Hammer Films in the 1970's was a strange beast. The violent Technicolor elegance that had once enthralled horror fans in the late 50's/ early 60's had come to be viewed as quaint and dated as the Universal horror's. Forced to survive in a post- "Night of the Living Dead" genre landscape alongside titles such as "The Exorcist", "The Last House on the Left" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", Hammer desperately tried to remain relevant by upping the sex and gore quotient; cashing in on post "Exorcist" satanic panic with "To The Devil a Daughter" and even teaming with kung-fu magnates the Shaw Brothers for a couple co-productions. They managed to create some entertaining work during those twilight years. "Captain Kronos- Vampire Hunter" is a fun vampiric swashbuckling tale and "The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires" features Peter Cushing going on a kung-fu adventure (if that's not something you're interested in, you're reading the wrong blog). To that list of noteworthy late period Hammer productions you can add the sleazy Gothic thriller "Crescendo".
Originally a project of the Brian Jones of British horror, Michael Reeves, "Crescendo" finally came to be made at the turn of the decade under the direction of Alan Gibson, with a script rewritten by old Hammer standby, Jimmy Sangster. The picture opens with slow motion horseback riding and smooth sax, not exactly how you'd expect a thriller to start. It all soon turns into an Argento-esque fever dream, though, as a man has a shotgun pointed at him by his mirror image and he discovers the girl he's been laying with has become a corpse. The man suffering the dream is Georges Ryman (James Olsen), a wheelchair bound ex tennis player, who lives in a large French chateau with his mother, Danielle (Margaretta Scott). Throughout the film, Georges repeatedly experiences the dream, with the imagery staying basically the same, changing only slightly as fact's are slowly revealed.
Into their life enters Susan Roberts (Stefanie Powers), a grad student there to do her thesis on the late Mr. Ryman, who was a renowned composer. Initially enthusiastic, Susan is slowly drawn into the bizarre psychodrama of the Ryman's and their servant's Lillianne (Jane Lapotaire) and Carter (Joss Ackland). Georges takes a liking to Susan, but suffers spasms only curable through heroin, usually administered by a naked, sadomasochistic Lillianne, who desires to marry him for his family's fortune and wishes Susan to be gone. One evening Susan hears piano coming from the music room, played by an unknown hand. Her fruitless journey to find out who it is ends with her discovering a disfigured mannequin head of her own visage. The classic monsters of Terrence Fisher, this is not. With a heavy air of Gothic mystery, the picture plays like a chamber drama directed by Mario Bava.
Susan finds the clothes she has been wearing (since her own luggage disappeared under questionable circumstances) are those of an elusive woman from Georges' past, to whom she bears a resemblance. Georges urges Susan to leave the house, but Danielle wants just the opposite. As the baroque power struggle builds, people begin to get killed and Susan finds herself at the center of it all. Powers is great as a woman losing her innocence while trying not to lose her identity as well as her mind. The picture's climax is a clash between Eros and Thanatos in the form of mother and son, with a shocking twist worthy of classic Brian De Palma.
Indeed, this film also shares De Palma's obsession with Hitchcockian body doubles, with Susan being groomed in a "Vertiginous" manner to resemble Catherine, and Georges' continual nightmare in which he confronts his own image. If De Palma's work can be considered the American echo of the modern Italian giallo as ushered in by Argento, then "Crescendo" can be viewed as the Anglo counterpart. Released early in the cycle, the same year as Argento's tide shifting "Bird With Crystal Plumage" and three years before De Palma would enter his "red period" with "Sisters", "Crescendo" fulfills most of the genre tropes: blood, nudity, twisted psychology, red herrings, stylish camerawork, and a twist ending (the only thing missing is a black gloved killer). The American distribution for the the film was delayed by two years, when it was ignobly dumped on a double bill with "Dracula A.D. 1972", just months before De Palma would gain worldwide recognition by employing many of the same elements.
The ending to the picture is tense and unsettling, as we wade waist deep into the killer's insanity within a room full of mannequin's. There is something intensely satisfying about a mystery thriller that knows how to stick the landing with a satisfying conclusion, rather than giving the audience a flaccid or sloppy letdown. It's a tough thing to do. Hitchcock knew how to do it, Depalma (in his younger day's) knew how to do it, Argento (in his younger day's) knew how to do it, and, in "Crescendo", Alan Gibson knew how to do it. That's reason enough to learn his name. Visually, the film is multi layered and evocative, with a great sense of movement and the final shots directly anticipate the ending's to Argento's "Suspiria" and "Inferno".
"Crescendo" is the best example of Hammer bringing their style into the nasty, dirty 70's; taking the Gothic atmosphere they built their name on and adding sex, drugs and harder violence in a manner that doesn't seem desperate or forced. The master himself, Alfred Hitchcock, would pull off the same trick a couple years later, when he stepped back onto the street's of London and gave us "Frenzy".
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