Michel Parry Biblio in Progress

[dem]

Frightening thought that it was nine years (!) today we lost Michel.

[sadako]

Today found this article on an occult ‘student movie’ Michel Parry directed. From the brief UK horror mag ‘Supernatural’ number 2, 1969.

[helrunar]

What a cool find! I hope the movie still exists somewhere, in some form. It would be a great entry (or extra) on one of the BFI's 'Flipside' releases.

Thanks, Hel.

[weirdmonger]

Intrigued by this, as I was at school with Michel up to 1966.

[sadako]

Check out the last paragraph. Looks like he sold a Countess Bathory story to AIP (in 1969). Did this project somehow become Hammer’s Countess Dracula (without crediting him), and Parry got the movie novelisation as recompense?

[andydecker]

Oct 2, 2024 14:56:40 GMT sadako said:

Check out the last paragraph. Looks like he sold a Countess Bathory story to AIP (in 1969). Did this project somehow become Hammer’s Countess Dracula (without crediting him), and Parry got the movie novelisation as recompense?

According to Kinsey's Hammer Films: The Elstree Studio Years the screenplay for Countess Dracula is from a story by Alexander Paal and Peter Sasdy based on an idea by Gabriel Ronay. Ronay was an expert on Bathory, Paal had co-produced earlier Hammer movies.

Ingrid Pitt wrote: "Director Sasdy and Producer Paal were both Hungarians and always fighting. They had different views about the character. Paal wanted to make a horror film while Sasdy wanted to make an artistic movie. They used to shout at each other in Hungarian and the crew would have to wait."

[dem]

"Bloodbath (aka: The Countess Bathed in Blood) was my lurid take on Elizabeth Bathory. One of my first tasks at AIP had been to add a male villain to the story who could be played by Vincent Price. Harry Alan Towers wrote a script based closely on my treatment, using his Peter Welbeck pseudonym. In response I wrote my own draft which Deke preferred. With the prolific Towers on board it seemed like a 'go' project. A press release was issued announcing production with Vincent Price and Joan Crawford (Deke had me prepare a script specially for Joan Crawford which removed all references to aging or nudity. Even so, I very much doubt she would have made the film without considerable changes.) Again the unforeseen happened. Harry Alan Towers delivered his latest film, The Seven Secrets of Sumuru (aka The Girl from Rio/ Rio 70), directed in Brazil by Jesus Franco, to AIP. Sam Arkoff watched it and freaked! He declared the film amateurish and unreleasable. Towers' relationship with AIP disintegrated amid threats of lawsuits...... Looking back, I've wondered about the way Hammer plunged into making Countess Dracula not long after AIP announced our own similar project. I've no doubt Deke discussed our Bathory project as the next likely co-production with Hammer after The Vampire Lovers. Unfortunately, as had happened before, Deke fell out with them at post-production stage and that was the end of co-productions with Hammer! It may have been pure coincidence that Hammer developed their own version, or it might have been a way for Michael Carreras, or whoever, to get back at Deke and AIP if the Hammer people felt they had been messed about. Anyway, after leaving AIP I was totally disillusioned with the realities of the film industry and pretty much dropped out. I still needed an income and so, using my experience as a story editor as an entree, I started doing weekly reader's reports for Anthony Cheetham, chief editor at Sphere Books, a paperback company. We got on well and it was through him that my first anthology, Beware of the Cat was published in hardback by Gollancz. One day he said, "When are you going to write something for us?" I pitched a few ideas and the one he chose was the Countess Bathory story. I figured I could adapt my screenplay into an effective horror novel. However, at one of our next meetings Anthony said he had some bad news: he had just bought novelisation rights to three forthcoming Hammer films, and one of them, Countess Dracula, was a version of the Bathory story. I was psyched up to write a Bathory novel and I agreed to write the Hammer version instead. I was only given two weeks to write it so it was a rush job."

