Hammer House of Horror S01E11 - Visitor from the Grave

Welcome back to midnight Viewing. I'm your host, Vonn Malone. In this season, we are appraising the eighties UK horror anthology classic, The Hammer House of Horror, and with me testing all the showers for water pressure? Is the projection? Boots?

Mike White? How are you? Mike? Spells like gaslighting in here? So much gaslighting?

Tonight we are looking at the eleventh episode of the only series of Hammer House of Horror. This is called Visitor from the Grave. It aired originally on November the twenty second, nineteen eighty written by John Elder, directed by Peter Sasty and starring and starring Catherine Lee Scott. Fans of Dark Shadows will recognize her as Maggie Evans, the local waitress who Barnabas Collins falls in love with because he mistakes her for his long lost love Josette. That was the plotline in.

The original series that they co opted in the suit in that fucking movie, The Tim Burton Movie anyway, also starring Simon mccorkandale. Mike, was he Manimal? It's Simon McCorkindale. I love that name. I don't know was he Manimal?

Because I think he was man. I remember Manimal. I remember Manimal, of course, but I don't remember the show per se. I don't remember the Beats. Was then Simon mccorkandale the guy who gets eaten by Jaws?

Three d? Oh, definitely he was the guy that got eaten by Jaws three. D Okay, good, good, good. He he's got a great face. Reminded me of a lower Brent Michael Yorke.

Oh my god, that is the perfect description of him. Yes, like a former Matinee Idol's cousin. Yes, yeah, Tom Cruise's cousin. It's the the Peter Maypolar effect that I see that motherfucker in Forever. But then I haven't seen any Cruise movies and forever He's how many times has he gotten killed in the Mission Impossibles?

Do you think how many of them are there? I lost counts after they stopped numbering them. Yeah, they had to stop numbering them. We have all been on too their scam. This episode is about a woman who murders her attacker and then buries them with the help of her boyfriend.

But does the grave remain filled? What do you think of this one, Mike. We've been very consistent on the show, just talking about how great it is. I still keep thinking about that Brian Cox episode, that one, and even what was it Old Charlie or whatever that was, Like, these are some really solid episodes. And then I got into this one and I was just like, Okay, I can tell what's happening here.

Even within the first few minutes of the episode. I think it was I don't know when exactly. I was just like, Oh, she used to be in a mental institution, and so she murdered this poor guy. So she's a lot of sorts and everything, but did she really murder him? Is he really dead?

Are all exaperations apparitions, not operations apparitions just figments of our imagination and you know they're guests lighting are Yeah? Okay, yeah. I was very unimpressed with this episode. It was very It made me sad because I've been enjoying these so much, but this one I could just tell right away, right from the jump. I was like, this is just a we are going to scare Jessica to.

Death precisely and clumsily, oh. Very clumsily. Yeah. I just watched not Baby Jane, but the other one, Hush Sweets Charlotte this is hush, Sweet Charlotte, basically exactly. And I was onto it as soon as he dug a grave and then we didn't see any burial occur.

That was like, is this could this be? And I guess I kept going back and forth throughout the episode, but really, as soon as that the apparitions were only appearing to her and everything that was happening off screen, we weren't even being made privy too, so we were being kept in the dark with her. So obviously this is. A plot involved, and yeah, rather sad here near the end of the Hammerhouse of Horror's fucking victory lap around all the other horror anthologies, but it was I don't know, Look, I love I love cantherin Lee Scott, so I got to spend an hour with her and Simon McCorkindale too, And there's a lot of interesting stuff going on here. I think this is you know what, I take that back, there's not that much interesting going on here.

It's solidly made and it's fun, but right down to the music, the music feels like all of the odds and ends left over from other episodes that were just haphazardly played here because the music seems to constantly work against what we're seeing on screen. It's fascinatingly odd how that choice was made. Yeah, yeah, nothing really impressed me with this. The acting is fine, it looks nice, but like when you start complimenting on the cinematography, something is wrong. I know that you already know this answer, but just for the audience at home, yes, he was Manimal.

