Frightmare is a British, pre-slasher horror movie directed by Pete Walker and stars Sheila Keith as a cannibal mother recently released from an insane asylum to claim more victims. Now the fear is that her only child has inherited mum’s insatiable hunger for human brains.
Buy Frightmare Blu-rayDororhy Yates (Keith) and her husband Edmund (Rupert Davies) have a dark secret they are trying to hide by living on a remote farm away from the hustling crowds of London. Fifteen years earlier, they were caught and sentenced to time in an insane asylum for the crime of killing people and eating their brains. Edmund doesn’t partake but helps his wife cover up her crimes, which stem from a childhood trauma she was supposedly cured of in the asylum. Unfortunately, her peculiar appetites have returned. Only now she’s begun to use a power drill to bore into her victims’ skulls.
Meanwhile Edmund’s daughter from a previous marriage, Jackie (the lovely Deborah Fairfax), has been secretly visiting them late at night to deliver packages of animal brains while trying to conceal her activities from her younger half-sister Debbie (Kim Buther). Jackie has done her best to keep the true identity of Debbie’s parents from her but it’s too late, Debbie has developed a taste for rowdy nights and human depravity. Good thing Jackie’s new boyfriend is an investigative psychologist (Paul Greenwood) and insists on digging into Jackie’s parents’ past as he attempts to help Debbie. Too bad Debbie has already discovered who her mother truly is and where she’s been hiding. Now no one is safe, not even her protective sister.
Pete Walker and writer David McGillivrey deliver a decent horror movie which caused quite a stink upon its release in England due to its use of cannibalism, minor gore, and improper use of a power tool. Meanwhile across the pond in America, Tobe Hooper terrorized the nation with his blood and guts gore fest The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Frightmare also predates Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer (1979) by five years. Frightmare isn’t nearly as gory or depraved as the Hooper or Ferrara films but Sheila Keith plays an excellent, unsuspecting psycho old mum. It’s a jolly little romp that tries to suggest that insane habits can be passed down to children inherently as is the case with the young Debbie and her craving for treats of the human kind. Though it’s clearly stated that her mother was traumatized into the dreadful habit through the horror of having to eat a beloved pet as a child. So there is that to ponder.
The Kino Cult Blu-ray release is loaded with special features which include short separate interviews with Walker, editor Robert C. Dearberg, and actor Paul Greenwood. There’s also a short profile titled Sheila Keith: A Nice Old Lady that looks at her career as an early scream-queen mum. There are two audio commentary tracks that include author Stephen R. Bissette and one that includes Walker, cinematographer Peter Jessop, and Walker biographer Steve Chibnall. All are informative and insightful.
It’s through listening to Walker we discover that in the movie Debbie has somehow actually made contact with her mother long before we see them on screen together and Dorothy has in fact assisted Debbie to dispose of a body. Maybe some scenes were cut or, more likely, Walker just left it to the audience to try and figure out for themselves. The only issue with the Walker audio track is that at two different points on the recording it loops back a few minutes and we hear the info repeated. Which then causes the listener to think they, themselves, are having a mental moment.
Frightmare isn’t as unsettling as other bloody horror movies of the period and it’s more unintentionally funny than scary, but it’s got some genuinely disturbing moments as well as a certain charm to it that makes it a true cult classic. Totally worth a watch for fans of the early ’70s “pre-slasher” genre. For fans of Fawlty Towers keep your eyes open for a cameo by Andrew Sachs, who played the beloved Manuel.
