#The Horrible Dr. Hichcock

[rhera]

THE INNOCENTS (1961) THE OTHERS (2001) CRIMSON PEAK (2015) THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947) THE VVITCH (2015) THE BLOOD ROSE (1970) BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1946) THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED (1969) THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK (1962) THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1946)

[horrorme]

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962)

[diabolikdiabolik]

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962)

[weirdlookindog]

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock / L'orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock (1962)

poster art by Sandro Symeoni (1928-2008)

[mudwerks]

(via Film Noir Photos: Inside Looking Out: Barbara Steele)

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962)

[horrororman]

Released June 30, 1962(Italy).

#TheHorribleDrHichcock

#BarbaraSteele

#horror

[movies-tv-more]

Movie Releases for February 27, 2024

[thevideodungeon]

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962)

Gothic horror, as a genre, has a tendency to feel very similar. Like you're watching a series of paintings of a woman wandering through a candlelit manor, occasionally screaming and/or fainting at the sight of some ghastly thing. And this movie doesn't really do anything to deviate from that formula. The plot about a doctor who anesthetizes his wife to satisfy his necrophilic urges is the sort of thing that sounds like it might have been interesting, when anesthesia was a new concept, as it is in the movie. However, by 1962, any novelty in the concept has long since expired and we're left with a movie that feels like it's trying to be salacious, but without the nerve to actually push any boundaries.

5/10

[cultfaction]

Preview- The Horrible Dr Hichcock (Bluray)

One day the necrophiliac tendencies of Dr Hichcock (Robert Flemyng, The Quiller Memorandum) go too far and his wife dies from an overdose. Bereft, the doctor leaves his house but returns years later with a new wife, Cynthia (Barbara Steele, Black Sunday). The house they return to is eerie and Cynthia hears strange things, meanwhile, she doesn’t realise Dr Hichcock intends to use her body to…

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK (1962)

We start with a guy digging a grave for a newly-dear person, but then someone bonks him on the head!  The person then breaks open the coffin, revealing a dead young woman, whom he begins to fondle.

We continue on to Dr. Hichcock, a renowned surgeon using innovative anesthetics to aid in his operations.  After a successful surgery, he returns his home, a huge villa.  His young wife, Margaretha, is playing piano for a bunch of visitors, but she receives a signal from their maid, Martha, and she clears everyone out.  Hichcock proceeds to a special room with a huge poster bed, where Margaretha is waiting for him.  He proceeds to anesthetize her, and then he fondles her unconscious body!  They seem to enjoy this, but one night he gives her an experimental anesthetic.  Margaretha goes into distress, and then she dies!  She is buried in a nice wooden coffin with a glass window.  Hichcock packs up and leaves town.

Twelve years later, he returns.  He has a new wife, Cynthia, who is Barbara Steele!  They enter the old villa.  Martha, the maid, is still there.  They hear a scream!  Martha says that it’s just her crazy sister, who lives in the house with her.  That first night, Cynthia is trying to go to sleep, but she is spooked by the sight of a strange woman in the garden, and then a gust of wind blows the windows open. She finally crawls into bed, but then she hears footsteps in the hallway.  Cynthia sits up in bed and we slowly zoom in on her face.  Someone jiggles her door handle, but then they leave.

The next morning Dr. Hichcock tells Cynthia that she must be imagining things.  That evening, they all go to the opera.  Hichcock has to leave early, and his younger colleague, Kurt, takes Cynthia back to the villa.  Cynthis goes up to her room and is smiling to herself, but she’s arranged so that it’s as if she’s looking directly at us, the audience.  She pulls back the bedcovers, and there is a skull!  Cynthia screams and passes out.  She wakes up later, and the skull is gone, but she hears footsteps in the corridor.  She peeks out the keyhole and sees a pair of female-shoe clad feet! 

