The Horrible Dr. Hichcock

AKA L’Orribile Segreto Del Dr. Hichcock / The Terror Of Dr. Hichcock

Director: Riccardo Freda

I love film fairs. Give me £100 and take me to a film fair and you will never see a happier or more content human being. There are so many films to look through, some with amazing covers, some with amazing titles, and some with both! The film of this week is one which falls into the latter category. “The Horrible Dr. Hichcock” grabbed my attention straight away and then upon reading the synopsis, it promised a plot involving a “funeral sex game” going wrong. That was it; money exchanged, dvd in the bag. This was going to be good.

Released in 1962, “The Horrible Dr. Hichcock” is a gothic Italian horror film, brought to us by director Riccardo Freda. Freda’s filmography, like most Italian directors, covers a wide range of genres but is probably most well known for his forays into horror, most notably the first Italian horror movie of the sound era, “I Vampiri”.

Before we dive into the film, here is a little disclaimer. The film is technically an Italian production, filmed in Italy but set in London, with two British actors in the lead roles. The supporting cast have been given more anglicised names, which I assume is an attempt to make it easier to sell the film to an American and British market. For example, Silvano Tranquilli is credited as Montgomery Glenn and Maria Teresa Vianello is credited as Teresa Fitzgerald. This is quite normal for this period and genre of film but Robert Flymng and Barbara Steele are clearly performing their parts in their native tongue, but my version of the film is dubbed into Italian with English subtitles. Again, it is quite normal in Italian films for actors to perform in their first language and then be dubbed afterwards but some of the names of the characters in this film seem to have been lost in translation. For example, Barbara Steele’s character is credited on IMDB as Cinzia but the subtitles refer to her as Cynthia. For consistency and because it is obviously a 100% reliable source of information (!), I will be using the characters names as credited on IMDB (even though we actually see Cynthia on the side of a coffin in the film… oops, spoilers).

Set in 1885, “The Horrible Dr. Hichcock” stars Robert Flemyng as the titular doctor, a well respected surgeon who has a dark secret which he shares with his consenting wife. You see, the Dr. is what I would call “necro-curious” (I’m claiming that term as my own but I suspect it has limited use). Realising that the draw back with corpse fucking is that (apart from not being socially acceptable), the body will start to stink and a corpse can’t do important menial jobs around the house such as cleaning and cooking dinner. Therefore, he has managed to have the best of both worlds, exploiting his access to the latest anaesthetics, he drugs his wife so he can then simulate necrophilia on her whilst she is temporarily incapacitated. That’s one very liberal wife you have there Hich.

The film opens on a graveyard in the dead of night where a shadowy man opens up a coffin to reveal an attractive (but dead) young woman. The man caresses the woman’s face and then covers her with his cloak as he leans in, presumably for a kiss; foreplay is still important in necrophilia you know. 

We then see Dr. Hichcock (Bernard to his friends) at the hospital where he is about to begin an operation using a new anaesthetic which drastically reduces the heartbeat of the patient. The Dr. finishes the operation, and leaves to go home where his wife (Margaretha played by Maria Teresa Vianello) has been holding fort at the social gathering they are hosting at their house (again, mansion….whatever).

The Dr. peers in through the window at the party but makes his way into the house via the side entrance so he doesn’t have to face the crowd – there’s far too much life in that room for him. When inside, he bumps into the housekeeper, Martha, played by Harriet Medin, and asks her to tell his wife that he won’t be joining her as he is too tired and will be going to his room instead. The housekeeper enters the room full of guests and nods at Margaretha who nods back and then swiftly ends the party.

Dr. Hichcock makes his way down to a secret room. Along the way he sees their black cat and gently strokes it on the head (bloody hell, that’s rare for an Italian horror film to actually show compassion to animals). Upon entering the room, he finds Margaretha lying in a four poster bed. She looks pleased to see the Dr. and seems happy about what is about to happen (kinky bitch). Either that, or Hich is so shit at sex she would rather be unconscious for it. From inside a very ornate box, the Dr. takes out a hypodermic needle and draws back the medicine before injecting it into his wife. The drugs kick in fairly quickly, as within seconds she is out cold and the Dr. begins kissing and fondling her.

The next night, we find Margaretha and the Dr. back in their “sex dungeon”, but this time the Dr. draws back even more of the medicine. I guess this is so she is out for longer and maybe he can get beyond first base? He acts crazed as he walks over to inject it into his wife but something goes wrong and she begins to convulse. Moments later she dies and the Dr. breaks down and cries. To be fair mate, you wanted to fuck a corpse, surely this is a good thing? All you need to do is get hold of some of the preservative off Francesco from “Beyond The Darkness” and you’ll be well away. 

