Hammer House of Horror S01E09 - Carpathian Eagle

Lovecraft wrote of duels better left unopened. To night. We open one anyway. The room feels familiar until the light falters, until the shadows linger. Step inside and find your joy in the dark.

Welcome back to Midnight Viewing. I'm your host, fan of Malone. In this season, we are surveying the eighties UK horror anthology classic The Hammer House of Horror, and with me surveying, the foundation for cracks is the projection in booths. Mike White, You'll never guess who the killer? Oh yeah, you are the guest.

Tonight we are looking at the ninth episode of the series. This is called Carpathian Eagle, and like a title that throws off the shackles of a definite article, Carpathian Eagle released on Our first aired on November the eighth, nineteen eighty Written by Bernie Cooper and Francis Omegahee McGehee, also directed by Francis. This one stars Anthony Valentine, who's an actor I'm way too familiar with because he's in The Monster Club, the last of the Zamakis films and in the first two episodes of Robin of Sherwood. Those episodes are called Robin and The Sorcerer, and he's the Sorcerer. So in my mind, he's one of those actors that I thought was a big deal because I saw him in a bunch of stuff when I was really young, and it turns out he's just a journeyman actor anyway.

Also starring Susan Danielle, Sean Phillips, Holy Good God, and Barry Stanton and and even impossibly younger than his appearance in The Long Good Friday, Pierce Bronsman as the last victim. Mike, what did you think of this episode of The Hammerhouse of Horror. Every episode that we've done over this series, we've just been like, oh, Wow, you know, this is so great. You know, just been hitting home runs the whole time. I think I might have found the error.

Please feel free to talk me out of it, because I was just like, yeah, I'm not really impressed with this one. I love watching Sean Phillips. I thought that she's great, but yeah, as far as there's a mystery at the heart of this as to who's killing these men, and yeah, I was just like, oh, it's got to be her. As soon as I saw the woman come on screen, the kind of dowdy woman with the glasses and the curly hair. I was like, Okay, yeah, she's the murderer.

So it was a little rough. I have to say I felt that way too as soon as she came on screen, just like you said, her glasses are too small, she has an unkempt perm, and she's wearing a Holly Hobby patterned sack dress. And we've seen in the opening scene the super sexy body. Susanne Danielle was labeled the body by the UK Press, right, so very distinctive. So if we see her in anything other than a sack dress, we're gonna know it's her.

So they put her in a sack dress straight away. I'm like, yeah, oh, she's the killer definitely. However, I thought it was labyrinthine enough. Then I started doubting that it was her or was not her in combination with others, And then my mind got tripped up with supernatural potential because there is a painting of her, or a painting that looks enough like her that she could be either the descendant or the progenitor of this line. Like I was thinking, potentially, she is the two characters that we keep meeting with Sean Phillips and the nephew character that those are her descendants, that's like her granddaughter and her great grandson or something like that.

And then when it turns out it's not that at all. It's she's just a garden variety psychopath. I was really. Excited by that. Oh well, good, good.

For some reason, it actually answered all my questions without further opening up dramatic avenues. There's a strong plot subplot going on in this that's a mashup of the Elizabeth Bathory blood Countess story and the Anastasia myth right. This is supposed to be like smuggled out of Russia, the last of our line, and we might also sacrifice people to stay young forever. They played into that and said, yes, she is the Elizabeth Bathory character. I could still see having questions.

Yeah, absolutely, And yeah, the way that we lean into the supernatural at one point and then we back away from it, I was really okay with that, because, yeah, I was thinking at one point, well, when you see Sean Phillips, I'm just like, all right, is she controlling somebody else? Because obviously she seems and she's not. This is years before she was in doomed even and it was so unusual seeing her with hair, with hair. With so much hair, it's like a bird's nest of beautiful red hair. She well, yeah, all of those Harkonans have red hair, but she with that big hair.

She reminded me of you Baba from Spirited Away, that little lady with the big head. Oh my god. Yeah yeah, yeah, So I was like, oh, I don't think that's a reference, but that's pretty cool. But yeah, so I was just like, Okay, is she somehow controlling a younger woman or is she becoming a younger woman? Is the blood helping her dage?

But then she just seems so scattered as you're watching it, and yeah, it's all about who has knowledge of this? The Russian stuff and what's pretty smart as well. It's just like how those were wolves come from Hungary. It's like, okay, well this killer is coming from Russia. Maybe it's the whole xenophobia that Britain is so fantastic in being, you know, the whole thing.