— Michel Parry, interviewed by Martin Jones, Hairy Freak Goes AIP!, Bedabbled! #2: Cult Of Satan, Sept. 2011)

[helrunar]

Dem, what an amazing quote from Michel Parry about the long lost, sleazy world of the British film industry in 1969. I might have a nightmare about Vincent Price and Joan Crawford making a Countess Bathory movie tonight. Perhaps it would have been a lot like Cry of the Banshee which I found practically unwatchable... ditto the Towers Jess Franco thing, Rio 70. 

I wish Parry had found a home for his original Bathory novel. Lost hearts indeed.

Hel.

[sadako]

Amazing, thorough account lf what happened! It looks like they even stole the ‘male villain’ character (played by Nigel Green in the Hammer movie).

Totally ironic then that the novelisation came his way! Good news though that he dove into the interesting anthologies that he was so good at producing.

[dem]

Oct 2, 2024 18:16:24 GMT helrunar said:

Dem, what an amazing quote from Michel Parry about the long lost, sleazy world of the British film industry in 1969. I might have a nightmare about Vincent Price and Joan Crawford making a Countess Bathory movie tonight. Perhaps it would have been a lot like Cry of the Banshee which I found practically unwatchable... ditto the Towers Jess Franco thing, Rio 70. 

I wish Parry had found a home for his original Bathory novel. Lost hearts indeed.

Hel.

I think much of the novel found its way into the Countess Dracula novelisation. Michel was "unofficial casting director" on Cry of the Banshee and also helped out with location spotting, accompanying director Gordon Hessler and scriptwriter Chris Wicking to Scotland to find "an old castle where a banshee might feel at home." They eventually settled on Grim's Dyke in Harrow Weald.

I feel blessed to have known Michel, a sweet, modest, inspirational man, usually up to mischief. Sobering thought that 1st November marks ten years since we lost him.

[weirdmonger]

Oct 3, 2024 6:02:23 GMT dem said:

I feel blessed to have known Michel, a sweet, modest, inspirational man, usually up to mischief. Sobering thought that 1st November marks ten years since we lost him.

i certainly second that.

[helrunar]

Grim's Dyke was the location for several cult TV shows and films, including one of my personal late Sixties fave-raves, Curse of the Crimson Altar (which was one of Boris Karloff's final feature films). TV series shot there included episodes of the Dr Who classic 'Evil of the Daleks,' The Avengers, The Saint, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Department S, and Spyder's Web with Patricia Cutts and Anthony Ainley, an early Seventies series so bizarre it really deserves to be more widely known (might be on youtube).

If I ever get hold of Parry's novelisation of Countess Dracula, I look forward to reading the parts of the story that would have been filmed had his screenplay been used. The Sasdy film often gets low ratings from fans, but I recall it as a stylish and offbeat production (which I imagine is why a lot of people found it disappointing).

Hel.

[pulphack]

Good gravy, is it really ten years? I only met Michel a couple of times, but he was an excellent chap. I've never read his Countess Dracula novelisation, but it has to be better than the film. You may have a point, Steve, in that I have watched it expecting something else, but I do find it drags. I do agree about the atmospheric qualities, and it does have the wonderful Sandor Eles, who was vastly underrated and watchable in anything he did. He was also Hungarian, though he usually played Frenchmen or Spaniards for some reason. He was the magnificent Mr Paul in Crossroads for many years, but don't get me started on that...

[sadako]

This biography from ‘Horror: 100 Best Books’ will now send me scurrying back to my Castle of Frankensteins…

[helrunar]

Sadako, I think all the issues of Castle of Frankenstein can be viewed as scans on this site. Here's issue 5 which might have been Mr Parry's first:

www.zomboscloset.com/zombos_closet_of_horror_b/2016/09/castle-of-frankenstein-no-5-1964.html

The Linda Lovecraft period is one I find oddly intriguing. I think at one time there might have been some photos on a thread here.

cheers, Hel.