We then cut to Margaretha’s funeral where her she is being taken to a crypt attached to the house. Her coffin has a window at head height. Since when has this been a thing? Surely this doesn’t really serve a purpose, they are dead, seeing what is going on outside of the coffin isn’t really a concern. I suppose it would be of some benefit to necrophiliacs so they can see what they are getting before opening up the coffin but having a coffin designed to please corpse fuckers doesn’t feel quite right. Haunted by the memory of Margaretha, the Dr. decides to move away, leaving Martha to look after the house and the cat.

We skip forward twelve years, and the Dr. is returning to London with his new wife, Cinzia, played by the queen of gothic Italian horror (despite being born in Cheshire), Barbara Steele. As they enter the grounds, Cinzia notices a light is on in the house which the Dr. says will be Martha. Sadly the shot of the house doesn’t quite hide the fact that it is actually just a flat painting of a house, but I can forgive the film that because the rest of the sets and locations are brilliantly dressed and shot.

As they make their way into the house, a storm begins to brew which lights up the large portrait of Margaretha hanging over the mantel piece. Cinzia, understandably feels uneasy as if she is being watched. After a nice little cat jump scare (yep, he’s still alive) we see Martha who seems to have aged quite considerably when compared to the Dr. and the cat. Whilst the three are exchanging pleasantries, a loud shriek is heard. Martha appears flustered by this and says it is her mentally ill sister who has been staying with her. Martha assures the couple that her sister will be taken back to the hospital the next day.

The Dr. shows Cinzia her room, which Margaretha used to sleep in. So hang on, having a secret room specifically for funeral sex games is fine but sleeping in the same bedroom isn’t? Sexual etiquette in 1885 was kind of fucked up. Again, Cinzia feels uncomfortable about staying in a room where the Dr.’s dead ex-wife used to reside, saying that she feels like everything in the house is being hostile towards her. Hich reassures her that everything will be ok and that things will seem different in the morning after the storm has passed and she has rested.

The Dr. goes back downstairs to find a very stern looking Martha holding the cat and looking at the painting of Margaretha. She looks at the Dr. with distain. I have a feeling that Martha isn’t going to be too welcoming to the new lady of the house.

Back in Cinzia’s room, she hears a loud rapid tapping at her window. She draws back the curtain to find that it is just a tree branch being blown against the glass. Before she has time to give a sigh of relief she spots a mysterious figure walking away from the house, dressed in white. Just when she thought her anxiety couldn’t get any worse, the double doors leading to the balcony burst open due to the force of the wind. After closing the doors she climbs into bed. I doubt much sleep will be had though. This trio of scares are really well executed; the branch from the tree is tapping away as if it’s possessed and the figure walking through the garden really gave me a chill.

Before poor Cinzia can even put her head on the pillow, she begins to hear footsteps on the creaky floorboards outside of her bedroom door. As they get closer, she calls out for her husband but there is no response. Then the door handle turns – but luckily, it’s locked. The footsteps then get quieter as the unwanted intruder walks away from the door. Again, this is expertly handled, as we get a nice spooky point of view shot of the corridor outside of the bedroom as the footsteps get louder and Barbara Steele’s reaction to the situation only heightens the tension.

The next morning, Cinzia tells the Dr. about the bumps in the night but he dismisses them saying she was probably hallucinating. Hich then gets called away to visit the hospital where he used to work, leaving Cinzia on her own in the house. She takes this opportunity to have a snoop in the daylight, but, before she can enter another room, Martha grabs her hand and tells her that she is not allowed in there.

That evening, Cinzia and the Dr. are at the theatre, where we are introduced to Dr. Kurt Lowe (played by Silvano Tranquilli). After the performance has finished, Hich is called away to the hospital again, leaving Dr. Lowe to escort Cinzia back to the house. There is some flirtation between the two of them, with Dr. Lowe proclaiming “at first I admired Professor Bernard, now I envy him.”

After saying goodnight to Dr. Lowe, Cinzia enters the grounds of the house. As she tries to navigate her way through the thick fog, she begins to hear voices: “death will take you in your sleep!”. Cinzia begins to panic and runs as the voices continue: “a sleep as eternal as death!”. Cinzia spots the light of a gas lamp in the near distance. It is Martha who claims she heard something so came out to investigate. Cinzia asks Martha to light the way to the house, where, once inside, Cinzia questions Martha about when her ill sister would be leaving the house. To Cinzia’s disbelief, Martha informs her that her sister was returned to the hospital the night before, leaving Cinzia to wonder who it was she saw walking in the garden the previous night.