Meanwhile, Hichcock is at the medical clinic.  A patient has just died, and some younger doctors are saying that the man has lost his touch.  Hichcock sits in his office and has a few shots of something, and then he goes to the morgue to leer at the body of the deceased patient, a young woman!  Someone interrupts them, and he leaves.  Back at home, Cynthia suggests that Hichcock maybe take down some of the many paintings of Margaretha.  He puts her off and says he has to return to the clinic.  Cynthia later espies Martha, the maid, emerging from a secret passage.  At the clinic, Hichcock again sneaks into the morgue and begins to fondle the dead body, but Kurt barges in!  Hichcock fabricates a reasonable-sounding innocent explanation for what he’s doing and leaves.  Still that night, back at the house, Cynthia enters the secret passage.  We focus in her face as she slowly walks down a tunnel, to discover a crypt!  A wind blows out her candle, and she is spooked.  She makes her way into the garden, where she sees a lit window.  Cynthia slowly approaches and looks in.  She sees Martha tending to another woman.

Cynthia returns to her room and sees Hichcock.  She says that she wants to leave the house, but he refuses!  Later, alone, he hears a piano playing.  He runs to a little balcony overlooking the parlor, and he sees a strange woman playing the piano!  He tries to chase her, but the figure eludes him.  Hichcock returns to Cynthia’s room and looks at her sleeping body.  His urges get the better of him.  He prepares some anesthetic and jabs Cynthia with it.  Cynthia wakes up briefly, but she quickly falls unconscious.  He picks her up.  Cynthia later seems to rouse, laying on the bed where Margaretha died.  She sees a monstrous Hichcock leering at her, and then a female hand scratches him across the neck. 

The next day at the clinic, Kurt notices scratches on Hichcock’s neck.  Hichcock says that the cat scratched him, and then he lays the groundwork for getting rid of Cynthia by telling Kurt that she’s been having issues.  Kurt attempts some Freudian analysis and tells Hichcock that Cynthia needs a change of location.  Hichcock brushes him off.  He goes home and finds Cynthia dozing away in a chair.  Hichcock gets a glass of milk from Martha, and he actually pours poison into it.  (The bottle says “POISON.”)  He hands the glass to Cynthia, and then he goes to the window to look at something outside.  He returns to Cynthia, and the glass is empty!  He then tells Martha to take a few days off.

Hichcock goes to the clinic, but he devises an excuse to return home.  He goes to the chair where he left Cynthia, but she is gone!  Cynthia is actually at the clinic!  She goes to Kurt and gives him the poisoned glass, which still has a bit of milk in it.  (She dumped most of it in a flowerpot.)  Hichcock shows up and takes Cynthia home.  She packs a bag to leave, but all the doors are locked!  She peeks into Hichcock’s secret room and sees him tying a noose!  And a coffin, with her name on it!  She faints. 

At the clinic, a doctor tells Kurt that the glass definitely had poison in it.  He rushes off.

Cynthia awakens in a coffin!  We see her scream and struggle, but her voice is muted.  She manages to knock the coffin off its pedestal, and it busts open, allowing her to crawl out.  She’s in the crypt, and then she sees a female figure, who tells her, “You must be buried, like I was buried!”  It’s Margarethe!  Cynthia runs away and ends up back in the parlor where Hichcock does his fondling.  Margarethe is there.  Instead of looking in her thirties, which sounds about right, she appears elderly!  Because she didn’t die!  She was buried alive!  Then Hichcock catches Cynthia!  Outside, we watch as Kurt tries to enter a locked door, and then we watch as he slowly climbs a window to the second floor. 

In the parlor, Hichcock has Cynthia strung up by the feet.  He tells Margarethe, “I will give you back your beauty with this young blood.”  “Yes,” Margarethe says, “kill her, kill her, and then there will be only me.  Only me!”  Hichcock is about to slice Cynthia’s jugular with a scalpel, but Kurt busts in!  Kurt and Hichcock grapple, and Hichcock ends up falling down to his death from a balcony.  The house catches fire, and Kurt shoves Margarethe into the flames.  Kurt frees Cynthia and carries her out of the house.  Cynthia thanks him, and he tells her, “The past is burning, and that nightmare is over forever.”  He carries her away.

