Symptoms [The Blood Virgin] *** (1974, Angela Pleasence, Peter Vaughan, Lorna Heilbron) – Classic Movie Review 11,061

Director José Ramón Larraz’s creepy and suspenseful 1974 British drive-in classic exploitation horror film Symptoms stars Angela Pleasence, Peter Vaughan and Lorna Heilbron.

The Repulsion-style film, based on a story of mental dissolution by Thomas Owen, with a screenplay by Larraz and Stanley Miller, is about a young woman writer Anne Weston (Lorna Heilbron) who is invited by her reclusive girlfriend Helen Ramsey (Angela Pleasence) so stay at her family remote English country manor mansion estate. But there all is not quite as it seems and nor is the friend. Peter Vaughan plays Brady, a handyman who lives in the stables on the property.

The film had its premiere at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival as the first official British entry and was also released under the alternate title The Blood Virgin.

Pleasence replaced Jean Seberg who was forced to drop out of the production at the last minute because she was not a member of Actors’ Equity, but she really justifies her casting.

It is shot at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, at Harefield Grove, Harefield, London, (Helen’s country house) and High Street, Pinner, Middlesex, England, (the village chemist that Helen visits).

Also in the cast are Nancy Nevinson as Hannah, Ronald O’Neil as John, Marie-Paule Mailleux as Cora Porter, Mike Grady as Nick and Raymond Huntley as Burke.

By 2016, the film was last shown on British TV in 1989 and it circulated privately on bootlegs but then it was announced that, with the help of the British Film Institute, prints had been obtained and that year, the film was released in the US on DVD and Blu-ray for the first time by Mondo Macabro home video and in the UK by the BFI.

Pleasence recalled that shooting demanded long days that required her to ‘get up at four in the morning and not be home before 11 at night’ and that director Larraz was controlling on set. Luckily, she had known Peter Vaughan since her childhood as he was a friend of her father Donald Pleasence. Less luckily, she was struck by an overhead light during filming and was hospitalised but recovered.

Heilbron recalled Larraz as being intense’ and approaching the script in a ‘psychological way’. She was not provided the entire script till late on. Heilbron and Pleasence remained close friends since making the film.

Film editor Brian Smedley-Aston said Larraz financed the film himself from his income as a comic book artist and photographer. But the BFI said funding also came from producer Jean L Dupuis, Belgian heir to the The Smurfs fortune, who had decided to go into film production and set up a company in the UK. Larraz and Smedley-Aston continued to work together.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,061

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