Cinzia makes her way to her room and pulls back the bed sheet to reveal a skull! For the last time Martha, you’re meant to fold the end of the toilet roll into a triangle, drape a sash over the toilet seat and put a chocolate on the pillow! Looks like you need to go on a housekeeping refresher course. Understandably freaked out, Cinzia screams and then faints. Sadly, the Dr. is not around so can’t use this opportunity for a quickie.

At the hospital, the Dr. fails to save a patient’s life, which causes his staff to question his abilities after a twelve year hiatus. Dr. Lowe questions the Dr. as to why he did not use the anaesthetic, to which the Dr. replies that it needs improving and using it could have been fatal. Well, the patient died anyway so you may as well have tried! Seeing the body of the dead patient pushed past on a trolley seems to stir his desire to have sex with a stiff, but he retires to his office for a stiff drink instead. Robert Flymng is fantastic here, his twitching facial expressions tell us all we need to know about the internal conflict he is having. Alas, the allure of an attractive dead woman is too much for the sweaty Dr., and he stands in the doorway of the morgue shrouded in red light about to go in for a smooch before he is disturbed by the cleaner.

Back at the house, Cinzia wakes up on the floor and checks the bed again. The skull has gone, but footsteps can be heard again outside the door. Cinzia peers through the keyhole and see’s a woman walking away. The next day, when the Dr. has arrived back at the house, Cinzia explains what had happened, but again, the Dr. disbelieves her and blames the trauma of her father passing away. The Dr. leaves, and Cinzia manages to spot Martha coming out of a secret door behind a mirror. Curiouser and curiouser! Later that day, Dr. Lowe arrives at the house to see the Dr., who is sadly absent. Cinzia takes this opportunity to ask Dr. Lowe if he believes in ghosts. Of course, as a man of science he also dismisses Cinzia’s claims, but not quite as aggressively as Dr. Hichcock does. The conversation is cut short, however, as Dr. Lowe needs to get back to the hospital. There is an attraction between these two but it is subtly played.

That night, Dr. Hichcock and Cinzia are relaxing by the fire when he suddenly gets up and claims he needs to go back to the hospital to check on a patient. Clearly distressed by the thought of being left on her own again, the Dr. offers to ask Martha to stay with her, to which she exclaims “no, not Martha, I’d rather be alone!”. Little did Cinzia know that Martha was in fact listening the whole time.

The Dr. arrives at the hospital and enters the morgue. He begins fondling the dead patient when suddenly Dr. Lowe enters and asks what he is doing. Hich tells Dr. Lowe he is checking the blood coagulation, yeah, checking it with his dick. Back at the house, Cinzia is waiting for the Dr. to return when she decides to check out the secret room behind the mirror she saw Martha coming out of earlier.

Cinzia opens the mirror door which leads to a narrow passageway. It’s not long before Cinzia finds herself in the crypt and as she spies a skull rested on top of a coffin, a sudden rush of wind blows out her candles. Cinzia rushes down another passage way leading to a window where she sees Martha tending to an old woman. The reveal is very creepy with shades of Norma Bates from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “Psycho”.

As Cinzia makes her way back into the house she is intercepted by Dr. Hichcock, who questions where she has been. Cinzia tells the Dr. that Martha had lied about her sister, and in fact, she had not been returned to the hospital, as Martha was still caring for her. Cinzia also asks about the secret room and what is in there, to which the Dr. becomes quite cagey, stating it is his “old laboratory” and he “wants it kept locked”. I suppose technically he isn’t lying, as he did do stuff in there involving anaesthesia and organs.

As a storm begins to rage outside, the Dr., now alone, begins to hear the signature tune Margaretha used to play on the piano. He rushes to the balcony to look out over the room where the piano is, just as a flash of lightening illuminates the piano where a woman in a white dress and veil is sat playing it. The Dr. runs down the stairs and into the room, but the woman has disappeared, leaving only the black cat where she was once sat. In his crazed state, the Dr. runs around the house trying to find Margaretha, but the only thing he finds is some spooky imagery which I won’t spoil here, but is very effective. Eventually, he hears Cinzia call out and finds her passed out in the garden. Martha suspiciously appears at the same time and the Dr. asks her to help take Cinzia back inside.

Later that night, the Dr. opens up his naughty box of anaesthetics and creeps into Cinzia’s bedroom where he drugs her as she sleeps. He takes her down to the secret room where she wakes momentarily to see the Dr. leering over her. The longer she looks at him, the more disfigured his face becomes before she passes out again.

