Riccardo Freda is generally regarded as one of the lesser Italian genre directors of the 60s and 70s. One reason for this might be that for years his gothic horror masterwork The Horrible Dr Hichcock (AKA The Terror of Dr Hichcock AKA L’orribile segreto del Dr Hichcock) could only be seen in very poor quality grey market releases. It’s now available on Blu-Ray and it’s worthy of re-evaluation.
It deals with classic gothic themes in a rather daring way for 1962.
Professor Bernard Hichcock (Robert Flemyng) is one of the most eminent surgeons in London in the 1880s. He is pushing the boundaries of surgery and of anaesthesia. He has a laboratory attached to his house. His work is somewhat experimental and there are risks. Sadly an experiment goes wrong and his beloved wife Margaretha dies. The professor can no longer stand living in the house and disappears. He is presumably now living in retirement somewhere.
Twelve years later he is back in London, with a pretty new wife. He met Cynthia (Barbara Steele) when he was treating her for a nervous disorder. Cynthia is very much in love with her husband.
Bernard Hichcock is clearly a man haunted by the past. The house is filled with pictures of his first wife Margaretha. This upsets Cynthia – Margaretha may be dead but she still seems to be a rival for her husband’s love.
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There is a locked room in the house which Cynthia is forbidden to enter. Being a woman she naturally enters it. It’s all a bit disturbing. Other things make her uneasy – she is convinced she sees the figure of a woman in the house and in the grounds of the estate but her husband assures her that that is impossible.
There’s also a creepy housekeeper, Martha, who seems to resent Cynthia’s presence.
Professor Hichcock’s behaviour becomes more unstable. His colleagues, especially his chief assistant Dr Kurt Lowe (Silvano Tranquilli), worry about him. Cynthia is becoming quite frightened. She fears that there is something threatening in this household and of course she’s right. She really is in danger, but what kind of danger?
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Freda obviously never met a gothic visual clichè he didn’t love. He lays on the gothic trappings very think indeed. Which is fine. The gothic is a genre in which nothing succeeds like excess. The Horrible Dr Hichcock is overcooked and overdone and overblown but that just makes it more alluring to fans of Italian gothic horror.
I can’t help wondering if this movie was influenced by the style and mood of Roger Corman’s The Fall of the House of Usher. It has a similar vibe.
I suspect a very definite Poe influence as well. While Hammer gothic horror was very concerned with good vs evil Poe was more interested in decadence, madness and doom and Corman’s Poe adaptations reflect that. The Horrible Dr Hichcock reflects some of that as well.
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This movie takes things a lot further in the direction of madness and very unhealthy sexual obsessions. Italian film-makers at this time were still limited by censorship in terms of showing nudity and sex but they were able to push sexual themes much further. This movie pushes them a long way indeed.
Having a screenplay by the great Ernesto Gastaldi certainly helps. This is perhaps more of a Gastaldi film than a Freda film.
While it’s obvious that the professor has a bit of a thing for dead girls the movie perhaps doesn’t make it sufficiently clear that this is what led to the unfortunate demise of his first wife. There are rumours that the film fell behind schedule which resulted in several important scenes not being filmed.
This movie also very obviously owes a debt to Hitchcock’s gothic masterpiece Rebecca.
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Barbara Steele is excellent as always and as always looks extraordinary. Robert Flemyng is suitably creepy, tortured and on the verge of complete madness. Necrophilia is not exactly conducive to retaining one’s sanity.
Freda does have to be assigned to the second rank of Italian genre directors but The Horrible Dr Hichcock succeeds by virtue of its sheer excessiveness. It has plenty of flaws, it’s not a great movie in any conventional sense, but it is outrageous and enjoyably deranged. Highly recommended.
The Olive Films Blu-Ray is barebones but looks lovely. The English soundtrack is the only audio option but that’s no real problem given that even the Italian language versions of Italian genre films of this era were post-dubbed.
