Stop Me Before I Kill!
Let’s face it, most relationships in Hammer films are pretty bloody toxic. Frankenstein and his monster, Dracula and his victim, Dracula’s servant and Dracula quite frankly. And even the happy couples are only happy until one of them is eaten, or they don’t get together until after someone else is eaten; which is bound to lead to certain doubts later on like ‘did we only get married because I was so relieved not to get eaten that anything that wasn’t trying to eat me looked like good marriage material’?
But then, there is the most toxic relationship that any Englishman could imagine: a relationship with... the French! Because what are they up to, eh? With their emotions, and their subconscious desires, and their being just too sexy to be able to have any sort of sensible conversation with, without wanting to strangle them, punch them or drive your car into traffic. Stop Me Before I Kill! is a good example of what it was about France that appealed to the lads at Hammer - and not only because they could hop on a ferry and spend the summer shooting their movie in the south of France, thank you very much - but also because the setting is glamorous and different; and of course mostly because it’s full of the French, who are all definitely up to something - even if the audience can’t be sure what it is right away, they can be certain that it’s something very, very French.
Unfortunately the real toxic relationship in the movie, as it is frequently in Hammer, is between the nice young woman who only wants a nice, romantic life with her man; and the monstrous pile of human misery she’s become tethered to, and there’s no better sort of man to pretend to be alright, while regularly flying off the handle into miserable rage, than an Englishman. That’s the pretty effective dilemma at the heart of Stop Me Before I Kill! - If this man was sincerely worried that he might murder his wife, that he was actually fantasising about putting his hands around her neck and squeezing, would an Englishman in that situation… talk to someone?!
The answer, of course, is no; no he wouldn’t. Because why would he? Better to keep it all bottled up, and hope it sorts itself out, or if that fails just scarper and never see her again. Those are the only choices; c’est la vie, he might say if he had a mind to, which, of course, he doesn’t.
Unfortunately that is one thing that lets Stop Me down, he just takes too flippin’ long to decide what he’s going to do. When he does, it becomes a bit of a cracker, and I genuinely did not know what the Doctor fellow was up to, or even if he was up to anything at all, despite being exceptionally French. But the opening hour of the film is spent with the Englishman doing the same two things over and over. He’s either cheekily married (it’s like ‘happily’ only more irritating), or being violently thin-skinned about pretty much everything. Which is perfectly fine as it goes, but there’s not enough sense of him spiralling downwards and out of control. It should reach some sort of crescendo until he’s forced to deliver himself into the hands of a Frenchman who wants to poke around in his subconscious, because that’s the last thing any Englishman wants; we hide everything in there! But he starts off unhinged and just carries on like that, so the film ends up being repetitive instead of unnerving. You can’t have your monsters threatening to do bad things over and over, and not actually do them, without losing your audience a bit. I mean, you wouldn’t put up with an hour of screeching cats jumping out unexpectedly would you? You get one cat, that’s your lot, and then you’d better get into some action toot suite. Still, when it does get going it changes it up nicely. It goes from a possible slasher film to a pretty involving mystery - one that you’re nicely invested in by the time it comes around. I’m not trying to be grumpy or anything, I just wish they could have got there a bit quicker.
Still, there are of course two sides to every toxic relationship. Yes, Frankenstein’s monster causes his house to be burned down and for him to be run out of town on a pretty regular basis; but that moment when the creature comes alive makes every late night secret flight from pitchforks totally worth it. Yes, that French psychiatrist may, or may not, be up to something inside your mushy, desperate brain but what if there really is something wrong with you, and what if you really can be cured? Maybe you’ll have to put his trust in... a Frenchman, even if his continental inclination to ogle your missus isn’t really cricket. It just goes to show that sometimes the thing you have a toxic relationship with can save your life in the end, even if it comes at a price.
Speaking of which, another pint?
