By Keri O’Shea
Crazed acolytes! That’s always a good start to a film, be in a golden oldie or a modern piece of cinema – and that’s just how we get going in Craze, a lesser-known horror movie from the oeuvre of British director Freddie Francis (a man with a distinguished filmography to his name, including many classics from Hammer and Amicus). The opening reels show us a group of people gathered in a darkened basement, offering fealty to an entity called Chiku – an African deity rather than good Ol’ Scratch then, but in the great scheme of things, it doesn’t seem to matter greatly. We’re immediately shown robes, boobs and blood; this could be any malign deity, anywhere. And at the head of proceedings is a man by the name of Neal Mottram.
The film feels incredibly British from the outset as, when the ritual is ended, Mottram (Jack Palance) has a cigarette and does a spot of tidying up. It’s important to keep up appearances, see, as by day he’s a somewhat dodgy antiques seller, aided and abetted by a younger assistant, Ronnie (Martin Potter). The arrival of an irate ex-Priestess, demanding to take the idol of Chiku away with her, barely makes an impression on Mottram and after a struggle she is soon dispatched – for good – on the prongs of Chiku’s weapon. This, to Mottram, is the reason for a sudden change in his fortunes. The following day, as he begins to empty an antique desk ready for sale, he uncovers a hidden drawer which is full of gold coins, thus ending his money worries – problems we are led to gather have been going on for some time. He reasons that this must be because of the sacrifice which fate saw him make to Chiku; by the same logic, then, he decides he has to continue worshipping Chiku in this same grisly manner.
And the film is grisly, at certain moments, though many of the worst excesses are implied rather than shown. For instance, in an early scene where Mottram kills, we don’t actually see a great deal, but it still feels rather unpleasant, even from the decidedly low-key footage we get of a panicked scream and later, a burned female hand. After a punchy beginning, however, the film settles into something far more sedate: really speaking, it is Palance’s performance which carries the film through what feels like a long lull in the middle, although of course as the majority of the film is at this pace, it’s the way in which it’s bookended with stronger fare which deviates, not the other way around. Palance feels like an odd choice in a British film to an extent (though he had worked with Francis previously via Amicus) but this is far from the only occasion when an American actor has been shoehorned into a British production, as I understand happened on this project: fact is, however he came to be cast, he makes rather a good bastard, and kept me engaged throughout. Smiling wryly through a number of convoluted plans and watertight alibis, Mottram is good fun, and when the script calls for something more unhinged, Palance can certainly do that too. Any scenery-chewing is entirely in keeping with the character, in my opinion…
After all, it’s left rather more abstract as to whether Mottram is really under the thrall of a mysterious god, or simply takes his change in fortunes as a sign that Chiku is a real supernatural force and begins killing accordingly. I don’t feel that this chicken/egg aspect derails the film per se, but I also feel like a bigger budget and more time spent might have led to the coven we see at the beginning resurfacing and maybe spelling it out for us a bit more – I can’t help but feel like this was the original intention. It’s rather odd really – and when that force of nature Diana Dors (as the character Dollie Newman) recounts stories of covens meeting in the woods, and fire, and blood rites and so on, it’s hard not to feel somewhat cheated that none of this made it to camera!
Still, cop-out or otherwise, there is plenty here to entertain. Fans of 70s British horror could do far worse pick this up, and not just for the reasons I’ve already given: this film is an interesting roll-call of British acting talent, with even a young David Warbeck popping up as a police officer, and as you might expect, all the glories of 70s Britain are present and correct (nightclubs and bars in horror films are a special source of enjoyment, I always find). Certainly, if you enjoy Freddie Francis’s work elsewhere in the horror canon, then why not add to that with this modest offering? Yes, it’s weak in places, and lacks pace in others, but it’s still modestly enjoyable, and I’m not sorry I gave it an hour and a half of my time.
Nucleus Films have tried hard to bring us a complete version of this rarity, meaning some short, unavoidable minor dips in quality: entirely reasonable, given how hard they’ve worked to put this together in the first place. The release is chaptered, has a trailer, and an enjoyable Freddie Francis trailer reel is included too.
Craze (1974) was released by Nucleus Films on 4th April 2016.