Horrors Of The Black Museum (1959) Not a single Baby Boomer horror fanboy could ever forget the opening sequence of this richly appointed British exploitation shocker......a pretty girl opens a delivered package containing a pair of spiffy binoculars.
Trying them out, the last thing she ever lays eyes on are two spikes sprung out of the eyeholes, squishing through her eyes and right into her brain.......
What ghastly fiend could have sent them? Clearly the same guy who's played similar lethal tricks twice before, leaving Scotland Yard at a loss (headed by Geoffrey Keen, whom you all probably know better as the Minister Of Defense in Bond films).
So how do you stop a serial homicidal prankster? Keen and his befuddled cops find themselves also tormented by the imperiously snotty Edmond Bancroft (Michael Gough at his most uppercrust, suffer-no-fools best). A best selling true crime journalist and author, Bancroft revels in the gruesome gore of murderous madmen and publishes withering critiques of the the law's inability to catch them.
Little does 'The Yard' know (but we do) that Bancroft's perpetrating the slayings himself, with the help of his subservient young minion Rick (Graham Curnow). Rick periodically gets an extra Jekyll and Hyde jolt out of Bancroft's special injected serum, turning the Rickster's face into a warped, eye bulging, jaw-jutting Hyde-like horror.
This comes in handy when Bancroft sends out the Rick-inator armed with a portable guillotine to use on the old guy's former hot-to-trot harlot (June Cunningham). Seems she got bored and fed up as Bancroft's kept woman, making fun of his crippled leg. So what can say.......heads, she loses...literally.
Even more juicy stuff unfolds via a nasty pair of tongs, electrocution and bubbly acid baths reducing corpses to skeletons. (Oh right, did I forget to mention, the ever sniping Bancroft and the simpering Rick operate out of a convenient basement torture spa, including Bancroft's private 'Black Museum' of waxen murderers and victims....)
All of this grand madness came to us, courtesy of Grade D Hollywood shlockmeister Herman Cohen who moved his little shop of horrors in England starting with this film. (More Cohen-ized, British produced shlockers would follow, like 'Konga', 'Black Zoo', 'Trog' and 'Berserk').
And unlike his previous black-and-white, poverty budgeted drive-in drivel, Cohen kicked off his Brit period with 'Black Museum' shot in glorious lurid color and cinemascope. Enough can't be said about Cohen wisely using the under appreciated Michael Gough to anchor these films as the Vincent Price-like resident madman, Those of you only used to seeing Gough as the kindly gentle Alfred the Butler in the first four Batman films are in a shock at his skilled versatility. .
For all fans who love to delve into vintage horror, do stop in to 'Black Museum'.....where unlucky visitors never get to exit through the gift shop.....3 stars (***)
(And before BQ forgets to mention it, take note of the impressively insistent score by Gerard Schurmann, filled with chattering horns and blasting brass. Wildly inappropriate for a horror film but wow, what a knockout to listen to....)
(One final note about that 'Hypno Vista' crapola on the poster.....on the trailer and attached to theatrical prints of the film was a so-called psychologist promising viewers the movie's technique would mesmerize them fully in the storyline (yeh....you bet....whatever...) William Castle no doubt drooled with envy that he didn't think of it first.......)
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