To a certain kind of cinephile, Judy Matheson is a beloved actor of the golden age of 60s and 70s British cinema. That kind of cinephile, needless to say, includes me. Like many people (usually men of a certain age alas) I absolutely love British horror, and I love it unashamedly, unironically and unapologetically.
And Judy Matheson’s place in that cinematic pantheon is assured.
Her iconic Hammer outings Lust For a Vampire and Twins of Evil have not only brought pleasure to millions of people, but have finally begun to receive the critical acclaim that was never afforded them upon their release. But there is so much more to her career. In addition to Hammer, Judy appeared in movies by renowned cultists such as Pete Walker and Joseph Larraz, as well as establishing a successful career in theatre and TV. She also appeared in a number of series which have latterly become classics (The Sweeney; The Professionals) and also a number of leading roles in prestigious one-off dramas. It is a career to be proud of.
But that’s not the reason why I’m outing Judy Matheson as a hidden hero of British cinema here. I respectfully suggest that she has a much more substantial claim to fame and that history will judge her career to be of deeper significance. I contend that Judy played a crucial, trailblazing, and to my knowledge unacknowledged role, in the history of British queer cinema. I’ve certainly never seen it raised in interviews.
There are a two main reasons for this.
First is the sheer number of roles that Judy took on as a bisexual or lesbian character, which was a high proportion of a relatively slim filmography (I’m not including her TV appearances here). Second, and much more importantly, is that Judy Matheson’s acting choices were remarkably respectful of her characters.
One standard narrative of cinema is that queerness was either hidden and encoded (text and subtext); or else used as vilification; either by making the character a villain or else as a cartoon who provided easy laughs, usually at the character’s expense.
Yet never once were Judy’s portrayals in any way clichéd or even knowing. Only one character had her sexuality used as a punchline, and as we will see that this is no shock in context of the film series. Often her character’s sexuality wasn’t even essential to the plot. And so the credit must be given to Judy’s skills as an actor and her portrayals themselves, rather than any particularly enlightened scripts.
I think this is remarkable, and it suggests at least once alternative history. Not only was there a leading actor who consistently took on these challenging roles, she did so with a tact and a fearlessness that was light years away from many similar performances. In fact they still are. To do all of this in the genre that is still considered by too many to be the epitome of exploitation, is even more astonishing.
Before we look at the films themselves let me emphasise that this is entirely my own view. I haven’t discussed it with others and have no idea what Judy Matheson’s own perspectives would be. She has given some warm and candid interviews over the years but I don’t know if this was ever raised as a topic with her.
There has to be an exception to prove the rule so let’s begin there. Judy’s most substantial non-bi or gay role is in Joseph Larraz 1974 movie, The House That Vanished. It is not a very good film (no offence) and it is an unforgiving role. Judy plays the flatmate of the heroine of the film, played by Andrea Allan, who has witnessed a murder and is now in fear of her life. She turns up around about the hour mark for one scene with a shady, red herring of a neighbor. Her next scene is shortly after and shows Larraz off at his worst. In the scene the real murderer breaks in at night and brutally assaults her, and while we don’t see her murder she is obviously killed. It’s a sleazy, graphic scene and it must have been a difficult piece to act in. It’s definitely of its time and if being generous you can appreciate it as effective. I certainly tip my hat to the performance but don’t like watching it.
The fact that sexuality doesn’t come up much in the film is slightly unusual bearing in mind that lesbianism was a recurring motif in Larraz’s films, most notably in the acclaimed Vampyres, whose blonde and brunette antagonists somewhat resemble Matheson and Allan. There is lots of sex in the film, including a bizarre mashup of incest and gerontophilia, and if you look hard enough you could perhaps detect a spark between the flatmates; in the first scene Allan’s character shows that she is at the very least comfortable being nude around her friend. But Allan is avowedly heterosexual in the movie whereas there is no development of Judy’s character at all. She’s there as a victim and that’s about it sadly.
Moving on to the Hammers we can see the spectrum of sublime and ridiculous in terms of character development. Judy’s appearance in Twins of Evil is memorable as an innocent woman who is burned at the stake as a witch (in one interview she proudly recounts how her screaming earned her an ovation from the film crew). But the character is literally in the film for moments and – again – is simply there as a victim. Although almost as brief, Judy’s role in Lust For a Vampire is as one of the attendees of the same finishing school as Carmilla Karnstein, played brilliantly by the much loved Yutte Stensgard. As such, she is one of the many characters who are clearly involved in gay relationships. It seems bizarre today to read old reviews that creep around what was actually quite overt lesbianism in the Carmilla trilogy. There was nothing coded in these films.
The one film where the sexuality of Judy’s character was treated as a joke was, almost inevitably, the wildly successful Confessions of a Window Cleaner which also starred Robin Askwith and the legendary Linda Hayden. She is only in one scene, in which she purports to pseudo-seduce the hapless Timmy Lea in order to make her partner jealous. It works, and just as Timmy thinks he is about to seal the deal the angry partner walks in in and – lo and behold – is another woman!!! Hilarity ensues!!! Ha, ha, ha!!!
Although this scene is a groaner now it isn’t really any worse than the rest of the film, which (again) was a product of its time. It really doesn’t compute anymore in terms of what was meant to be funny. Or sexy. One key point, though, is that even though lesbianism was used as a punchline, Judy never oversells the character, nor does she play it for laughs. instead, she plays it relatively seriously as a downtrodden and frustrated housewife who wants to get back at her ‘Ronnie’. There is no recourse to coarseness or cliché. In fact the joke only works on that premise; and Judy’s sensitivity as an actor shines through.