Well'll screw you guys, We're going to be part of the Europeini Union anymore because we hate immigrants so much. They if this series is to be taken as a polemic about immigration in the UK, even something like Charlie Boy that's all white on white violence and they use a like an African sigil, you know, to in order to do it to each other. Like come on, okay, I can understand what you're saying, that this is the first of the unsatisfying Hammer Horrors. I will counter that this is better than most of what we've gotten another series. So it's still of fantastic quality.

Absolutely, And again, the filmic quality of this, the acting, the performances. I'm not faulting any of that. I'm just faulting the story a little bit. But yeah, compared to some of the stuff that we've seen in the past on other things, I keep I always go. The first image I popped in my mind is all those weirdos hanging out in the tree firm.

I think it was night Gallery. Oh yeah, okay, yeah with David Yep. Yeah, first image that comes to mind. And meanwhile, I've got like nice Sean Phillips in this the same house that we probably have seen nine times by this point. Oh my god.

Yeah, but it's dressed differently. It looks great, And yeah, this kind of like the more ornate, old lady type of place where you're just like, oh, what mysteries are being hidden here? And it does a good job of presenting us with the mystery. It was just yeah, maybe they doudied her up too much with the bad perm the glasses, the holly hobby dress, because I'm just like, Okay, yeah, she's got a lot going on, especially like you said, when you see that first woman, the woman that gets picked up hitchhiking, that dress is wild with those little beads at the end of those like long tassels and everything. I'm just like, Andrew, why don't you wear dresses like that?

For me? You mentioned that once again we're getting the actual hammerhouse used in production for all of these and they're just doing it for production and keeping budgets under a certain spending limit. But what it's having a sort of cumulative effect on the series is it makes it feel like all of these things are happening within this five mile square of England that nobody talks about. It's very rare we go to a metropolitan area like London, and if we do, it's always just quick b roll of somebody dropping in so they can get back to this fucking bizarre stretch of UK countryside. Here's what I think would have saved this story dramatically.

I think it's the second murder. It's when we learn that our lead is the killer, because she goes to or there was maybe the third killing, even where she goes to a motel and opens up the trunk and we see the accouterments of what we've seen the killer using the entire time, and at that point we now know it's her. That scene, that brief moment, if they pulled that out and just had the rest play, could have kept the mystery going because once they introduced the nephew and then took pains to show him as a hot headed psychopath, and then compounded that with making him like a drag performer. Right, so now we get to see him in the dress with a wig, and I bought that it was a woman at first when he was getting off of stage.

But that also triggered our newest segment on Arausophre, which was Brian de Palmer in England in nineteen eighty because is this not dressed to kill? Like I was so worried are going to have to tangle with the gender? Fauld all that De Palma was trafficking in around this time period. Yeah, no, I completely can see that. And when they took that wig off of the nephew, I was a little surprised by that.

So it did have me fooled slightly. But again, my wife's just you didn't see that coming, Okay. Yeah, perhaps we're just slow. What I was really taken by in this episode is speaking of the stage dressings, the set dressings. Andy, the guy that picks up our killer, I think it's in the second murder and that incredible crazy bed he's got that has the two big feet at the foot of the bed.

Oh, those huge lights that are behind him that are totally breasts tests And I'm just like, did Dudley Moore decorate this apartment? This is wild? Oh my god? And foul play exactly. It's like this sort of suit super late seventies mashup of leftover sixties kind of design, but like trying to be space agy about it.

Oh so ridiculous cartooned oversized feet as your footboard. So to anyone standing in there looking at you, it looks like you have giant cartoon feet sticking up from under your covers with that. White shag rug that he's got going on too. I'm just like, this is amazing. Yeah, they also threw in multiple personalities as a possibility because that was the Boston Strangler was still renowned for having that.

So I liked that it became an episode about defying your expectations of the twists. But I can see ultimately not having the same bite as the rest of these, I mean, because it doesn't. Nevertheless, I like the idea of somebody figuring out what a town's dark secret is and then becoming that dark secret. No, that is pretty smart, And yeah, I do that we move away from the supernatural that this is pretty much when you boil it down, it's just a serial killer basically. And then yeah, like every episode that we've talked about, it feels like, oh, well, yeah, Patricia Quinn's in this and Brian Coxes in this one.

I'm thinking Sean Phillips is my entree into this episode, and again seeing her with hair and it's a different character, and I just kept throwing dune lines out the entire time when I'm watching it. There's one moment where she's sitting in her mouth is open a little bit, and I was just like, don't try your witch's tricks. I'm me. But then yeah, to have a Pierce Brows's show up at the end. I was so shocked in his face.

