When Greek Mythology Met Budget Hell: A How-Not-To-Guide to Horror
Incense for the Damned is that rare film that asks: What if The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, and your Oxford thesis on the sexual repression of 19th-century British men had a horribly confused love child… and then abandoned it in Greece during a drug-fueled gap year?
Based on Simon Raven’s novel Doctors Wear Scarlet (a title that sadly oversold how interesting this would be), this cinematic trainwreck attempts to mix ancient mythology, vampirism, academia, impotence, colonial guilt, and a generous helping of orgy-adjacent nonsense. The result? A disaster so baffling it makes Plan 9 from Outer Space look like Citizen Kane with capes.
The Plot: Or, What Plot?
The movie centers around Richard Fountain, an Oxford don who disappears into Greece looking for his manhood. (No, really.) He’s allegedly brilliant but emotionally constipated—essentially the poster boy for repressed upper-class British ennui. When he falls under the spell of a Greek vampire seductress named Chriseis, his friends trek across the Mediterranean to retrieve him, presumably between afternoon gin and dryly muttered colonialist slurs.
There’s a monastery, a fort, multiple orgies (none sexy), political undertones that feel like they were written by a malfunctioning AI trained on Freud and National Geographic, and then—after a bizarre detour through an Oxford faculty dinner that turns into a bad stand-up set—we land on the inevitable: bloodsucking, rooftop dashing, and an ending that’s as abrupt as it is nonsensical.
The Cast: An Existential Crisis in Every Performance
Peter Cushing is here, probably wondering why he didn’t call in sick. Patrick Macnee plays a military attaché named Major Longbow, which sounds like a porn name generated by ChatGPT. Edward Woodward shows up to make you question whether any of this was real or just a hallucination brought on by too much ouzo and 1970s lighting gels.
And then there’s Richard Fountain, portrayed by Patrick Mower with all the emotional depth of a wet sock. Mower spends much of the film wandering around looking like someone who’s just been told the bar is out of gin and now has to endure Greece sober.
The Production: “Shambles” is Too Generous
Filming was reportedly halted when the money ran out—probably during the second take. Scenes were later Frankensteined together with fresh cast members, new plot threads, and the kind of disjointed voiceover that feels like it was recorded in one take during a hangover. The final result? It’s like watching two completely different movies trying to cohabitate in a single body, like a vampire possession gone very, very wrong.
Robert Hartford-Davis was so embarrassed by the final product that he slapped a fake name on it. When even your director ghosts the movie, you know you’ve summoned something truly cursed.
Themes: Repression, Vampirism, and Baffling Dialogue
There’s a moment in Incense for the Damned where a vampire expert declares that vampirism is “a sadomasochistic sexual perversion afflicting impotent men and frigid women.” And honestly? That’s the most lucid line in the whole film.
Richard’s vampiric transformation is less terrifying and more like watching a sad Englishman discover body glitter and emotional breakdowns. By the time he bites his fiancée after giving a deranged anti-academic TED Talk, you’ve stopped trying to make sense of anything and are just praying someone turns on a light and ends the madness.
Best Scene (if we must): Richard Goes Full Vampire at the Faculty Dinner
This is the film’s “big” moment: Richard rants about the soullessness of Oxford dons, declares academic institutions a protection racket, and then seduces his fiancée straight into a bloodbath. It’s like Dead Poets Society, if Robin Williams had been a vampire with unresolved mummy issues and everyone involved had taken a Xanax right before filming.
Final Verdict: ★☆☆☆☆
“Incense for the Damned is what happens when your horror movie is bitten by a philosophy major and dies of pretension.”
