Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense has only appeared on this blog once before, as part of a series of posts on ‘White Jaguar’ television, because Black Carrion uses the famous jaguar-going-over-a-cliff footage that appeared so often in 1960s and 1970s independent TV. However the reason it hasn’t appeared more often is that, at least in Britain, the series is quite inaccessible.
I find this strange. The series’ predecessor, Hammer House of Horror, is all over the internet and widely available on DVD, and is accordingly popular. Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense was an attempted follow-up in the dying days of Hammer Studios, and was a joint effort between Hammer and 20th Century Fox Television in the US (where it is known as Fox Mystery Theater), and is one of those shows in which it was perceived an American actor or two would help it along across the Atlantic. Yet Hammer House of Horror has had several releases on both region 1 and 2 DVDs, is pirated all over the internet and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense was last released on UK DVD in 2005 and every time an episode gets put on the internet it tends to get taken down. Or rather, some episodes do. Some of the episodes remain online, and others are as rare as rocking horse shit. It’s very strange.
I’m afraid if you’re in the US you’re on your own with this one but the good news is that there is an alternative to the prohibitively-expensive-on-the-used-market UK-issued DVDS. This is in the shape of a Germany-released box set which has the English-language soundtrack as an alternative to the German-dubbed track. The even better news is that there is an Edinburgh-based seller on UK ebay selling it for less than £20 so there is no need to worry about getting it into the country. If you’re looking for the set on the continent the German title is Vorsicht, Hochspannung!
The Sweet Scent of Death is written by our old friend Brian Clemens, and its similarity to episodes of the earlier anthology series called Thriller. It is about an American ambassador to Britain and his wife, who take a country house to find strange things happening, which are apparently somebody taking revenge related to a case the wife won in court in her previous life as a barrister.
I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has watched this episode where actress Shirley Knight (who plays the wife)’s accent comes from. Is it a Boston Brahmin accent? It is certainly less rhotic than a lot of American accents but I have been unable to place it.
One of the interesting things about this episode to me is that I think the general perception of it would have changed since its original broadcast in 1984. What I mean by this is that I think in 1984 when the diplomat’s wife is absolutely distraught howling that there is a strange man looking at her in the garden, viewers would probably have watched her husband telling her that she was imagining it and seen this as him being sensible and calming her down by not paying attention to the strange ideas she has and encouraging them. I think forty years later this looks quite different and probably viewers now would be more likely to see this as him being unsupportive or even suspicious on his part.
I have a few criticisms. For example we see an ambassador assault a presumably British citizen in full view of a police officer with no comeback of any sort. I think in reality, he would probably just be back in the US in no time making use of that diplomatic immunity. Another major problem with the plot is that we are expected to believe that the US ambassador and his wife have just gone to live in a house in the country with no security and not even any staff. I do not believe that being an ambasssador to another country is the sort of job where you do it at the office and just retain your own life at home with nobody around. Also the other thing is that nobody in their right mind would take on that sort of house with only a cleaning lady who we never actually see, certainly not when you’re used to being in the diplomatic/political set.
An interesting mystery, marred only by a few credibility gaps.
Have a quick snatch of Count Binface reciting Homer in Greek.
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