Verdict
Summary
Severin’s third Christopher Lee box set is full of discoveries and rarities with these titles, which includes the feature doc about his life (and on-screen deaths) that will please his most ardent fans. For me, the highlight was A Feast at Midnight, but for others it will vary. Severin’s high standards compliment these titles and their strong transfers, with oodles of special features included. The hard shell box is sturdy and the booklet that comes with the box set is thick and bountiful with insightful essays and info.
Arabian Adventure (1979) Plot:
A sorcerer and a plucky hero vie for a magic flower.
Review:
An evil sorcerer named Alquazar (Christopher Lee), who rules Baghdad without his soul to bother him (he’s imprisoned it in a mirror), seeks a magical flower – the Rose of Elil – because he knows one day it will be the catalyst for defeating his own magic. He hires a mercenary hero named Hasan (Oliver Tobias) to track it down, and monitors his progress in a seeing pool. Hasan picks up a kid sidekick – a street urchin boy named Majeed (Puneet Sira) – and they encounter all sorts of perilous adventures, including bloodthirsty raiders, a genie, a magic carpet, a caterwauling Mickey Rooney as a machine maker, and a beautiful princess named Zuleira (Emma Samms). Finally, they grab the magical rose, and instead of delivering it as promised to the evil Caliph, they defeat him with it.
A nicely produced 1001 Nights cinematic adventure with adequate special effects, handsome production design, and a good score by Ken Thorne, Arabian Adventure is a perfect fit for fans of these types of sword and sorcery films from a bygone era. The swordplay is a little stiff, but honestly there’s nothing here to really complain about. Peter Cushing has a small role as an old mage. Directed by Kevin Connor.
A Feast at Midnight (1994) Plot:
A bullied kid at a boarding school becomes a celebrated chef amongst his friends at the school, much to the ire of their strictest teacher.
Review:
Magnus (Freddie Findlay) is dropped off at his new school, a posh boarding school in rural England, and right away he’s a target for bullying. He’s not really a target, per se, but while the other kids excel at cricket and physical activities, he gravitates to the kitchen, where he finds individual ingredients to be his chemistry set in the culinary arts. While the other boys are goofing around or going off to bed, he’s sneaking into the school’s rather large kitchen and chopping up pears and strawberries and using alcohol as a garnish for his lavish cakes and pies. Sharing his finished desserts with his classmates, he becomes more popular, and soon the other boys – save one (there’s a kid who really hates him for no reason) – are sneaking off with him each and every night to help him mix cake batter and separate egg yolks, with the ultimate prize of eating their amazing concoctions together as a reward. But Magnus’s days at the school are fraught with peril; his strictest teacher – a lanky old cranky professor the kids less-than-affectionately call Raptor (played by Christopher Lee) – has targeted him for his cruel dislike simply because he’s weaker than the rest of the boys and the unfortunate boy has never quite figured out the finesse of fighting back or defending himself. Magnus has an ally in Raptor’s nerdy (but still somehow incredibly attractive) teenage daughter Charlotte (Lisa Faulkner) who sees how special Magnus is, despite the fact that her father clearly has no clue. When the boys decide to arrange and hold a “midnight feast” in honor of Charlotte’s birthday, the event will be a night to remember, but also one to rue because Raptor catches them, leading to a clash of destinies for both Magnus and Charlotte, who are all but forced to part ways with the school forever.
Matilda for boys, but without the fantasy, A Feast at Midnight is a cute little lark of a film from co-writer and director Justin Hardy (whose father made The Wicker Man). The performances are all uniformly nice, with a hard-edged Lee looming over the film like The Slender Man, always with a mean streak and a penchant for sharp words and a raised hand to strike. The movie has a little bit of an eyebrow-raising penchant for horniness with its leery gaze pointed at co-star Faulkner (who was in her early 20’s here), who is required to appear nude or almost nude several times in the movie, although the movie remains chaste and still fairly innocent. I chalk it up to the fact that this is a movie about boys crossing over from adolescence and into puberty, and I really had no problem with it, but some viewers might find it … questionable. I didn’t, but it’s worth mentioning. The score by David Hughes and John Murphy is delightful. Recommended.
Beat Girl (1959) Plot:
A teenage girl goes into full rebellion mode when her father remarries.