I did just have to double check that. So do I need to do a rewatch of Manimal? Is that something that is in my life in the future. You let me know if it's gonna happen, because I'm curious. I remember watching it as a kid, but it's been many moons.

It just saw Ryan Coogler is what rebooting the X Files? But did I also see he's rebooting Animorphs? Do you remember that one? I remember them? I was never an avid viewer of Anamorphs, but as that of fact is, he's doing that as well.

Good for him. I don't know. Maybe that was a April Fool's joke, and now I'm thinking about it, I'm just like, fuck, they get every year, and living in this world of disinformation, I really don't need this shit anymore. I know people stop making fake trailers and fake posters. Just oh god, it's enough already.

We all know you want a sequel to whatever your favorite movie is, but it's not being made, and stop reposting it as if it's a fact that somebody else gave you. There's got to be better labeling on YouTube. I just report every single time I run across one of those fake trailers, I don't need to see how good you are at prompting AI to make Will Smith as Popeye? What are you doing? The fact that we're talking about that as long as we are is pretty indicative of how great this episode was.

I suppose we should talk about it a little bit. Their entire plan hinges on her shooting. This guy in the face with a shotgun. Yeah, which really seems like how do you recover from that one? I know, of course, like it's all fake and everything, But he's got that blood right there in the first scene.

It's not like he pulds his hands up to his face and goes ah and then like you see the blood afterwards. He just has the blood and there's blood on the floor. I'm like, where's all this stuff coming from? Yeah, there's a blood trail out the back and everything right, and then okay, so it's predicated on her him trying to rape her, but getting her into a position where she can get the gun and shoot him. I guess it didn't matter if he gets shot in the face or not, because perhaps he has bags of blood in his pockets that he intends to squeeze out.

I don't know. But when they finally find the body sim mcgorgandale dragging her out there, all of the bizarre behavior that I was writing down in my notes as it was happening, it's all null and void because it was just a plot by a bunch of stupid humans and there's no ghosts in this one. But when he finally gets. To her, he flips the guy over and he's, oh my god, you've killed Charles Willoughby. And there's a commercial break there, and then when they come back, she's, who's Charles Willoughby's Oh.

Nobody, Yeah, because he is banging at the door, banging at the window, and every thing. I know you're in there. I know you're in there. And then he says something about her husband owes him some money. So yeah, when he goes, oh nobody, I was like, wait, no, motherfucker, you owed this guy some money?

What's going on? Oh yeah, interested a silly old bet. I'm like that guy's I'm bounding down your door for a silly old bet or something. Yeah. Considering that this is an elaborate plot by a lot of people, there's at least five conspirators going yes, why did it need to be so involved?

Why is there this story that he's this former coworker and the police are investigating him and everything, Like they could just have the police come around once just to scare her a little bit. Isn't this all about the ghost? And then a gypsy lady like reinforces what you need to hear. We'll get to the fucking ending with the and the actual plan, which I was convinced the entire time. Once she said if you want my money so badly, you can just have it, I thought, Oh, okay, So he's trying to get her money he wants so dead, so because he's her husband, he'll inherit, right.

But it ends up being that they've she's hatched this plan. They've hatched a plan to get her to fly a swami from India to the UK to perform a seance slash exorcism to get rid of this ghost. And his fee is one hundred and fifty thousand dollars that he needs for a center that he had to come to England before it attempted to build and couldn't get the money for what an elaborate, stupid backstory that she didn't know any of this and in the end, if they just killed her, he would have inherited her millions. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. I was also reminded a lot of the film was a death trap, the one with Diane Cannon, Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve.

And I think there's a whole thing in there where it's like somebody comes back from the dead and then she's got a weak heart, and then I think she ends up having a heart attack and it's, oh, our plan was successful kind of thing, and like, yeah, had she just thrown a line that she's got a weak heart, and then you could have just murdered her that way in this and no trace, no nothing, Sorry, she got scared and she died or whatever, her heart just gave out, But there's none of that here. Yes, this whole swamy thing. And then it's also the guy that is playing the cop is the swammy. I'm like, oh, okay, yeah I was. I could have just come onto this podcast and just railed for half an hour about the use of brown face, but I decided against it.

