HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR EPISODE 11 - VISITOR FROM THE GRAVE (1980)

DIRECTED by Peter Sasdy 

SCREENPLAY by  Anthony Hinds

STARRING - Katherine Leigh Scott as Penny, Simon Macorkindale as Harry, Gareth Thomas as Richard, Myrtil Nadasi as Margaret, Stanley Lebor as Charles, Gordon Reid as Max.

PLOT - Harry and Penny are a seemingly happily married young couple living a peaceful life in the English countryside. There's only one problem - Penny has recently suffered a nervous breakdown, she's recovering from her mental illness but her sanity is precarious at best.

One night whilst Harry is away on business, a man named Charles breaks into Harry and Penny's cottage looking for a fight with Harry after a recent disagreement. Finding Penny alone he tries to sexualy assault her but Penny grabs a shotgun and kills her attacker.

Returning home Harry finds a distraught Penny, she tells him what has happened and Harry helps her dispose of Charles's body by burying it in a nearby forest clearing.

The murder covered up, the couple try to get on with thier lives. However Penny's grip on sanity is becoming ever tenuous, she keeps seeing the ghostly, gory spectre of Charles watching her, waiting for her...

Is Penny finally going insane or is she really being stalked by a visitor from the grave ?...

PERFORMANCES - Katherine Leigh Scott gives probably one of the best performances of the entire series as the mentally unwell Penny. She completely nails the feeling of helplessness and desperation that those of us suffering from mental health issues frequently face (a feeling I myself am all too familiar with sadly).

Particularly powerful is the moment when Harry comes home after the attack on Penny, it's all in the way she can't even bring herself to say the word "rape" when she's describing Charles's attack on her. It's harrowing stuff that brings a sense of gritty "real world" horror to this episode.

As the story continues Penny's sanity begins to crumble further as she keeps seeing the shotgun blasted zombie of Charles walking around seemingly taunting her. You really can believe that this is a woman that is in danger of completely losing her mind. The ambiguity of the story (is the haunting real or just a figment of Penny's imagination?), coupled with Scott's excellent performance makes for a gripping hour of horror drama.

At first glance Harry (Simon Macorkindale) appears to be a loving and supportive husband to Penny. However, as the story progresses we start to get a few red flags crop up regarding him. Firstly - there's the question of Charles. Who was he and why was he after Harry ? The implication seems to be that Harry is in some kind of debt to Charles or at least has been involved in some shady deal or other with him.

Then there's the matter of the fact that Penny doesn't really seem to have much knowledge of what it actually is that Harry does for a living - once again it's implied that Harry's line of business may not be entirely above board.

Finally - and most glaringly of all - there's the mention of the very small fact that Penny has money... LOTS of money. Although Harry claims not to be bothered by this, as soon as the fortune is mentioned it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out where all this is leading. 

Ultimately it turns out that our suspicions are right - Harry turns out to be one of the most bastardly bastards in the entire series (perhaps only beaten to the top spot by William in The House That Bled To Death). It turns out that the so-called haunting (and indeed the "death" of Charles) was all just a scam carried out by Harry and his bunch of actor friends to cause Penny to go mad and take her own life so Harry can inherit her fortune. Macorkindale is great at playing the smooth and conniving Harry having just the right mix of charm and shiftyness that a silver tongued conman like that would probably possess.

Just got to give a quick mention to Gareth Thomas's portrayal of Richard (who turns out to be one of Harry's co-conspirators). He crops up at several points playing different "characters" who are designed to further unnerve Penny. When we first see him he's in the guise of the local village policeman - his questions regarding the missing Charles certainly serves to further unhinge Penny on the day after she "kills" him.

The next time we see Richard he's impersonating an Asian swami and...well...just take a look at this and see if you can spot what's wrong with this picture...

Score ten points if you answered "but he's not an Indian...he's white !"

Yep, that's right - in this episode Gareth "Blake from Blake's 7" Thomas effectively "browns up" to impersonate an Asian - complete with "sing-song pud pud ding ding" pretend Indian accent.

Not only is it the sort of thing that'd never happen today it also makes the character of Penny look completely and utterly thick as pig shit. He's SO OBVIOUSLY a white man in fancy dress and yet Penny is one hundred and ten percent taken in by his act. It really does shoot her character in the foot and undermine her completely in the last act.

I'm not one to get wound up by dodgy representation because it is what it is (a product of a more naive time) but when it starts making the character you're supposed to be rooting for look completely stupid at the eleventh hour, then you've got a problem dramatically speaking. Anyway moving swiftly on...

SEX & VIOLENCE - Attempted rape followed by a shotgun murder (even though he's not really dead, the principle still stands).

When the "zombie" Charles appears he's got quite an impressive looking shotgun "wound" on his face.

Finally - driven to the brink of insanity by Gareth Thomas's terrible Indian impersonation Penny decides to blow her brains out (or "unalives" herself as those twats that run YouTube would have it) with a shotgun.

SFX - Some basic gore and not a lot else.

RATING - Despite a few flaws this is yet another decent episode - it's well acted, if thoroughly predictable.

Not premium level top drawer Hammer House Of Horror by any means but perfectly entertaining and watchable all the same.

3 and a half zombie assisted nervous breakdowns out of 5.

ART -