Review:
Widower architect Paul Linden (David Farrar) goes on a business trip to Paris where he falls in love and remarries a French woman named Nichole (Noelle Adam), whom Paul encourages to be a mother to his teenage daughter Jennifer, a spry and hot to trot blonde (played by Gillian Hills, who was 14 at the time). When Paul brings his new wife home, it’s instant hatred from Jennifer who has nothing but daggers in her heart for Nichole. This new change pushes an already volatile Jennifer over the edge into full-on rebellion; she’s been running with the rockers and beat nick jukebox rebels, all of whom are older and more experienced than she is, and now she’s ready to get some upgrades with sex and all the perils that come with that. She finds the allure of sex and being desired a true temptation, and that leads her to the local gentleman’s club, which is run by a worldly man with questionable morals (played by Christopher Lee), meaning he takes one look at Jennifer and offers her a job as a stripper, despite knowing that she’s underage. Brewing that offer over while she plays “chicken” on the railroad tracks with her going-nowhere friends, Jennifer gets herself into deep trouble when she practices stripping in front of her friends (watch for a lusty Oliver Reed as one of the fellas), but gets in even deeper trouble when she’s the prime suspect for a shocking stabbing (to death) of the man who runs the strip club.
A cautionary tale for the late ’50s / early ’60s rock and roller crowd and their parents, who must’ve taken one look at this movie and been shaken to their core, Beat Girl is pretty edgy for its time with some very sexy (and revealing) strip tease acts and nudity, but also because it presents its lead character, the underage blonde beauty Hills in a truly unflattering way, giving her absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever, making her out to be the ultimate teen vixen bitch on a downward spiral, headed for lots and lots of hurt. If they’d given her a drug addiction or made her an alcoholic, the film might be even more realistic, but for its time this was pretty hard-hitting. Lee’s role is minor. From director Edmond T Greville.
The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee (2023) Plot:
A documentary about the life of celebrated actor Christopher Lee.
For those new to the party, Christopher Lee was a very well known and celebrated character actor, leading man, and world class screen villain for more than 50 years, acting or appearing in hundreds of films and TV shows, not to mention embarking on a very-late career switch to being a recording artist. From Dracula to Fu Manchu, to Count Dooku in the Star Wars films, and the evil wizard Saruman in The Lord of the Rings, Lee mostly played villains (even in a James Bond film), but did you know that Ian Fleming based his James Bond character largely on his cousin, Christopher Lee, who was in the British Secret Service during World War II? Lee kept thatpart of his life largely private (because he was good at keeping secrets), and once he started playing famous monsters, such as Frankenstein’s creature and Dracula for Hammer Films, Lee’s life (for better and worse) became defined by appearing in horror films, which he lamented. Lee longed to be remembered for much more than his horror movie performances and those sometimes less-than stellar films, and towards the end of his life (he lived to be 93), he found his greatest successes, having had the opportunity to work with Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, and many other “great” filmmakers. In the last years of his life, he was knighted by the King, and he found some success recording heavy metal albums, and even a Christmas album.
Told via puppetry, narration, and animation, along with clips of Lee in many of his films and in some news footage (the final moment with him verbally disagreeing with a reporter that he should not be considered the king of horror is very poignant), The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee has some interviews with the likes of Joe Dante, John Landis, Peter Jackson, Caroline Munro, and others, but it works best when it gets as personal as possible, informing us of his life rather than just his accomplishments as an actor. Sometimes, the movie gets in its own way with the odd choice to have a puppet and a narrator as Lee (and there’s a lot of that), but that was writer / director Jon Spira’s choice, and so that’s what we get. It ends on a terribly odd and melancholy note as well, which felt anticlimactic, and so there you have it.
The Hands of Orlac (1960) Plot:
A pianist is given new hands after an accident, but the hands may have belonged to a serial strangler …
Review:
Stephen Orlac (Mel Ferrer) is a classic, renowned pianist, who has a great life. His wife is beautiful, and he has accolades and fans all over the world. When a plane crash renders his hands horribly mutilated, he wakes up in the hospital to a terrific shock. Given an experimental hand transplant, he has hope that he’ll play the piano again, but over time, he’s frustrated when his hands simply won’t obey his will and level of skill. He is disturbed when he realizes that his hands may have come from an executed man, a serial killer, a strangler named Vasseur who was beheaded for his crimes. Fearing that he now has a connection to the killer, Orlac must use every ounce of his will to fend off his inclinations to strangle women to death, including his wife! When his wife kicks him out, he ends up in a shabby motel, where he attracts the attention of a two-bit stage illusionist named Nero (Christopher Lee), who plans on extorting money from him, and using his own beautiful assistant Li-Lang (Dany Carrel) as a honey trap, Nero gets closer and closer to finding out the real reason Orlac fears his own hands. When police investigate another strangulation crime, it seems obvious that Orlac is to blame, and when the big reveal at the end proves a powerful revelation, the evil hands of Orlac are shown to be something else entirely …
A slightly edgier than usual supernatural thriller, The Hands of Orlac pushes the boundaries of a thriller with creepy violence and some discreetly presented nudity (if you watch the extended French version, which I did). Directed by Edmond T. Greville manages to navigate a tight little mystery with good, convincing performances, and the film has a satisfying ending. The U.S. version runs nine minutes shorter.
