The Horrible Dr. Hichcock
Encyclopedia
The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (Italian
title: L'Orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock) is a 1962
Italian
horror film
directed by Riccardo Freda
and written by Ernesto Gastaldi
. The film stars Barbara Steele
and Robert Flemyng
.
The story is set in 1885 and concerns a Dr. Hichcock, a necrophilia
c whose horrible secret of the title involves drugging his wife for sexual funeral games.
One day he accidentally administers an overdose and kills her. Several years later he remarries, with the intention of using the blood of his new bride (Steele) to bring his first wife's rotting corpse back to life.
Glenn Erickson
has written, is his essay "The Horrible Dr. Hichcock: Women on the Verge of a Gothic Breakdown," about how "The outrageous central concern of The Horrible Dr. Hichcock has never been considered appropriate for any film openly advertised and exhibited to the public, horror or otherwise. That a film about the frustrated passions of a necrophiliac could even be released in 1962 is a censorial mystery in its own right -- or, perhaps, a clear testament to the way horror films were officially ignored on every cultural level back then."
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
title: L'Orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock) is a 1962
1962 in film
The year 1962 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May - The Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards are officially founded by the Taiwanese government....
Italian
Cinema of Italy
The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.-Early years:...
horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
directed by Riccardo Freda
Riccardo Freda
Riccardo Freda was an Egyptian-born Italian film director. Best known for his horror and thriller movies, Freda had no great love for the horror films he was assigned, but rather favored the epic sword and sandal pictures...
and written by Ernesto Gastaldi
Ernesto Gastaldi
Ernesto Gastaldi is an Italian screen writer.Born in Graglia, province of Biella, he has written under the pseudonyms Julian Berry, Julyan Perry and Ernst Gasthaus....
. The film stars Barbara Steele
Barbara Steele
Barbara Steele is an English film actress. She is best known for starring in Italian gothic horror films of the 1960s. Her breakthrough role came in Italian director Mario Bava's Black Sunday , now hailed as a classic.Steele starred in a string of horror films, including The Horrible Dr...
and Robert Flemyng
Robert Flemyng
Robert Flemyng OBE, MC was a British film and stage actor.Flemyng was born in Liverpool, the son of a doctor, and was educated at Haileybury. He began his career as a medical student before abandoning medicine to become an actor. Flemyng made his stage debut in the early 1930s, and worked steadily...
.
The story is set in 1885 and concerns a Dr. Hichcock, a necrophilia
Necrophilia
Necrophilia, also called thanatophilia or necrolagnia, is the sexual attraction to corpses,It is classified as a paraphilia by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The word is artificially derived from the ancient Greek words: νεκρός and φιλία...
c whose horrible secret of the title involves drugging his wife for sexual funeral games.
One day he accidentally administers an overdose and kills her. Several years later he remarries, with the intention of using the blood of his new bride (Steele) to bring his first wife's rotting corpse back to life.
Glenn Erickson
Glenn Erickson
Glenn Erickson is an American film editor and film critic. He started in the film industry in 1975 as an editor of low budget films and later worked in minor technical crew capacities in such major films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1941...
has written, is his essay "The Horrible Dr. Hichcock: Women on the Verge of a Gothic Breakdown," about how "The outrageous central concern of The Horrible Dr. Hichcock has never been considered appropriate for any film openly advertised and exhibited to the public, horror or otherwise. That a film about the frustrated passions of a necrophiliac could even be released in 1962 is a censorial mystery in its own right -- or, perhaps, a clear testament to the way horror films were officially ignored on every cultural level back then."
External links
- The Horrible Dr. Hichcock:Women on the Verge of a Gothic Breakdown
- Horrible Secret of Dr. Hichcock at the Internet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...