Hammer House of Horror S01E12 - The Two Faces of Evil

Welcome back to Midnight Viewing. I'm your host, Father Malone. In this season we are appraising the eighties UK horror anthology classic The Hammers of Horror and with me testing, Oh, I'm already did the testing joke. And with me as always is the projection booths. Mike White, Thanks for the ride, lady, and it's all hitchhiking all the time.

Here tonight we are looking at the twelfth episode of the only series of Hammer House of Horror. This is called The Two Phases of Evil. It aired originally on November the twenty ninth, nineteen eighties. Written by Ronald Graham and directed by Alan Gibson, starring Gary Raymond, Anna Calder Marshall, Philip Latham, Jinny Laird and the Cowling. This is about a vacationing couple involved in a car accident with a sinister hitchhiker.

But Who's who? What do you think of this one? Mike yees, Yeah, we're running out of some gas in the tank. This one felt like it should have been probably half the length that it ended up being. I like the premise, but we talk about this a lot on this particular podcast as far as what are the rules of things?

What why are people being tortured? Are these morally bad people? Do they deserve the fate that they get? This one just sets up this weird scenario where it's here's a double that's on the side of the road, dressed in a dressed like the Gordon's fishermen, And yeah, I guess it's just a bunch of like pod people. But we're at brown zero with these pod people.

What's your take on this one. I'm very curious that's it exactly? This is whatever the doppelganger and we don't know what their plan is, or where they're from, or what their intentions. They've replaced us, But I spent most of this episode completely confused in a good way, in a good way, in a way that Hammer House of Horror tends to do, which it doesn't feel like there is no intent behind their confusion, right. I agree with you.

I don't think it needed to be shorter. I think it went on too long as a mystery. I think if at the half hour mark, we had been told there are these things called doppelgangers and that's just a myth, but what are you going to do? And then we spent the rest of the episode with her dodging doubles, I think it would have been a perfect episode because even with the sort of structural problem, I really enjoyed this episode. I loved the ending, and that might be that I have a personal fear of meeting myself.

That a dappelganger is a terrifying note. But when it became apparent but this was a supernatural episode and not just a sort of mistaken identity or some sort of cult kind of thing going on, I got really excited. So I was under the impression through most of this episode. And maybe I'm just angry at this episode that it didn't live up to the mental model that I had. So there's this whole thing of the hand, and the hitchhiker had a very long nail on the one hand, and then you see that hand on the husband after he's had surgery, and they're like, oh, yeah, we didn't find any hand.

The hand was cut off of this double and I was just like, or this fisherman And I was like, okay, first off, surprised you didn't see the guy's face, But second off, I kept thinking that this was going to be a hands of Warlock type of episode. I kept thinking, Oh, they screwed up, and they put the dead man's hand onto the husband's arm. So I just kept thinking throughout so much of this that he was going to act nice and normal and all that kind of stuff. Then he would be possessed by the hand, and the hand would do all of these horrible things. So then when it ended up being a double guger, I was just like, Okay, all right, I guess I can see that.

But again, just that randomness of there's a random dude on the side of the road and it ends up being your exact double now that is a very scary premise. But just the execution, I was like, Okay, I wasn't sure if he was evil from the jump or if he started getting evil or what the thing was. All of her reminiscences, like going the flashbacks to the fight at the side of the road. I kept waiting for there to be a lot more to that, or like a better twist to that. Yeah, the fight by the side of the road, the slow motion battle between husband and fishermen.

I too thought we were slowly peeling an onion there. And she was remembering more and more about what had actually gone down that perhaps this wasn't even a car accident at all. Maybe this was just a brawl these things. Maybe there was no fisherman. Maybe it was her the entire time, which is there why I'm acting so strangely to her.

Maybe she was the one who attacked her husband up. Yeah, there were a lot of irons in the fire as far as where they could have gone. And as much as I like the episode, I'm just reiterating what I said before, but they needed to have gotten the entire mystery of solving what she was witnessing that she doesn't remember was irrelevant because it furthered the plot, not at all that it was. This was about her showing up at the hospital and taking home this man, and her suspecting it's not her husband, and then it's slowly dawning on that it really isn't and then go from there. You know it ultimately, though, why I like it, It felt like it felt like the prologue to a really good and I don't need to know the rest of it, but it's like the lonesome death of Jordi Verrol.

I know the weeds are going to fuck everything up, but I really don't care to know any more than that origin true. Yeah, no, you're right if we think of this as like a ground zero pod people type of thing. Okay, but there were just so many weird like the flashbacks to the fight. But the other thing that got me was like, oh, here's this room with all of the stuff that was in your car. We the audience have seen the car being flipped over.

We didn't see stuff scattered to the four winds, but for whatever reason, all of this stuff seems like it's completely ruined, and there's blood all over everything. There's more red in this room than there was in don't look now that plus the rainslicker. I just kept thinking of that, and then I'm just like, why, why are all these clothes ruined? Why is David's favorite toy ruined? What is going on with this?

