Directors: Eileen Daly, Lindsey S
Writers: Eileen Daly, Lindsey S
Producers: Eileen Daly, Lindsey S, Dominique Daly
Cast: Eileen Daly, Tom Bonnington, Sam Cullingworth, Justin G Gibson
Country: UK
Year of release: 2020
Reviewed from UK DVD
Website: www.eileendalyproductions.com
Much like Slartibartfast designing Earth Mk.2, I am coming out of
retirement for one extraordinary commission. At Darkfest in November
2025 I finally caught up in person, after far too many years, with my
old pal
Eileen Daly, grand dame of British indie horror. And she
immediately thrust into my hand the DVDs of her first three features
as writer-director-producer:
Mr Crispin,
Hollywood Betrayed and
Witches’ Brew.
These were not included in my four self-published volumes of British
Horror Cinema 2000-2019 because they were among that small coterie of
titles which fell between two stools. Although listed on IMDb as
2013/14 productions, they did meet my definition of ‘commercially
released’ before 31st December 2019 so did not make it into Volume
3. However, by the time I published my addendum of ‘Unreleased and
Incomplete’ films, Eileen had self-released these movies on DVD so
they didn’t qualify for that either. I am happy to resolve this
unfortunate bit of bad timing with this and the two subsequent
reviews.
The basic premise here is that Eileen, playing herself, is a
paranormal investigator. She has a back-up team of gay medium Lord
Sebastian Wainwright and defrocked priest Simon Vogel. The former is
played by the impressively ripped Sam Cullingworth (The Eschatrilogy,
Legacy of Thorn, Slasher House 2 and 3) as somewhere inbetween Right
Said Fred and the Hood from Thunderbirds. The latter is played by
Justin G Gibson with a vaguely Satanic beard and an extravagant
cravat, as if someone had cast Mike Raven as the poofter neighbour in
a 1970s sitcom.
They are investigating a man named Crispin Williams, who claims that
there are ghosts and demons in his house, an Edwardian semi he shares
with his mother. Crispin is a bespectacled, balding, middle-aged
nebbish, a classic mixture of reticence and over-confidence with no
social skills. Tom Bonnington only seems to have a couple of short
films to his credit but, by golly, he throws himself magnificently
into the role of this cheerfully awkward loner.
The first half of the film has Eileen spend time with Crispin, before
her two associates arrive the next day. There is an assumption
throughout that the elderly, unseen Mrs Crispin is the key to
whatever is happening. We all assume there’s a Mrs Bates thing
going on – and maybe there is, maybe there isn’t (no spoilers).
But here’s the thing. The actual plot is of secondary importance
here. Watching Mr Crispin, the phrase that popped into my noggin ran thus: this film has the same casual attitude towards narrative
coherence that one finds in the works of, for example, Jean Rollin.
And indeed, the credits reveal that some of the interstitial shots
that pop up frequently but irregularly have indeed been lifted, with
permission from Salvation Films, from Shiver of the Vampires. What we
have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a ‘Dalyade’.
Things happen but it would be naive to expect them to fit together in
a completely logical way. You just have to hang on for the ride and
see where the film is going. There are a couple of lengthy
flashbacks: one to Simon and Seb exorcising a possessed woman tied to
a bed, and one in which Eileen searches a seaside town for Seb who
is, I think, planning to commit suicide by swimming out to sea
because of his alcoholism. Or something.
Mr Crispin is utterly bonkers and ridiculously entertaining. I will
acknowledge that someone coming to it cold would dismiss it out of
hand, not least because the budget seems to be about what one would
normally pay for a decent fish and chip supper. But you and I are not
coming to it cold, are we? We’re coming to it as acolytes and fans
of Dame Eileen Daly.
Here is the secret of Eileen’s success. She comes across as a kooky
goth chick, but underneath that she is the most normal, down-to-Earth
girl you could hope to meet. It’s not an act as such, it’s more a
persona, but then Eileen is the sort of lady who would screech with
laughter if you accused her of cultivating a persona. She plays
on-screen ghost-hunter Eileen wonderfully straight here, with lots of
sidelong glances to camera and the occasional exasperated whisper of
“What the fuck?”.
After many years of acting in motion pictures of – shall we say –
wildly varying quality, Eileen branched out into making her own
movies at the end of the 2010s. For this first one she is co-credited
with someone named ‘Lindsey S’ as writer, director, producer and
editor. A gentleman named Carlos Dittborn Calejas is credited as DoP,
which reminds me that the conceit of whether this is being shot for a
putative TV show comes and goes with gay abandon throughout the film.
Some of the camera-work is what they call diegetic, ie.acknowledging
that there is an actual camera (which is not the same as breaking the
fourth wall) and a further subset of that actually has ‘REC’ and
a battery symbol in the corners. But at no point is there any
acknowledgement of an actual cameraman. This is not unique to low
budget films; for example the Borat films do exactly the same schtick
and it is a whole subgenre of sitcom including things like The Office
and Parks and Recreation.
So anyway, there are a few recognisable names in the credits. Dan
Brownlie (Three’s a Shroud, Serial Kaller) gets ‘additional
camera’ while the legend that is Jason Impey gets ‘additional
editing and colour grading’. Layla Randle-Conde, who was in some of
Philip Gardiner’s early features including The Stone and Cam Girl,
plays ‘The Scary Lady’.
If you love microbudget, wildly enthusiastic British indies as much
as I do, if you wonder what Jean Rollin would be doing if he was
still alive and preferred the sands of Swanage to Calais beach, if
you just have 80 minutes burning a hole in your calendar, you could
do much worse than take a gander at Mr Crispin. It’s available to
rent on Redemption TV, or you can pick it up on DVD anywhere that
Eileen sets up her stall.
