Day two of the 20th Festival of Fantastic Films continued with a screening of one of Hammer's better mid-sixties offerings, The Plague of the Zombies (1966), followed by a Q&A with its immensely affable bad guy John Carson, again chaired by the knowledgeable Wayne Kinsey
Early Years
Born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1927, Mr Carson claimed to have always felt like something of an outsider. He got the acting bug when he was allowed backstage at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he spotted a ballet dancer limbering up and became intrigued with the discipline involved (he later married a ballet dancer).
He was eventually picked from repertory theater in Sheffield and brought to London to play in costume series for ITC, such as "Sword of Freedom" (1957), and "Ivanhoe" (1958) with a young Roger Moore.
"The Saint" (1962–67)
John appeared in four episodes of this fondly remembered series, and has an obvious love of Roger Moore, speaking in admiration of a scene Moore refused to play that involved a villain holding an air hose to his ear. Moore had final script approval on the series and would not do anything that might be copied by children.
Asked what he thought of Moore, he laughed and said: "He's a villain. A dreadful man. I love him!" Moore learned that Carson had a fear of snakes from his Ceylonese upbringing, and naturally arranged for a fake cobra to be dropped around his neck in the middle of a scene.
"Adam Adamant Lives!: The League of Uncharitable Ladies" (1966)
Mr Carson was impressed with the director of this episode of the Gerald Harper fantasy series, a young man, in his second year of directing, named Ridley Scott. he was impressed with Scott's framing of shots and recalled that his fight scene with Harper was entirely unrehearsed.
Talking of his stage work, he said that Cyril Cusack taught him to listen - an element that he considers to be the key to good acting. They played together in "In the Bosom of the Country" on TV, and on stage in TS Elliot's Murder in the Cathedral.
The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
John remembers André Morrell as a great actor who always wore red socks, and that John Gilling, like Basil Dearden (with whom John worked in The Man Who Haunted Himself), had a reputation for being difficult, but that Gilling hired him from their previous film together The Night Caller (aka, Blood Beast from Outer Space, 1965). Unfortunately his memories of making the film are a little patchy.
Thankfully his reminiscences of the last decent Hammer Dracula movie are more intact, particularly of the brothel scene, where he was happy to be paired with a partially naked Asian girl (Chai Ling) who asked him to ensure that her nipples weren't showing.
During the same scene, Peter Sallis, a quiet, gentle man (famous these days as the voice of Grommet's owner, Wallace), accidentally placed his hand in an unfortunate position on his girl and the screams that resulted brought the set to a halt. John also recalled that Geoffrey Keen (Sir Frederick Gray in several Bond films from The Spy Who Loved Me to The Living Daylights), a stately, old-fashioned actor, forced to go on all fours and be ridden like a pig by Madeline Smith, was heard at one point to shout "Take the weight on your feet, girl."
John had nothing but great things to say about co-star Roy Kinnear, who he described as having a great force of life inside him, that was constantly likely to burst out in laughter. Kinnear managed to make everyone laugh, even the po-faced Keen.
His brief reminiscences on this later Hammer piece were confined to screenwriter-turned-director Brian Clemens, who he recalled as a wonderful director, a great professional, and a pleasure to work with. He also mentioned that his children at this stage were old enough to watch this on TV, but got very scared.
"Hammer House of Horror: Guardian of The Abyss" (1980)
John talked about his appearance in one of the better episodes in the TV series, directed by Don Sharp (Kiss of the Vampire, Curse of the Fly), and how he was asked to act an evocation and black magic ceremony. He wasn't happy about this, and his concern worsened, when afterwards he was informed that the mass was real. He was extremely disconcerted by this, won't see the episode and rarely talks about it.
This lead him to discuss a documentary on healing that he researched, after moving to South Africa in 1983. "Africa," he said "says: "Make up your mind." You have to decide who you are."
South Africa
After they moved to South Africa, John's wife Sam wrote the play "Reap the Whirlwind" for TV. Prime Minister PW Botha wanted to use television to educate the populace and bring an end to apartheid, but when the piece was completed, there was a governmental failure of nerve and the couple had a very difficult time – their phones were bugged and they were put under constant surveillance.
He talked of the darker side of African life, and encountering one Masai sorcerer, who was using children for "moti", or medicine, a brutal system that involved killing the children and using their skin and genitals to heal the sick.
John recalled the early TV impresarios Sidney Newman (ABC and BBC) and Lew Grade (ITC), and described them as storytellers first, in contrast to today's accountancy-led management system.
Also, in those days actors formed relationships with the cameramen, as the huge pedestal cameras were not very mobile, and the actor therefore had to be an ally in creating a well framed shot. He described the BBC in the 60s as being literary, static, worthy, and dull, but said that for the short time that David Attenborough was Director of Programmes (1969–72), that he really lifted the output.
Finally, Mr Carson discussed his work in the BBC play "The July Plot", which was directed by Rudolf Cartier (director of the original BBC "The Quatermass Experiment"), and in which he played Colonel Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg, the Nazi played by Tom Cruise in Valkyrie. Cartier told him that the role would make him a big star (he later discovered that this is what he told all his actors), and recalled the day that Otto John, one of the original plotters, visited the set and commented "When you smile you are von Stauffenberg, but he was much more tired than you when he came back from the bunker." A print of "The July Plot" was recently unearthed by author and critic Stephen Laws and screened at the British Film Institute, a fact for which Mr Carson was truly grateful.
John Carson at the 20th Festival of Fantastic Films 2009 (© Gareth Walters).
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