The Body In Blood: Tower Of Evil

Every Halloween, I try to find a new movie to watch and feature on the blog. My hope is to find a rare movie that might not be familiar to most, and of course it must have a bit of male eye candy. This year, my research took me to a naked male body, given the season though, he was of course dead, laying in a pool of blood. I think I came upon a gem this year, we shall see.... Full disclosure, I have only seen the first 15 minutes. I scanned the rest to make caps, but decided to save it for the weekend so that I would have time to sit down and enjoy it.

Tower Of Evil, also known as Horror on Snape Island is a British Horror film from 1972. Snape Island is a small isolated point off the English coast. A Team of archaeologists head to the island to uncover possible treasure but instead of treasures, then come upon a series of brutal murders. Whoever, or whatever is doing the killing, begins to pick away at the islands newest visitors.

Starting with end seems to be the theme of the day. The end in this case is the beautiful back end of British body builder turned actor John Hamill. The movie opens with the archaeologists coming upon Hamill's (Gary) naked body lying face down in a pool of blood. From there the movie goes back to tell the story of how he ended up there.

John Hamill's physique was clearly part of the selling of the flick, and images of the naked actor were heavily used in the film's marketing. In the late 60's, Hamill was one of Britain's most popular physique models before turning to acting, studying at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Hamill had a fascinating acting career appearing in television shows such as Space 1999, Dr Who as well as a trilogy of British sex comedies. Hamill also has the distinction of co-starring along side Joan Crawford in the 1970's science fiction flick Trog, which marked Crawford's last appearance on the big screen.

I haven't watched enough of Tower Of Evil to comment on Hamill's acting abilities, but although there were no frontals, (that I saw) he was pretty much kept naked for most of his scenes.

There were two other hunks stripped down in Tower Of Terror, Robin Askwith and Gary Hamilton. I had never heard of either before, but both had the look, and hair, of someone in a 70's rock band. Askin seemed to work steadily, the last seven years on the British soap Coronation Street. Hamilton was especially delicious in the flick, but his career seemed to pretty much begin and end with this film, with only other credit after in 1973. I will give a quick thumbs up or down in a future post once I finished watching the entire movie.

Robin Askwith (Des)

Gary Hamilton (Brom)