The Horrible Dr. Hichcock

London, 1885. Respected Dr. Hichcock (Robert Flemyng) has had a rough day at work. He goes home to his wife Margarets' (Teresa Fitzgerald) piano recital. She plays badly enough for friends to whisper comments. After she's through playing, she pleads a headache and the attendees quickly leave. The doctor then mixes up a medicine to knock out the Mrs., so he can have sex with her as though she was dead. A few days later, the doctor puts too much barbiturate into his formula and kills his wife for real. After her funeral, he leaves London for twelve years.

Fast forward to 1897. The doctor has married Cynthia (Barbara Steele), who was a mental patient of his and has no idea of his past. They return to London and Hichcock's old house. Strange events start to happen.

The film looks expensive and fussily Victorian. Director Riccardo Freda has all of the music a note or so off key, to suggest things aren't right in the characters minds and that things aren't as placid as they may seem. The film utilizes most of the old cliches successfully; a dark and stormy night, a window banging, a piano playing by itself, etc. The film owes a lot to Alfred Hitchcock, and steals some ideas from his films. There's even a direct copy of one of his most famous shots, the glass of milk from "Suspicion" (1941).

Steele was a underrated actress, and is at her best here. Flemyng is good as a man struggling not to become totally crazy.

Gorgeously filmed, totally insane Gothic pastiche from Riccardo Freda holds its marvelously overwrought tone through to the fiery climax. At the center of it is Barbara Steele's Cynthia, the neurotic second wife of the eponymous Dr. Hichcock, who, from the second she arrives in her husband's creaky and apparently haunted mansion, is picturesquely threatened by the hostile maid, by a mysterious figure in white, purported to be the maid's sister, and by her own increasingly mad husband, who was already predisposed to pseudo-necrophilia, but who really starts to tip over the brink as he begins to believe his first wife has come back from the grave. It's all both lavish and ludicrous, and profits from Steele's incredible screen presence and the weight of its own images. Spectacular use of color, as well. Essential viewing.

The plot ,which could be considered a horror "Rebecca" ,complete with the late wife who haunts the maleficent mansion,the unpleasant governess,in Mrs Denvers ' mold .One can also find the movie too slow-moving,but it does not matter.

The wonderful scenery (this house is a splendor) , the clever lightings , the superb colors make it a winner ;add the presence of Barbara Steele ,par excellence the Goth girl , an Edgar Poe atmosphere ,and a fancy for necrophilia ,and you get a must for horror buffs.

I suppose how horrible you think Doctor Hitchcock is depends on your own view of necrophilia. I mean, sure, the first time we see him he's bashed the head of a gravedigger so he can have a quick go on a corpse's paps, but then he did show his kinder side by also being the Doctor who stitched up the poor guy's head at the hospital later. And it's not necrophilia is his wife is still alive, and only looks dead because of the drugs he pumps her full of, is it? It's a complicated issue.

This film also gives us a Double Scouse Lead Actor Line-up! (or D.S.L.A.L for short)! Not only do we have Birkenhead born Barbara Steele in the film, but playing Doctor Hitchcock is Liverpool born actor Roberyt Flemyng! Very little is known of this actor, except that he was an aristocratic-looking character actor, with a 60-year long theatrical career stretching back to 1931. The son of a Liverpool physician, he had a brief medical career, which he abandoned in preference to becoming a thespian. Rose to prominence as Keit Neilan in 'French Without Tears' in 1936. Thereafter, had leading roles on the London and Liverpool stages. Also appeared on Broadway and went on tour in 1952 opposite Katherine Cornell in 'The Constant Wife'. During World War II, he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps, reaching the rank of full colonel. He was awarded the MC (Military Cross) in 1941, mentioned in dispatches and was awarded the military OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1944 King's Honours List for his services to the Royal Army. On 21st March, 1995, he suffered a serious stroke and was for a time comatose. He eventually recovered consciousness, but was incapable of speech and was limited in his movements. He died as a patient in St. Thomas's Hospital in London in the early hours of May 22nd, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Barbara by the way is Dr Hitchcock's second wife, because Hitchcock accidentally killed his first wife with those drugs while trying to turn her into a fake-corpse. Hitchcock, after twelve years, has now returned to his creepy old mansion with Barabararararara, who immediately takes a dislike to meddlesome ratbag housemaid Harriet White. After some screaming is heard, an alarmed Barararararbara is told that's just Harriet's crazy sister and that she's getting shipped off to some loony bin the next day. If that's the case, however, who's running around laughing, being spooky, and making use of the mansion's standard-issue secret passageways? And why is that creepy cat still alive after twelve years?

Barbara Steele sure does a lot of fainting in this film! Someone leaves a skull in her bed = faint. She's out in the garden when a ghostly bridesmaid runs about = faint. She looks through a keyhole and sees someone preparing a noose = keels over. That last one doesn't work out too well for her either. Someone's up to something, and while all that's happening Dr Hitchcock is getting a hankering for some cold flesh, and constantly nearly keeps getting caught at the hospital morgue for this troubles (mainly by suspicious Silvano Tranquili, who has the hots for Barbara).

I'm going to level with you here and say that this film isn't exactly a white knuckle ride. It's pure undiluted Gothic horror that takes it's sweet time getting to conclusion, but just like his other film The Ghost, Riccardo Freda makes good use of colour and throws in loads of mood (and thunderstorms, don't forget thunderstorms). There's one particularly weird scene where Barbara hallucinates Hitchcock's face swelling up while red light fills the screen. That said, I do prefer the Ghost if I had to compare the two.

Actually what I have on VHS (recorded off the TV) is the full-length version of the film, released in the U.K. as THE TERROR OF DR. HICHCOCK (in the U.S. it was cut by 10 mins. and retitled).

From the little I have watched of 'Euro Horror', this is definitely one of the highlights; most critics place it at the top of Freda's canon and it's easy to see why. Visually the film is stunning (even if the print I have watched has seen better days) with any number of striking images that are not easily forgotten.

Still, the film's greatest coup, perhaps, is its unabashed (but not sensationalistic) treatment of necrophilia, a theme that was pretty much taboo at the time - and probably still is! (I urge you all to read Glenn M. Erickson's excellent and highly perceptive essay on the film on the 'Images Journal' website - incidentally, you will find a whole section here devoted to Italian horror films.) In this respect, THE TERROR OF DR. HICHCOCK would make a fine companion piece to Mario Bava's LA FRUSTA E IL CORPO/THE WHIP AND THE BODY (1963), another unhinged (and extremely personal) Gothic masterwork!

The exemplary cast is headed by Barbara Steele and Robert Flemyng. Steele is pretty good in what she has to do (though never quite scaling the heights of LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO/THE MASK OF Satan [1960]) but is overshadowed by Flemyng as Dr. Bernard Hichcock (an inspired choice for a name!) who is utterly credible in all the various facets of manic lust his character has to go through. Indeed, this doctor would not have been amiss in a Poe story and, much as I love Vincent Price in the AIP/Corman adaptations, Flemyng here emerges a far more sinister figure - without ever resorting to camp!

Finally, I wonder how this film's follow-up LO SPETTRO/THE GHOST (1963), which I have never watched, compares with the original. Hopefully both films will one day be adequately represented on DVD, possibly released as a double-feature.