The next day, Cinzia wakes in her bedroom, but cowers from the Dr. when he greets her. Again, he blames her nerves on the passing of her father and that she still hasn’t recovered but “don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon”. Doesn’t sound suspicious at all. The Dr. fetches some milk from Martha to take up to Cinzia but puts in some poisonous powder in it. As he offers it to his wife, he tells her it will make her sleep for a long time (no shit) but he is distracted by something out of the window as she goes to take her first sip. The Dr. looks back at Cinzia to see she has drunk all of the milk. “Good girl”, he quips. Upon leaving Cinzia’s room, he bumps into Martha again, and asks her to leave the house for a week so his wife can properly rest. We later find out that Cinzia poured the milk into a vase when the Dr. wasn’t looking and then pretended to be asleep. Once the Dr. was out of the house, Cinzia takes the glass that contained the milk to Dr. Lowe and pleads with him to analyse it. Dr. Lowe is skeptical but agrees to help Cinzia, at which point Dr. Hichcock rumbles them and takes Cinzia back to the house.

Cinzia begins packing a bag to leave the house when she starts to hear noises coming from the Dr.’s “old laboratory”. She looks through the keyhole to see the Dr. tying a noose and faints AGAIN! Christ woman, you need to start wearing a helmet. Back at the hospital, Dr. Lowe finds that the milk was indeed mixed with poison, and fearing for Cinzia’s life, he leaves the hospital to try and save her from whatever nasty plans Dr. Hichcock has for her.

Speaking of which, we find that the Dr. has closed Cinzia in a coffin in the crypt. She panics upon waking in what is quite a claustrophobic scene but manages to rock the coffin off the plinth where it was placed and manages to break out. Cinzia isn’t out of danger yet though, as Margaretha enters the crypt, now old, haggard and clearly insane, wearing the white dress and veil. Cinzia runs back into the house as Margaretha taunts her “I will bury you alive, just like I was buried alive twelve years ago”. As Cinzia makes it back into the house, she runs into Dr. Hichcock who begins to strangle her. Fear not though, as Dr. Lowe has arrived at the house just in time, and follows Cinzia’s screams for help until he finds her hanging upside down by the noose, as Dr. Hichcock is about to begin draining her blood to give to Margaretha to help rejuvenate her. “Everything will be like it used to be” the Dr. says, now in full crazy mode.

Just before Dr. Hichcock is about to slice Cinzia open, Dr. Lowe enters the room and tackles him, knocking over some candles and setting the room alight in the process. The fight continues with Dr. Lowe pushing Hich (or a dummy made to look like him) over the balcony to his death. As the house fills with smoke, Dr. Lowe makes his way back to Cinzia, unties her, and puts her over his shoulder, only to be attacked by Margaretha, now brandishing a knife. Dr. Lowe pushes the crazed woman into the flames and she dies – that was easy! The pair make it outside and look back at the house, which is now fully engulfed in flames. Dr. Lowe comforts Cinzia by saying “the past is burning, and the nightmare is over.” They hug and run away. I hope the cat is ok.

“The Horrible Dr. Hichcock” is a fantastic film. The performances by leads Robert Flemyng and Barbara Steele are first class, especially Flemyng as Dr. Hichcock. It is a joy to watch him struggling to contain the dark desires behind his stone cold face. His descent into madness is perfectly acted. 

The lighting and cinematography are fantastic with great use of bold colours at key points in the film. This same technique is utilised by the “giallo” sub genre only a few years later. The sets are lovely, but then again, I am sucker for gothic architecture and old buildings. There are some really well executed chills, such as the woman walking through the garden during the storm. The score by Roman Vlad is beautiful and pitched just right. It helps build tension and gives the film a very ominous atmosphere. It also brings out the most of the drama on screen. In my opinion, it is such a shame it has not been released as an album.

If I had to level any criticism at the film, it would be that the character of Martha just disappears at the start of the third act. Clearly she was in on Dr. Hichcock’s sordid activities and was helping to look after Margaretha for all those years, but she’s just going to turn up back at the house to find it burnt down and her old employers dead. It felt like she had a lot invested in what happened to Margaretha so for her to be absent at the end seems strange. Also, what happened to the cat?! An animal made it to the end of an Italian horror movie without being abused, at least let me know he escaped the fire!

If you like the movies made by Hammer of the same era then you’ll get a kick out of it, as long as you can stomach the corpse fucking. Having said that, this is only ever really implied and cuts away before anything explicit happens. With that in mind, I can safely say “The Horrible Dr. Hichcock” is the most tasteful film about necrophilia I have ever seen.

Whilst Mario Bava’s “Black Sunday” (also staring Barbara Steele) is probably a more accessible film to watch if you are new to gothic Italian horror, “The Horrible Dr. Hichcock” works as a nice bridge between the classic style of Italian horror and the more exploitative elements of the films made in the 70s and 80s.

“The Horrible Dr. Hichcock” gives me everything I want from a gothic horror film: atmospheric music, chilling visuals, rain and thunder storms, a black cat, a creepy house and Barbara Steele. If that doesn’t sell it to you then I don’t know what will. Highly recommended!