This was good.  The plot is nicely ghoulish, but it’s otherwise an exercise in restraint.  Remember how I’ve said that I enjoy when a filmmaker just let their scenes linger?  We have that here.  The camera stays with Barbara Steele for long stretches at a time, and, as I mentioned above, there are some takes where it’s like she’s definitely looking right at us.  Overall, her acting is solid, if not great.  She suffers from being dubbed.  Others have referred to that practice as Steele having her voice taken away from her, which was unfortunate.  Hichcock (Robert Flemyng) has a meatier role, as a man obsessed with dead women.  He is a twisted, tortured soul who cannot control his compulsions, and in that respect the end of the movie is a bit of a tone shift.  His former wife isn’t a ghost, she’s alive, and he still loves her.  It’s an interesting twist, but I really was expecting something more in line with his necrophiliac urges, (like, maybe, he becomes obsessed with finding a way to render Cynthia frozen but alive forever).  However, the man just wanted Margarethe more than Cynthia.

Also, this move is not (legitimately) streaming anywhere. I had to buy the Blu-ray version, which looks really nice. (Now, that disc was a bit of a pain to play on my PC, what with the DRM.) We live in a world where a corporation could decide to take down a stream any time it wants. Sometimes it's nice to hold something in your hand, that's just yours.

[kynkyatthemovies]

(via Films Kynky Watched In... November 2019)

[zigmenthotep]

August watchlist for anyone who cares. Also I guess most of these count towards the 100 Horror Movies in 92 Days thing, which I'm not actively doing this year, but just kinda assume I'll hit the goal anyway.

Titles in red are recommended. And as always, reviews posted eventually @thevideodungeon

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 Friday the 13th (2009) 6/10

🌕🌗🌑🌑🌑 Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies (2014) 3/10

🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑 WrestleMassacre (2018) 4/10

🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑 Evil Toons (1992) 4/10

🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑 The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) 5/10

🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑 The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) 7/10

🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑 Beast from Haunted Cave (1959) 5/10

🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑 Sisters of Death (1977) 5/10

🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑 Black Sunday (1960) 7/10

🌕🌗🌑🌑🌑 Naked Cannibal Campers (2020) 3/10

🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑 The House on Skull Mountain (1974) 5/10

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962) 6/10

🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑 Invisible Man in Mexico (1958) 4/10

🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑 Grave of the Vampire (1972) 5/10

🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑 The Embalmer (1965) 7/10

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 House II: The Second Story (1987)

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 Zombies of Mora Tau (1957)

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 The Head (1959)

🌕🌑🌑🌑🌑 Legacy of Blood (1971)

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 The City of the Dead (1960)

🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑 La cabeza viviente (1963)

🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑 The Flying Serpent (1946)

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 Carry on Screaming! (1966)

🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑 The Incredible Petrified World (1959)

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 The Day of the Triffids (1963)

🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑 A Bay of Blood (1971)

🌕🌗🌑🌑🌑 The Aftermath (1982)

🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑 Sound of Horror (1966)

🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑 Halloween Ends (2022)

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 Lady Frankenstein (1971)

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 Wrong Turn (2003)

🌕🌗🌑🌑🌑 Bride of the Monster (1955)

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966)

🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑 Isle of the Snake People (1971)

🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑 The Electronic Monster (1958)

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 Stung (2015)

[horrorme]

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962)

[outrider247]

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock [1962]

[mudwerks]

(via Film Noir Photos: Light and Shadow: Barbara Steele)

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock  (1962)

[howlgrowlsnarl]

1960s Retrospective: The Horrible Dr Hichcock

Riccardo Freda’s The Horrible Dr. Hichcock remains a fascinating entry in the annals of gothic horror, showcasing both the directorial prowess of Freda and the magnetic screen presence of Barbara Steele. Released in 1962, this Italian horror classic continues to captivate audiences with its atmospheric storytelling and macabre themes. At the heart of the film […]1960s Retrospective: The Horrible…