We begin, curiously enough, at what feels like the end:

One foggy day, a pair of crusty old sea dogs sail up to the shore of a lonely island so spooky even seagulls fear to tread there (and who's a better judge of scary than a seagull, I ask you?). As the pair explore the abandoned hulk of a forgotten lighthouse, they are shocked to discover the naked, dismembered corpses of some teenagers. And, hiding in a closet, a nude girl with a knife who kills one of the fishermen in a mad rage before being subdued.

Just as you've started to groove into the gothic atmosphere, the setting switches abruptly to the glaring white walls of the early-1970s vision of the future. A hypnotherapist employed by Scotland Yard to interrogate the crazy girl has strapped her into a chair, injected her full of psychotropic pharmaceuticals, and dragged in the wildest colored light show this side of a discotheque. To induce her to reveal what happened on sinister Snape Island, the doctor helpfully chants at her, "You're on the island... You're on the island...you're on the island!"

Sure enough, the poor girl flashes back to her experiences, which appear to have been filmed by a pornographer for the benefit of epileptics. In a stutter of images, we see how she and her jazz-loving free-love hippie friends came to the island to indulge in some bed-hopping, not realizing that there was a murderous murderer hidden about the place eager to do some murderin'.

Meanwhile, a group of horny archeologists sporting the latest in skimpy skin-tight fashion have become fascinated by the fact that the murder weapon in these crimes was a 3,000 year-old solid gold scepter from a previously unknown Phoenician shrine to Baa, god of fertility. They set off in search of what other archeological treasures are waiting to be uncovered on Snape Island.

Arriving at the lighthouse in the company of some secretive guides, very possibly hunted by a still unknown killer, and in the immediate vicinity of an untapped trove of fabulous wealth, they immediately settle in to the most critical activities: smoking pot, sleeping with each other, and wandering off alone at night. One by one, they fall victim, dying in order of their sluttiness.

Years after Tower of Evil (1972) made its modest tour of the drive-in circuit, the horror genre would develop a new set of conventions. In the mad slasher films that dominated horror filmmaking of the late 1970s and 80s, teenagers who dared risk promiscuous sexual activity would soon be slaughtered by the likes of Freddy and Jason. Tower of Evil straddles the transition between the Gothic horrors of the previous generation and the soon-to-be world of slashers. The driving force behind the change was a relaxing of censorship rules. Once forbidden images of sex and violence were now permitted onto screens, but audiences still felt awkwardly torn about them. British audiences were more comfortable with graphic sexuality than with gore, while the Puritanical impulse of Americans more easily tolerated blood and guts than scenes of sex. As a British production consciously aimed at American audiences, Tower of Evil did the obvious thing and mixed the two. English cinemas at the time were increasingly full of ribald sex comedies, but such things were hard to sell in the U.S. The approach of horror films like Tower of Evil and those that followed its template was to provide enough titillating nudity to cater to that prurient interest while lathering an anti-sex hostility over the top to make the whole thing appear less salacious. Here are your skanky whores, now watch them die.

In the flashback sequences, as the randy teens strip down and have at each other, one girl demurs. "I get the only chick in Europe who doesn't want to get laid," the boy moans (although he has scored a woman who subscribes to the theory that fellatio doesn't count as sex). Any guesses which of their party will be the sole survivor?

Director Jim O'Connolly packs as much bare flesh and bloody stumps into the flashback sequences as humanly possible, and lets loose with a sex scene just this side of hardcore. Along with the schizophrenic storytelling, skipping almost randomly between disparate timelines and settings, Tower of Evil is a film somewhat ahead of its time. In its British run, it was doubled up with Hammer's Demons of the Mind (1972), itself a crossbred hybrid of Gothic melodrama and modern psychosexual psychedelia. Demons of the Mind leans more heavily on the "psycho" side of that divide, with Tower of Evil favoring the "sexual" part, but both films marked furtive forays into a new uncharted realm for 70s horror. Yet, while it ventured into territory that would later be aggressively colonized by Reagan-era horror filmmakers, Tower of Evil made sure to set up its base camp safely within the confines of the familiar trappings of traditional horror. When the feces-smeared madman Saul finally makes his entrance late in the picture, fans of James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932) will recognize significant chunks of that narrative awkwardly cut-and-pasted into the middle of the proceedings. And as Tower of Evil winds to its conclusion, it ends with a blazing fire, natch. If you grew up in that time, you could be forgiven for wondering why municipalities bothered with fire departments at all, since obviously the only fires were those that destroyed the haunted castles and mad scientist's laboratories, and why would you want to put those fires out?

It is a rare and special thing to critique a low-budget horror quickie for having too many ideas, but that is the greatest failing of Tower of Evil. The characters are wanly drawn and given absurd things to say and do, but such was the stuff of 70s horror even in the most competent of hands, and easily forgiven. Harder to swallow is the fact the audacious first half of this movie promises a more ambitious and entertaining ride than the second half delivers. The script by George Baxt never seems sure whether it wants to attribute the brutal slayings to a case of hereditary insanity or to the ancient supernatural influence of the devil himself. Not only does it try to have that cake and eat it too, but spends the middle part of the film baking up additional cakes in the hopes of also having/eating them. Unfortunately for the film's reputation, it finishes on its weakest and hoariest notes, allowing audiences to depart in frustration that overshadows the memories of the genuinely distinctive farrago of ideas bustling in the opening reels. Tower of Evil was neither a huge hit on its original run nor well-remembered today, but this bleeding edge example of the slasher genre has merits enough to warrant a revisit today.

Producer: Richard Gordon
Director: Jim O'Connolly
Screenplay: Jim O'Connolly; George Baxt (novel)
Cinematography: Desmond Dickinson
Music: Kenneth V. Jones
Film Editing: Henry Richardson
Cast: Bryant Haliday (Brent), Jill Haworth (Rose), Mark Edwards (Adam), Jack Watson (Hamp), Anna Palk (Nora), Derek Fowlds (Dan), Dennis Price (Bakewell), Anthony Valentine (Dr. Simpson), Gary Hamilton (Brom), George Coulouris (John Gurney), William Lucas (Inspector Hawk), John Hamill (Gary).
C-89m.

by David Kalat