jamesrupert2014

With some allies from the alley, Jeoffry, a cat, "counteracts the Devil" who is attempting to steal a poet's soul as part of a plan to destroy humanity. Based on Siobhán Carroll's short story, which itself is an extension of Christopher Smart's famous ailurophilic poem about his cat ("For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry..." from 'Jubilate Agno'), this is a fun, animated short with entertaining imagery, an engagingly evil Satan, and an amusing team of angelic moggies. I have not been overly impressed with L,D+R's fourth season, by I quite liked this episode (a caveat: I'm fond of all things feline, so my rating is a point higher than it would be if any other animal was the star).

A bio-mechanical femme in a vast orbiting web-like space station controls a strange alien artifact, barters with extraterrestrials, seeks revenge for a dead mate, and acquires a strange pet. All of which is interesting but given the 15 minute running time, the disparate storylines just don't gel - too bad as they generally start off interestingly. The designs of Rose (the cybertrix) and the aliens are imaginative as is the rendering of Rose's vast mechano-environment. With a bit more focus, this could have been one of the top L,D+R episodes but even as is, it has so far been my favourite from the anthology's unfortunately weak fourth season.

After proving that he can bring the dead back to life, Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) becomes obsessed with the idea that he could create a superior man if he could just combine the best parts from a variety of corpses. Directed by Terence Fisher, this was the first of a series of horror films that resurrected a genre that had been extremely popular in the 1930s but was languishing by the 1950s. Unlike Colin Clive's guilt-stricken and remorseful Frankenstein in the 1931 version, Cushing's doctor is an obsessed, amoral fanatic who is not above ending life to further his goal to create life. Cushing is a good as always, as is his frequent co-star Christopher Lee as the creature, and the rest of the cast, which includes Hazel Court as Victor's betrothed and Robert Urquhart as Paul Krempe, his increasingly conflicted partner in the research, is serviceable. Although very different from the iconic look Jack Pierce created for Boris Karloff in 1931 (which was the intellectual property of Universal Pictures), Lee's creature is quite good, albeit less memorable. All in all, entertaining but not a 'monster-masterpiece' like James Whale's 1931 film (to which it is inevitably compared).

Horror films such as 'Curse of Frankenstein' tended to target the same audiences as science fiction films and the popularity of Hammer's films likely contributed to the decrease on the number of science fiction films produced in the 1960s compared to the 1950s. Ironically, Fisher had directed England's first two post-WW2 science-fiction films (1953's 'Four Sided Triangle' and 'Spaceways') before establishing his name as a horror auteur in 1957.