The Virgin of Nuremberg (1963) Plot:
A newlywed couple is terrorized in the husband’s ancestral home, which is a castle and sprawling estate where a killer is on the loose.
Review:
Max (George Riviere) and Mary (Rossana Podesta) Hunter marry and relocate to Max’s ancestral home, which is a sprawling gothic castle estate. When they arrive, the place is eerily spooky with wax figures and evil looking displays of dungeon horrors and torture scenes. Obviously, a red flag. A facially scarred groundskeeper known only as The Punisher (played by Christopher Lee with a gnarly prosthetic gash on his eye) lurks around, scaring the living daylights out of Mary, who has been warned that there might be a killer on the loose, and clearly there is. With a name like The Punisher, you’d think Mary and max would get the heck out of there, but Max truly believes everything is gong to be all right, much to Mary’s grievance. Women around the area turn up dead after torture, and an executioner-looking man with a mask targets Mary as his next possible victim. Is it The Punisher? Is it Max, playing some kind of sick game? Or is it someone else entirely?
A lushly shot-in-vivid color Italian horror film in the style of Hammer or Amicus, The Virgin of Nuremberg is most notable for having a big reveal that calls back to the Holocaust and Nazi experimentation (spoiler: the killer is a grotesque Nazi experiment with a skinless face), and with black and white flashbacks to the Nazi death camps, the movie has an icky, filmy aftertaste that is rather disturbing. Fans of Christopher Lee might enjoy his Igor-type performance, but he’s merely a supporting character and not the big bad. From Italian exploitation filmmaker Antonio Margheriti.
Severin’s third Christopher Lee box set is full of discoveries and rarities with these titles, which includes the feature doc about his life (and on-screen deaths) that will please his most ardent fans. For me, the highlight was A Feast at Midnight, but for others it will vary. Severin’s high standards compliment these titles and their strong transfers, with oodles of special features included. The hard shell box is sturdy and the booklet that comes with the box set is thick and bountiful with insightful essays and info.
Bonus Materials
- Audio Commentary For BEAT GIRL With Christopher Lee Biographer Jonathan Rigby And Hammer Historian Kevin Lyons (Extended Cut Only)
- Interview With Actress Gillian Hills
- London After Dark: The Sinful Soho Of The Sixties – An Exploration By David Flint, Author Of Babylon Blue: An Illustrated History Of Adult Cinema
- BEAT GIRL Trailer
- Audio Commentary For THE HANDS OF ORLAC With Christopher Lee Biographer Jonathan Rigby And Hammer Historian Kevin Lyons (French Cut Only)
- Hand Scare: A Portrait Of French Writer Maurice Renard – Interview With Merveilleux-Scientifique Specialist Fleur Hopkins-Loféron
- Locations Of ORLAC
- THE HANDS OF ORLAC Trailer
- Audio Commentary For THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG With Mondo Digital’s Nathaniel Thompson And Troy Howarth, Author Of So Deadly, So Perverse
- Margheriti’s Horror Castle – Interview With Director Antonio Margheriti
- In The Iron Maiden – Interview With Film Historian Fabio Melelli And Screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi With Audio Excerpts From Antonio Margheriti
- THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG Trailer
- Audio Commentary For ARABIAN ADVENTURE With Director Kevin Connor Moderated By Severin Films’ David Gregory
- The Princess Adventure – Interview With Actress Emma Samms
- Arabian Adventurer – Interview With Actor Puneet Sira
- Arabian Zoom – Virtual Reunion Between Kevin Connor, Emma Samms And Puneet Sira
- THE MANY FACES OF CHRISTOPHER LEE – 1996 Documentary
- ARABIAN ADVENTURE Trailer 1
- ARABIAN ADVENTURE Trailer 2
- Audio Commentary For A FEAST AT MIDNIGHT With Co-Writer/Director Justin Hardy And Co-Writer/Producer Yoshi Nishio
- A FEAST AT MIDNIGHT Trailer
- Audio Commentary For THE LIFE AND DEATHS OF CHRISTOPHER LEE With Director Jon Spira And Producer Hank Starrs
- BFI Q&A With Jon Spira, Hank Starrs And Christopher Lee Biographer Jonathan Rigby
- Extended Interview With Juan Aneiros
- Extended Interview With Gary Curtis
- Extended Interview With Joe Dante
- Extended Interview With Peter Jackson
- Extended Interview With John Landis
- Extended Interview With Paul Maslansky
- Extended Interview With Harriet Walter
