Catacombs – Imprint

Director: Gordon Hessler
Script: Dan Mainwaring
Cast: Garry Merrill, Jane Merrow, Georgina Cookson, Neil McCallam, Rachel Thomas
Running time: 90 minutes
Year: 1965
Certificate: 12

Based on the novel of the same name by Jay Bennett, Catacombs is a psychological thriller with supernatural undertones. The story follows faithless husband, Raymond (played well by Gary Merrill), being manipulated by one of his successful businesswoman wife’s employees, Richard (McCallam), into killing her so that he can be free from a manipulative boss and thus enabling Raymond to inherit her sizable estates. The hen-pecked husband doesn’t need much arm-twisting, especially when his nubile niece, Alice (Jane Merrow), comes back to the UK, after spending time in Paris training to be an artist.

Alice and Raymond become close and when Ray’s wife, Helen (Georgina Cookson), catches them kisses and banishes her niece from their estate, Raymond choses the younger woman over ‘her-indoors’ and drowns her in the sink when she’s trying to remove soap from her eyes. He quickly buries her in the shed and instructs Richard to hold up his end of their dastardly bargain, and kill her again during her planned trip to Italy, but make it look like an accident using an actress lookalike. However, it won’t surprise anyone to learn that things don’t go so smoothly and it quickly becomes apparent that the dead don’t die so easily…

Catacombs is a decent horror-thriller that should have done better than it did and, for sure, should be better known than it is. Hence, it’s really great to see that Imprint has pulled out all the stops and released an excellent new release of the film on Blu-ray, providing a high-definition presentation from a 4K restoration of the original nitrate negative.

The small cast are uniformly excellent, especially Cookson, who plays dual roles here, that of the domineering wealthy businesswoman, Helen, and then, latterly, of the not-so-bright out-of-work actress brought in to pretend to be Helen, driving through Italy, before being killed in an all-too-convenient car crash. There’s also a solid performance from Rachel Thomas as Christine, the suspicious maid, who ends up playing a pivotal role in the film’s denouement.

The cinephotography is high-end, making good use of the limited locations and studio sets – it was mostly shot at Shepperton Studios. And the film’s score by Carlo Martelli, while at times overly melodramatic, for the most part works nicely, with some expertly placed Hitchcockian strings emphasising key scenes.

The film is an enjoyable riff on Clouzot’s earlier Les Diaboliques (1955), where the wife and mistress of a loathed school principal plan to murder him with what they believe is the perfect alibi. I guess it could have worked out; this being set during an age when fingerprinting was still fairly basic and DNA testing wasn’t a thing, but it seems inevitable that Helen’s murder would be found out in the end. I think the one factor that works against the film the most is the fact that none of the main characters are particularly likeable. Raymond is a loveless ‘wet blanket’, his niece is happy to wreck a marriage between two people who looked after her when she was growing up and Richard is criminally-minded, happy to forge cheques for his own ends, and when he’s caught out sees murder as his preferred way out of the sticky situation.

However, Catacombs still deserves a second chance as, apart from some ropey back-projection and mostly unlikeable characters, it does everything else right, including holding one’s interest for 90 minutes. It’s just a shame they couldn’t have made more of Helen’s unusual religion, which enables her to put herself into a trance, reduce her pain and read minds, sort of.

The discs special features are:

Audio commentary with authors Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons – A very informative track providing lots of interesting facts and anecdotes regarding the production and also on those that worked on it. For example, the film was also known as The Woman who wouldn’t die, which is probably a better title than Catacombs. Also, director Hessler was heavily involved with Hitchcock and worked on his Hitchcock’s Hour series. They also talk about the source novel and the differences between it and the film. For example, in the book the character of Alice is the heroine, whereas here she’s, well that would be telling!

Merrow and Merrill; an interview with Jane Merrow (10 mins) – Jane tells us that she’d just done a film called The System before Catacombs, which was a Michael Winner film. Apparently Winner advised her not to do Catacombs, believing it to be beneath her and was annoyed with her when she did. She also remembers enjoying the production and the fact that Garry Merrill was married to screen legend Bette Davis and was happy to chat about his infamous wife.

The Glynn Miller Story – An interview with Continuity Supervisor Renee Glynne and Sound Editor Colin Miller (7.42 mins) – Another interesting interview, but a double one this time. Both participants explain how they came to be involved in the production, what their roles were and how the production went. Ironically Renee “escaped from Hammer” as she didn’t like working on the Gothic horrors, but then ended up working on Catacombs, a modern horror film, made by a rival company. Colin’s recollections are of a more technical nature, although he does comment about Shepperton Studios being mostly derelict at the time.

Martelli & Martell – An interview with composer Carlo Martelli (10.43 mins) – Carlo’s a very likeable interviewee who talks about the rigours of rapid composition on a lower-budget production in detail. After he’d composed the music to Cosh-boy (1951) and helped on the film Dr Syn he was recognised as having potential and given the chance to score Catacombs. He only had a few weeks to put it all together and found himself working on Christmas day to ensure that he got it done on time. He was paid about £200 out of a total £2K budget for music. He later went on to score Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb for Hammer, who paid him £350, which is now worth approximately £7K in today’s money.

Stills gallery (4.43 mins) – A large number of production stills including a cool poster and some nice behind-the-scenes shots, especially one of the aircraft shoot.