I Watch Films: The Reptile
It’s a sixties Hammer horror film with a period setting. Charles Spalding dies mysteriously in his remote Cornish village. His brother Harry brings his new wife Valerie to live in the cottage they’ve inherited. There have been several mysterious deaths and Harry and Tom Bailey the publican investigate. Meanwhile Dr Franklyn and his daughter Anna in the big house are acting very mysteriously and there is a sinister Malay hanging about the place, and he’s foreign so obviously up to no good.
The actual creature doesn’t look good, and the mystery is not really complex for modern audiences. But there’s a certain period pleasure to it, it feels very representative of the genre, and has just an edge of unpredictability so that we know our protagonists are in danger, and might not get out of it.
Watch This: For a classic monster film
Don’t Watch This: If you don’t like old monster films.
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