end of the episode, when they kind of figure some things out, he goes and visits kinds the guy I was talking about, the kind of poshure guy who's selling all the stuff at the beginning. He goes back to see him, I think twice, and the second time he's finally just like, oh my gosh, you know, like you have to burn this thing. And oh that's what it was, because at one point they come home and everything is stolen. That was an amazing twist as well.

Yeah, who saw that coming, man, not me? And now he has to go get the fucking doll, Like he's finally given his marching orders, like here's what you gotta do. You gotta get that doll, you gotta burning and to make you boa and now you can't have the doll because it has been randomly stolen by these two guys that he waved to from the road to his house. That was such a nice touch. Yeah, But so he's now raised and he has to go and he's you know, like, I have the doll, I need to burn the doll.

I'm going to do this thing. And meanwhile his girlfriend is headed the other way and you literally get like her coming left to right in the frame, him coming right to left in the frame, And I'm just thinking of that earlier scene of the villain almost hitting his car, and I'm just like, are they going to run into each other and murder each other that way? And like then cut to Charlie Boy just like smiling his big toothy grin. It's not that, but it's almost that, and it could have been, and it would have been satisfying. And yeah, Gott was very satisfying too.

Oh man. They just went fucking further. When she pulled out in her car by herself, with a cartoon duck logo on them on the thing, I did think, well, things aren't going to end well for her that we're going to need to identify her with a duck logo on her car. Nevertheless, was not disappointed when we had to identify her. It's so awful.

Uh yeah, it's this, it's a it. The episode turns into like a race against time to destroy Charlie Boy before it gets to him and her, because they're both in the photograph. And that's what Charlie gonna do, no matter what, He's gonna kill whoever he's been sent to kill. And she gets it and I just feel bad. And then he I think he's you think he's gonna get away with it.

And then oh man, it's so personal at the end, the way it kills him. It's just I don't know. When she's hanging out of the car, it almost looks like there's something through her. Is that like the gearshift or something something? Yeah, like she's been perforated.

Like they all kind of die that way, don't they. I mean, I guess Gwen Gwen kills herself though she Yeah, when she plays that so well, just that complete destitute. I have nothing to live for. And it's not over, you know, overdone, heavy handed. It just feels like, yep, she's resigned and he's trying his best to get there, but not so quick.

This reminded me of the sort of portifhoy thing where she's the servant who's left nothing, And of course that's what is driving us like as are far as our sympathy for her ghosts. But then right before the end, we realized that this was really she was just in love with the previous owner of the house, their uncle who killed or was murdered or supernaturally died. I did he Maybe he just fell He just fell right, well. He dropped a spanner and then he just seemed to it was almost like a heart attack, and then he falls off the roof. So yeah, I was a little confused by that too.

Yeah. I mean, because we tend to in cold openings set up whatever the potential supernatural thing is here, whether it is or not, and this it's definitely a fucking supernatural episode, so I tend to want that to be tied in. But I guess it's just a random act of faith that he died, and then you know that's going to cause all the friction between the brothers and the friends. I did like during the they show us a commercial photo shoot with his little blond friend. This is where the crossbow goes off.

There's a moment where all the participants in the photo are all in period garb and they have a tent there and starts ringing and she opens it up and there's a little red phone in there and she reaches in it tanks and it shocks us back to the twentieth century. And I just love that. And just to be a complete massage in It's pig. The shot that follows where it's a close up of a barrel of apples and there's a woman's cleavage pressed up against it was another fantastic shot in this episode. That was a really good shot.

Yes, I won't disagree with that at all. It was just plump fruit. Also, when this is the only part that actually bothered me in the episode, which is he's going to go check on Gwen mourning of that she's murdered as she's killed herself, and his girlfriend says should I go with you? And he says, no, I'll drive faster on my own. Right.

Well, you're not Willem Dafoe in Vietnam running through the brush, you know, like you, she can't slow you down by being next to you. If anything, she might navigate and help you get there faster. So that was a little silly. If she had woken up and there was a note gone to check on, that could have just been alleviated. But that was the clumsiest thing I've ever heard.

Yeah, that was strange. And then the other strange thing is his demise where he's trying to set Charlie Boy on fire inside the house. That's something you do outside the house, sir. Maybe he was a little panicked at that point, but yeah, I was thinking that too, like, wait, is this going to turn into he burns down the whole house situation? Or that No I thought was going to happen.

I mean, could it have worked? I think not. I think he was going to burn everything down, honestly. Yeah, when they show the axe, I'm just like, oh shit, he's going to slip and fall and kill himself on the axe. But that he slips and falls and kills himself on all those points coming out of Charlie.

Wow, that was nice that the servant becomes the master as it were, and just takes him out. That was such a nice little turn at the end, which you already knew he wasn't going to be able to make it through this episode, and to have the doll be his demise when wonderful. It follows all the beats of everything we've ever seen before, and every every time it's given an opportunity to do the obvious thing, it absolutely takes a left turn, and it absolutely feels not only justified, but appropriate and satisfying. Like just dramatically, I this is We're six episodes into a thirteen episode series and they've all been fucking bangers. So right now, in my estimation, as far as what's the greatest horror anthology television series of all time, this is fucking this is the Raining King.

And that's not fair because if you boil down Night Gallery one season, you could probably kill it as well, or any of them, honestly, but pound for pound, man, like, this feels like so much care and attention. Yeah, it feels very unfair because it's okay, we got just a handful episodes, but yeah, everyone's rocking my world, and I'm so excited. I haven't watched ahead. I'm watching these as we're talking about them, but i did see a thumbnail from the next one, and I'm super excited to finally see some Peter Cushing in here. I am up for a treat.

I'm sure, uh yeah this, Yes, I won't say much everybody. But speaking of that, on the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we're taking a look at Hammerhouse of Horror episode number seven, that is the Silent Scream, starring the wonderful mister Peter Cushing. Until then, I don't want to say anything else. I just want you to all go watch it. There are links in the show notes to all of these episodes, so it'll take you to the Internet archives so you can watch these for free and unedited and unfucked with.

Go watch the Silent Screen before the next episode of this show. Do not watch this without spoilers. Okay, everybody, you've been warned until then, Mike, where can people find you? If they're looking for you. If they're looking for me, they can find me over at the Projection Booth, which is that Projection Booth podcast or all the rest of the stuff that I do as well, is available at weirdingmaymedia dot com.

How about you, father Malone, Well, you. Can hear me here. And I'm also the co host of a podcast about the television series Taxi called Night Mister Walters Taxi Podcast. To do that with my frequent co host HP. He's a frequent co host here on Midnight Viewing.

We do all the fests together. We're currently doing Star Trek Fest, looking at all of the Star Trek movies theatrically and over on the Patreon channel. We've got a Moranas Fest going on. We're looking at all the movies of mister Rick Moranis. Check us out there, Patreon, dot com, slash follow alone.

Until next time, everybody, try to enjoy that daylight