So I was like, maybe the crash, like you were saying, I'm like, maybe the crash didn't actually happen. Maybe this is all in her head and or or something else happened that we have these clothes that looked like they were strewn across the road and torn up, their tears everywhere. And then of course I kept thinking of which one of you, what's the line from the Thing, which one you dirty bastards left your drawers in the garbage can. Like the whole thing of that, they never really pursue in the thing about we think that when it when you change, it rips your clothes. Somehow they try to pay that off with I found these in mccrudy's furnace, his long John's but somebody was framing him.

But ultimately unclear and just it was a good concept that didn't really pay off at all, And it needn't have paid off at all. They could have just mentioned it in the one scene and never brought it up again, because it ended up making it being more confusing to me that why would the thing try and frame anybody else who cares, Wait until they're alone, and then take them over. Yeah, McCready's not any more of a threat to the thing than any other person. Yeah, No, we got to throw We're going to throw the attention on somebody else. They might suspect it's me who cares.

Eventually, I'll just take you all over. I know the score now, guys, there aren't too many out of here. No, this one felt like we were still in Hammerland, on the roads around around that studio. In fact, by the end, when we end up in those stables, those are the same stables that Patricia Quinn lit a bonfire in front of the very first episode. I really like the way that this one is shot.

All of the stuff in the hospital or whatever set was being used or the location was being used for the hospital. Thought that looked really nice. And I touch about the color red. I like how red tinged this is. I liked that the mortician that there's two huge red candles with a cross in between, and then the dead body laid out in between those candles, and I'm just like, this looks like a fucking altar.

This is pretty great. Yeah, And I love that there's the one sort of older guy who in the one shot between the mortician and the and the head doctor or the head mortician where the other guy is framed in the middle just leaned up against the thing like drinking koonyak that he tried to offer her when she first arrived and she didn't she It is really well shot. Yeah, yeah, I don't look it's not the best one of the series so far, it's it's better than the last one. And I don't know the end carried it for me. There's something about there's something about those versions of yourself coming for you, and you know what I mean.

I don't know the mindlessness. I'm a big sucker for Invasion of the Body stas. Oh. I love Invasion of the Body Snatchers, both the what fifty six and the seventy eight. All the other ones.

You can keep those, like the Nicole Kidman one, even the puppet Masters, which I know was hindlined, but keep that off of my TV. But the seventy eight fucking amazing. Oh my god, yess what was the Able Ferrara one? Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, I forgot about that one too, but yeah, I wasn't a big fan of that one either.

Now, everything after seventy eight where. It nailed it, It just god. Yes, so horrific. It's claustrophobic in the middle of the major metropolitan city to make you feel so confined. Yeah, God, do you think about those shots like fucking Robert Uvalla and the swing set towards the end or those cool trees there and what is it San Francisco?

Oh yeah, and they use those again and was it can I can't remember which Soderberg one. It was where you see those same trees where Jude Laws meeting a character. Oh yeah, yeah, those trees, and just because they look so otherworldly. And then you get Sutherland, oh Jesus. And Leonard Nimoy and that too.

Okay, we're talking about this stuff right, So I guess we didn't really like this episode after all. Yeah, like I said, it was very well shot. Like again, I just want to shout out. There's a scene where the wife is walking down the hallway like coming towards the camera. She's all in black and white.

The set looks very black and white, and then you have two internists who are pushing a gurney covered by a red sheet with a body underneath it. So again it's just like this whole black, white and red theme that they've got carried on through here that it looked wonderful. So the look of this episode is fantastic. I didn't think any of the performances were bad. I was happy that this was not a creepy kid episode because it so could have been that little blonde kid.

I was like, oh boy, he seems like you'd be I don't know, Hitler youth or something. But no, and then when he turns into his doppelgagner, I was like, wooh, that's really fucking scary because this kid's already. Yeah that by the end when they're when they become friendly, and that was the most frightening part. I could take them with the horrible teeth and they're gnashing and spitting and stumbling around after you. But as soon as they started waving and smiling, oh no.

I forget that. I will say that maybe fueling my appreciation of this one is you remember The Monster Club, the last of the Amicist films. There, there's a story midway about a filmmaker who ends up in this small village and it's completely twilight. You go through this foggy sort of passion. At the end he's able to escape all of these ghules and get into a car, and it turns out the cars being driven by the Ghules themselves, and they're taking it right back to town.

So it's just this ending again, but in the same year as The Club is. So I don't know, it was something in the water in England about being taken back to where you were from by the villains themselves. I don't know. Anyway, on the next episode to Midnight Viewing, we'll be taking a look at the thirteenth and final episos, the Mark of Satan, got to give the Devil his due. Until then, please tell the listeners where they can find you.

Everything that I do is available over at weirdingmady dot com, including the Projection Booth, which is a podcast I've been new for about fifteen years now where every week we look at a different film and try to break it down and maybe share some fun of pintance about things. How about you Saw Them Alone? As for me, if you're listening to Midnight Viewing, we're on twice a week. Fo Them Alone's Weekly Roundup is on every Friday and every Monday. It's either this show or one of our fests that I do with co host HP.

We are engaged in our Von Doom Fest as we try as we count down the days to Doomsday until next time, everybody try to enjoy the daylight, stretress