Chamber of Horrors

 At the end of this month, July, I shall be back once again tracing the fur-lined passageways of The Harrison, Chambers of Distinction - still reeling from the launch of my book Spine - and presenting the first of my Chamber Films cinema nights. I'll be talking about a film I've selected, providing a few exciting tidbits of scandal and gossip, plus fascinating facts about the stars, the writers and directors. I'll try and explain why the film is the way it is. I will stop short of an apology.  

There's no rationale for my film choices other than a) I think it's a great film and b) I think more people should see it. I'd love to say there's a seam running through all my picks, which I'll reveal at the end of the run as a piece of achingly deft legerdemain, to coos, sighs, and respectful applause. But there isn't one. 

Unless there is. Beyond my sensibility, is there anything tying these six films together? Three black and white, three colour. Two French. All from the sixties and seventies. Except one. Margot Kidder's in two of them. All of them are kinds of horror films, but some of them are funny, some of them poetic and strange. There's satire, spookiness, and swimming pool shenanigans in a French private school.  

Dead giveaway, that last one. 

First up, is The Abominable Doctor Phibes, 1971, which sees Vincent Price as Anton Phibes, a deranged and horrifically disfigured organist, seeking to wreak revenge on the surgical team who failed to save his wife's life. He does this by invoking the ten Plagues of Egypt. Because he's a theologian as well as an organist. 

"Mine's a pint of Lamb's Navy Rum. Get that down the back of yer neck."

Hard on his heels is dogged Inspector Trout,  always arriving just after another outrageous set-piece has scuppered another member of the surgical team. Full of the magnificently macabre murders, Phibes has an all star cast. Littered among the victims are Terry-Thomas, Joseph Cotten, Hugh Griffith, Caroline Munro, Peter Gilmore and John Laurie. What do you mean you've never heard of them? John Laurie was in Dad's Army. Joseph Cotten was in Citizen fucking Kane. Call yourself a cineaste? 

It's camp, it's colourful, it's chaotic, and the sets are is dripping with decadent décor.  I can think of no better place to show it than The Harrison, for one night only,  Chambers of Extinction.