"They came, they saw, they died!" This, blazoned across the posters for a tawdry little thing called Tower of Evil, playing double bills in England with one of Hammer's lesser efforts, Demons of the Mind (1972). Joe Solomon's Fanfare Corporation distributed it in the States as Horror on Snape Island alongside another Richard Gordon-produced flick, Tales of the Bizarre (1970). The most bizarre tale of Tales of the Bizarre is that just a few years earlier, it had been known as Secrets of Sex (1970). The problem was, getting the word "sex" into newspaper ads was a tricky thing in those days, and befuddled audiences assumed that the movie was a documentary. It was not - it was an anthology of sexy vignettes narrated by, I kid you not, a mummy! Disappointed by its poor performance, Gordon recut and retitled Sex to share the lower half of the double bill with Horror. About a decade later, Sam Sherman's Independent International outfit slapped a new title on the prints of Horror of Snape Island and sent it on the round all over again, this time as Beyond the Fog, a title intended to piggyback on the success of John Carpenter's The Fog (1980).

In these various versions, the film had undergone some editorial revision. American censors removed some of the nudity, a sex scene, and some gore. For a turn of the millennium DVD reissue, the censored footage was restored, and the original British release title Tower of Evil restored. The new home video version also restored some footage the British censors had found worrisome - a scene of the mad killer engulfed in flames.

To shoot that sequence, director Jim O'Connolly had stuntman Mark McBride in a fire-retardant suit. McBride would go on to bring his expertise to the Superman and Batman blockbuster franchises, and a few of the James Bond flicks as well, but at this point in his career he was still a young man with limited experience. When the sequence was finished, and O'Connolly called "cut!" the crew was shocked to discover McBride unconscious on the stage. The suit had saved him from being burned, but had also nearly suffocated him!

by David Kalat

Sources:
Robin Askwith, www.freewebs.com/robinaskwith
Tom Lisanti, Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema
Hank Reardon, Tower of Slash, Horror-wood.com
George Reis, An Interview with Richard Gordon, DVD Drive-In
Jonathan Rigby, English Gothic