He's always been good looking, that fella Jesus Christ. Yes, and he's just getting more to be a silver fox as the years go on. What the fuck? How did he do that? That's a horrible trick on the rest of us.

Unfair. Oh. Something I really liked in the episode because I'd never seen these before. Cops in movies and TV shows are always complaining about their steak at If I was ever going to be on a stakeout, I would want to be on this one. In this episode, the guy who's just sitting in this super futuristic looking yellow van in full view of who he's surveilling, and he's just sitting there eating sandwiches and stuff.

Now I liked that enough. But then the sort of cherry on top was their microphones for their CBS are not like ours, where it's facing into you and you click the button on the side. It was more like a microphone, so it made them look like rock stars every time they were talking to each other, and that tickled me. To no end. All this little peripheral stuff added up to making me like this movie, in this episode more than you.

I did, Like, I think it's the third guy she kills, who's got the crazy eyebrows and she's wearing a wig, But it also looks like he's wearing a wig, and I don't think we're supposed to think that. I think we're supposed to think it's his hair. This is the upper crust guy, right, who ends up running and hiding in the closet from her. Don't hurt me, take all the money that guy right. I actually wrote down a line of his dialogue here because I thought it very telling.

This was spoken by a middle aged white man in nineteen eighty. The line is, I know it's a very sexist thing to intrude on a lady's privacy simply because she's beautiful, Like I'm forcing a conversation on you because you're purty. Right in nineteen eighty they knew it was wrong. Yep, Yeah, when did we forget that stuff? Do remember growing up with that knowledge being handed to us?

And then I? Yeah, exactly. Anyway, that's just an interesting thing that you can sometimes see culturally here in these old episodes of TV shows. Because they're all a bunch of beta males, a bunch of cocks. Man, you got to really embrace that alpha energy that you've got.

That's what I say to all my boys when I go to the gym. Well, and one thing I do like about all of these Hammerhouse afar is that they do paint the ultra rich to be the perverted, disgusting scum that they actually are. Yes, yeah, which is usually what we see in these shows, which I always appreciate because we always talk about to come up and send Is it going to be some sort of again supernatural the putting things right? Or is it going to be like Tails from the Dark Side where it's just screw everybody, we don't care. Along the same gender lines, at one point, the inspector in this episode says, you think a woman could have done this?

It's a stabbing. You guys heard of Manson, It's like that was international news. I think women are pretty good at stabbing. Yeah, yea, of all the weapons employed here in England, Like, this is the first stabbing he's ever come across. Right, I was on the stakeout that you were talking about.

He's got a great look. I kept looking him up and be like, Nope, I haven't seen any of these things, but he just looks so familiar because he's just so dumpy and I don't know, just the facial hair, the gut everything. I was just like, this guy seems like a real man's man. I'd like to throw down a couple of pints with him at the pub. Yeah, I bet he was.

I keep finding the same thing where I look them up and you find out that they did have prolific careers, but it's completely separated because it was all UK TV that never made its way over here. I was an avid Doctor Who fan, so I'm getting to see a lot of these people that I do recognize. Suzanne Danielle, in fact, is in the four episodes of my favorite run of Doctor Who of all time, which was Destiny of the Dolleks. It's a fourth season Doctor we really get into the Doaleks and the whole fucking mythology of them. And the other funny thing about Susan Suzanne Danielle is she ended up marrying a pro golfer by the name of Sam Torrance and then they had a son named Danny, so there's a Danny Torrance.

Nice all right. Then on the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we're taking a look at the tenth episode, the tenth Floor, if you will, off the Hammerhouse far. I don't know if it has that many floors, Guardian of the Abyss. Until then, tell the find people what they need to be free, Mike whyte. Everything they need that is free is available over at readingwaymedia dot com, including the show that I do every week, which is called The Projection Booth, and be that now for fifteen fricking years.

Man, So congratulations there, Yeah, everyone go listen to that show. For God's sake, you some of you midnight viewer has just heard an episode for free on this show. So it's everyone is that long and that researched and I don't know, we're all big fans. Mike, thank you so much. How about you father Malone for me?

You're all listening to Midnight Viewing. It's on twice a week, follow the Malone's weekly round Up on Fridays, summing up what's coming up or out there in the world to see that's new, and then every Monday it's either Mike and I talking about an anthology series, or HP and I talking about I don't know whatever, goddamn tangent we've gone down, We're still talking Star Trek, I think at this point. Anyway, until next time, everybody, try to enjoy the daylight. Streets, streets,