Askwith and Judy teamed up a year previously in the Peter Walker thriller The Flesh and Blood Show. Another fairly grimy film it is often cited as a precursor to slasher movies. It isn’t at all, but it does have a fabulous cast. And here again we find Judy in overt scenes with other women. It’s an underwritten part but if nothing else, it once again displays a fearlessness in choice of role.
Which brings us to my own personal favourite of Judy’s roles, as Mike Raven’s muse in the astonishing Crucible of Terror. What a film this is. It encapsulates everything good, bad and ugly about early 70s British horror. Lovely settings; great outdoor cinematography; some top tier acting talent including Ronald Lacey and James Bolam, and a whole load of barrel scraping elsewhere.
It almost acts a litmus test to see if you are the same kind of cinephile that I described at the beginning of the article. It would be so easy to pick apart the plot, many of the performances, and much of the dialogue but why bother when the sum of the parts is as glorious as this? A true believer sees beyond the nonsense to the gems within.
As an aside I’ll throw this into the mix, and unfortunately I’ll have to dive deeply into spoiler territory here. I’d suggest that if you look hard enough you can see this movie as a precursor to J-horrors such as Ringu and Ju-On. Bear with me here. The film tells of the supernatural revenge of a murdered Japanese model, who acts through a haunted kimono which possesses its wearer, the heroine of the film, Millie, played by Mary Maude.
Alternatively you can make a case that this as a proto-feminist revenge flick with an unstoppable dead woman scorned. Yet that theory doesn’t really hold much water as too many of the victims are also women (including Judy who is offed via a very gruesome acid attack). Indeed these same women are equally used and abused by the murderer and in no way deserve their fates. Which brings us back to the pitiless, faceless (as is the case here); long black-haired, and merciless Japanese demoniac from beyond the grave. Where else do we see that trope? Honestly, if this film was remade in Okinawa nobody would bat an eyelid.
Apologies for the digression.
Despite the talent on view the heartbeat of this movie is Judy Matheson’s character Marcia. Judy is an overwhelming presence here and absolutely dominates every scene she is in, usually without having to say anything at all. She acts through expression, through gesture, through sheer presence. And it is scintillating.
Many British actresses of this era are famed for their amazing beauty, but few were as downright sultry as Judy Matheson here. Caroline Munro could be; Kate O’Mara definitely was in some roles; Martine Beswick another; but Judy Matheson blows them all away here for utter magnetism. She is luminous. There is one particular scene about three quarters of the way through the film where Judy has to sit among the group and put up with Mike Raven plummily expressing some astonishingly crass dialogue (“for me, a beautiful woman is worth more than rubies”). All the while Judy’s character sits there and just smoulders, with a look that screams of the inner confidence of a woman who knows she really is as beautiful as the guff being spouted about her. It is a wordless scene on her part, and it is magnificent.
And of course, to keep with the theme of this post, Marcia is bi-sexual, notably trying to flirt with Millie during a sun-bathing scene. The flirtation doesn’t go anywhere as it is clear that Millie will not reciprocate and it is isn’t spoken of again, which shows a profound maturity for 1971. It isn’t a salacious detail thrown in for titilation (the scene never gets anywhere near far enough for that) but is just a reveal of one element of Marcia’s character. It is straightforward and honest, and is refreshingly simple. I’d argue it is easily the most forward-thinking element of the whole film and Judy Matheson sells it as much as she sells Marcia’s failing queen-bee status and her refusal to be the plaything of her domineering male counterparts. It’s a fabulous performance and quite frankly Marcia should have made it to the end of the movie.
This leaves us with Judy Matheson’s debut film role, and the film she has identified as her own personal favourite. It is certainly of a calibre several notches above anything discussed so far, and the film if known variously as Las Cruelles, The Exquisite Cadaver and The Exquisite Corpse. It is widely known to have been a fairly troubled production but none of that shows in the finished movie, which is a twisty tale of revenge on a man who scorned a young lover. One of the central twists is that the revenge itself is conducted by Lucia Fonte (played icily by Capucine) on behalf of her young girlfriend Esther, who has killed herself after several failed attempts because she could not get over the rejection of the married man with whom she was having an affair.
The plot is meticulously crafted though a fractured, labyrinthine timeline that puts Tarantino to shame. The cinematography is outstanding, with a number of surreal scenes (you’ll remember the refrigerator scene forever) that add to the film rather than grinding it to a halt.
And once again the heart and soul of the film is an amazing portrayal by Judy Matheson of a young woman who is confused about everything: her health; her sexuality; her identity; her life. It is a brilliant rendition of a lost soul and to think that this was a debut performance, in a major film, only adds to my admiration. The central premise is that Lucia commits revenge not because of any outward hatred but simply because she herself is broken hearted that the man who was the fulcrum of her lover’s pain was himself so plain and unworthy of her. It is a superb premise, deftly realized, but even more tragic is that it is clear to the viewer that Esther was always going to end up as victim of her own destructive spiral. Her married lover was correlation not cause and if not him then another person would have taken his place.
Lucia misjudges Esther’s fragility for delicacy; and her longing for regret. Because of this, once again the bisexuality of Judy’s character is grounded in a non-exploitative context. The relationship is loving and kind, and is never portrayed negatively.
You owe it to yourself to see this film.
So where does that leave us? Well hopefully it leaves us with a slightly different view of the representation of bisexuality and lesbianism in British cinema. Far from the hidden world we are led to believe, here was a succession of gay roles at the front and centre of mainstream (if, admittedly a bit obscure) films. Far more importantly, though, it also leaves us with an actor who took chance after chance, and played everything with subtlety and conviction. Judy Matheson deserves to take a bow, not only for bringing joy to so many of us but for advancing how sexuality was portrayed in those less enlightened times. It’s a remarkable filmography and deserves the utmost respect.
Heroines of Horror 