Thank you, because jeez. Yeah. As a former Indian swammy myself, I was very dis personally attacked by this episode. I would like to point out that sim McCorkindale is driving this two door version of a Jaguar. Oh yes, that was just fucking gorgeous, and I should I'd like to note that at one point in my life, my mother owned that make model of Jaguars.

Ooh nice, and one time when she was on vacation, I thought I would go pick up my girlfriend in the middle of a snowstorm. Oh chan, and I. Got onto a freeway and the cart turned three sixty three times and then a snowplow almost hit me, and I thought, I think I'm gonna go home, and then I drove two miles an hour back home. I don't blame you, wow wow ooh. I'm just glad you're okay.

That sounds like it could have gone really bad. It was a better memory than the plot that they were trying to lay on us here fake psychics. Do you remember there was an episode of Night Gallery featuring a fake medium and there was this exact plot, including the come up and at the end, after he dies, he comes back, Hey, Phyllis you killed me. That was the thing too, because I was just like, Okay, these shows and I even said this to when I was watching. I was like, these shows usually stay away from the actual supernatural, Like usually things have a very logical thing.

So then when this happened and she died and all this stuff, I was like okay, yeah. And then but then when she comes back as a fucking ghost at the very end, I was like, whoa is she now trying to get revenge on these people, like pulling their same scam on them. Kind of No, it was just that she was a ghost. I was like, Okay, there goes the good twist, and here comes the bad twist. Yeah, and she torches the money and then once again, my thoughts go, too, he'll just inherit everything anyway.

Yeah, exactly, she's still a suicide. Lucky for them, she decided to shoot herself after taking all the pills. Everything is so happenstance in they're way too Labriantine plot. Yeah, yeah, and that they have to use tarot cards for this. That whole scene was very painful to watch because it's just like some people do the tarot and they really respect it and all that kind of stuff.

But then tarot cards and movies and TV shows is just like, all right, what's the death card? You know what that means? Actually, I think it just means change. But okay, if you want to means that she's gonna die, I guess that's where we're going with TV show. Yeah, if you're gonna throw the death card anything pre two thousand in a movie or a TV show, it means death and is usually followed like they do here, by.

The devil card. Oh, it's the devil, it's. The okay, it's the hanged man. Yeah. They might as well have pulled a voodoo doll, although they trated voodoo with utmost respect earlier this season.

You know what their problem with the taro here is. The tarou Ooh yes, please say correctly. Okay, let's say about a Swami group decreation unless you've got something else in this episode, because. No, you want to tell me some more stories about driving mishaps, Because that's way more entertaining than this one. I did, actually did hit a wall with that car once.

Ooh that little fender bender. Ooh boy, did I feel bad. I bet your mom wasn't too happy about that. She was not. On the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we're gonna be taking a look at the twelfth episode of Hammerhouse of Horror, that is, the Two Phases of Evil.

Until then, please tell the listeners where they can find you, Mike White. Pretty much everything that I do is available over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com, except for the one show that I have been doing on Patreon, which is patreon dot com slash Projection Booth, which is me and Chris Tashu and Richard HadAM and we talk about James Bond and we had you on what once twice three times a lady, Yes, sir, So that was a lot of fun. And yeah, we're just wrapping up over there. I think by the time this comes out, well, yeah, it'll probably still be the Quantum of Salace. So if you're looking for salas just a little bit, you can come on over and get a quantum of solace from.

Us, an infinitesimal amount. Yes, just a little bit off the top. As for me, you're listening to midnight viewing, it is my show. And oh by now, if you're gonna go over to the Patreon channel, we've got all of our Star trek Fest away missions in full swing. We've got our.

Fallout show just begun over there with my new co host Dakota and the Father Malone Weekly round Up, which is now a video podcast if you belonged to the Patreon and it's audio for everybody else. So that's where you can find me. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight.