Doc Rotten's 666 Revelations: Movie Monsters of 1973

1973 is the year everything changed. The genre has been toying with “maturing” over the recent years with entries such as Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Night of the Living Dead (1968). But with The Exorcist, horror shakes the world with its mature themes and creates a blockbuster. There are plenty of movie monsters this year; some cash in on the craze, others become adolescent and get looked over. The bar is raised. Along with the devil himself, possessing young, innocent Regan MacNeil, 1973 sees the return of a few Seventies fiends such as Blacula in Scream, Blacula, Scream, the Knights Templar in Return of the Blind Dead, Paul Nachy’s Waldermar Daninsky in Curse of the Devil and Christopher Lee’s Count Dracula in Satanic Rites of Dracula. Yul Brynner shows up as the robotic gunslinger in Westworld and Peter Cushing faces the Creeping Flesh. Along with Blacula, blaxploitation unleashes Blackenstein. Frightening killers sharpen their knives in Don’t Look Now, Sisters and Horror Hospital. Strother Martin turns into Dirk Benedict a ssssnake in SSSSSSS and Vincent Price chews up the scenery in Theater of Blood. Here are 6 of the Movie Monsters that scare up box office receipts (or TV ratings) in 1973. 

POSSESSED REGAN MACNEIL in EXORCIST

Suddenly there was a face to the old saying “The devil made me do it” when a demon possesses a Georgetown pre-teen in director William Friedkin’s adaptation of William Blatty’s Exorcist. Audiences find themselves subjected to unthinkable visuals: Regan levitates above her bed, her head spins completely around, she vomits green bile, and she stages unspeakable acts with a crucifix. The demon spouts foul obscenities to Regan’s mother and the priests who perform the exorcism in order to cast the creature out. The soundtrack only amplifies the audible fear with booming sound effects and Tubular Bells. Perhaps the greatest movie monster of the decade comes to life in the face of a child and the movie going public and the future of horror cinema will never, ever be the same.  

CREEPING FLESH in CREEPING FLESH

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are the go-to team for UK horror films. Starting with Hammer film’s Curse of Frankenstein in 1957, the duo makes classic gothic chiller after another, such as Horror of Dracula (1958), the Mummy (1959), Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) and more. They manage to elevate themselves to the highest of horror icons status alongside the likes of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Vincent Price. Hammer and Amicus commonly snatch the two up to star in horror outings. One such pairing is Creeping Flesh in 1973, directed by Freddie Francis, where Cushing’s scientist Emmanual Hildern returns from New Guinea with a large humanoid skeleton. He soon discovers, while cleaning the specimen, that when the bones come in contact with water flesh begins to grow on its surface. Fearing the being is evil, Hildern keeps the skeleton dry and hidden safely in his laboratory, until his corrupt half-brother, James (Christopher Lee), steals it on a dark, stormy night. The rain regenerates the creature into the creeping flesh and it begins to wreak havoc. 

GUNSLINGER in WESTWORLD

In an early example of technology gone wild, Westworld is a popular adult attraction where lifelike robots co-inhabiting the park for entertainment begin to malfunction, go against their programming and kill off the patrons. Famous author Michael Crichton writes and directs the feature starring Richard (Love at First Bite) Benjamin and James (The Car, Amityville Horror) Brolin as two of the park’s guests. When all hell breaks loose, the pair must face the most fearsome of the renegade robots, the Gunslinger, played by the legendary western actor Yul Brynner. Stoic, silent, slow moving, and unstoppable, the malfunctioning maniac continues to pursue Benjamin from park to park, rising after each defeat in actions similar to but predating Halloween’s Michael Myers from John Carpenter and Terminator’s T-800 from James Cameron. Even after being destroyed during the conclusion of Westworld, the Gunslinger returns briefly in the sequel Futureworld in 1976. 

BLACKENSTEIN in BLACKENSTEIN

Hoping to recapture the success they had with Blacula, AIP hires director William A. Levey to helm a twist on the Mary Shelley classic Frankenstein under the title Blackenstein. The end result, unfortunately, is a bit silly and ineffective. Much like Blacula, the title monster appears very much like its Universal Monster cousin, but with an Afro. In the story, a Vietnam vet, Eddie Turner, returns from the war horribly disfigured having lost all his limbs. His fiancée, Doctor Winifred Walker, takes him to Dr. Stein, volunteering him for experimental procedures that may return him to his former self. Instead, they create a monster that goes on a rampage. Where William Marshall at least challenges Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee in their similar roles, John De Su does little more that stumbling around, becoming a parody of the Universal Monster played by Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Glenn Strange. 

CREATURES in DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK

In John Newland’s TV horror movie of the week, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Kim Darby and Jim Hutton inherit a creepy two-story Victorian house that they soon discover has menacing creatures hidden in the dark. Sally (Darby) Farnham uncovers a bricked up fireplace in a locked up study and unwittingly unleashes a gaggle of miniature monsters terrorizing her night after night. Makeup man, Mike Hancock, gives the little beasts a frightening visage with shriveled up little heads. They hide in the shadows and whisper at Sally from the dark and threaten to drag her into the pit below the fireplace from whence they came. A minor success when it came out in 1973, as a TV movie, it became all but forgotten afterwards until Guillermo Del Toro recently announce that he was producing a theatrical remake for 2011. 

THE MAD DOCTOR STORM in HORROR HOSPITAL

Michael Gough stars as Doctor Christian Storm in Antony Balch’s Horror Hospital. Doctor Storm runs a “health clinic” where he cures degenerates by lobotomizing them into brain-dead zombies. He also drives around in a limousine equipped with a retractable blade and basket for decapitating his victims. He also pals around with a creepy dwarf, Skip Martin from Vampire Circus, who assists him in tracking down new candidates for his experiments. In Horror Hospital, Doctor Storm is a campy, dark humored, gore-infused take on the mad doctor theme, on science gone mad. Things turn sour for Storm when he targets the niece of his assistant (Aunt Judy) and her friends when they arrive at the clinic in search of missing friends. Doctor Storm, in the capable hands of Michael Gough (Trog, Horrors of the Black Museum, Konga), is a prime example of Seventies evil scientist looking to save the world in his own twisted, disturbed, maniacal way.