Raptus - The Terror Of Dr Hichcock 1962
Movie - Review & Info

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Film Review:

The early 60s saw the birth of the modern Italian horror film, of which two names can generally be credited with kick-starting the lavishly lensed and beautifully lit movement. Everyone (who knows horror) knows the name of Mario Bava - but you hear a lot less about his similarly gifted contemporary - Riccardo Freda.

This many-titled film is directed by Freda under the pseudonym of Robert Hampton (on this version) and its a good place to see some of the steadfasts as well as plenty of the pitfalls of Italian horror. Firstly, its fair to say that this tale of a twisted surgeon is, for 1962, amazingly daring. Hinting at Necrophilia, kinky sex practices and drug abuse - the film touches areas hither too avoided in movies up to and for many years beyond this film. Whilst that may be a drawing point to many, the dreamlike, nonsensical and utterly bizarre framework of a story that its fitted into help to mire any real impact from these themes.

Italian (and a lot of European) horror seems to work in its own reality, untethered by the laws logical story-telling and character building. Raptus is no exception to this. It feels more a series of strange but connected events than a story. Character and logic plays second fiddle to the lavish Gothic sets and candy-coloured lighting.

The story plods along confusingly for the first hour before settling on a cataclysmic finale. Personally I'm not that bothered about the logical elements of the film - I enjoy the visual excesses that are happily employed. It also struck me that it could have easily inspired the later works by Italian maestro Dario Argento in the three sisters films Inferno and Suspiria. The sets, the lighting and the startling surprises from the end of Raptus are not to dissimilar from those films.

Confusion abounds. The tape cover has it as 'The Secret Of Doctor Hitchcock' (yes like the director) whilst the actual film starts with the title 'Raptus: The Secret Of Doctor Hichcock' - who knows, maybe the video cover designer misheard the title. Whatever the name, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the film - despite its many flaws and a lousy pan and scan version from an Nth generation negative. If ever an early 60s Italian film demands restoration and a pristine, letterboxed DVD presentation, then this is it. Sadly, one doesn't seem to be on the horizon.

AKA

L'Orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock
Raptus
The Frightening Secret of Dr. Hichcock (International: English title) (literal title)
The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (USA)
The Horrible Secret of Dr. Hichcock
The Secret of Dr. Hichcock
The Terrible Secret of Dr. Hichcock
The Terror of Dr. Hichcock (UK)

Video Capture Comments:

The film marks a turning point for me as its the last film I used Dr DivX to encode to .avi with. From here on I switched to VirtualDub for the encoding pleasures as it to my eyes gives a nicer encode. As for the actual video quality - one can only describe it as ghastly.

The encode and capture is pretty top rate, but the source VHS had very poor sound and look like its seen better decades, let alone better days. Scratchy, washed out, panned, scanned and zoomed. I had to restore the audio before muxing it back into the video file for the final encode. The tape is at fault here, but I think considering its age - I did a good job saving it.

	Rating Out Of 5:
Video Quality:		2
Cheese:		2
Film:		3
Specificatons: Duration: 01:23:57 (125,919 fr) Video Codec: DivX 5.0 Resolution: 512x368 (1.39:1) =32:23 Bitrate: 1104 kb/s FPS: 25.000