Cult 60s and 70s Film and TV Reviews and Features
Here is a list of the Retroscope’s top ten Helen dances from the 60s and 70s (in no particular order). Read more about Helen in our examination of her work, here.
Beautiful smooth lounge music from Laxmikant Pyarelal gently sung by Asha Bosle, in Aansoo Ban Gaye Phool.
Helen distracts a jailor in this melodic song from the film Shikari.
When you have had a bad day, nothing beats Helen- dressed as a strawberry, dancing energetically and telling you not to worry about life.
Helen Richardson was born in Burma to a Franco-Indian father and a Burmese mother in the late 1930s. She fled the Japanese invasion with her mother and siblings, ending up in India. Helen’s film career began as a chorus girl in the early 50s, before she got her big break in the solo ‘Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu’ in Howrah Bridge (1957).
Known simply as Helen, she became one of the most well-known dancers in Indian Cinema- with an incredible dancing career spanning from the 50s to the 80s.
Read more about Helen – The Iconic dancer of Indian cinema …
A predictably plotted Hammer vampire film with a decadent atmosphere, two former Playboy Playmates and a surprising amount to say about the nature of human evil.
Twins of Evil is the third and final Hammer film to be based (loosely) on Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla. It is a sequel of sorts to the novella- featuring added witchhunters, satanists and of course, vampires and twins.
Mary and Madeleine Collinson star as the titular twins, Maria and Frieda Gellhorn. They travel to the small, misty ‘Central European’ Karstein village to stay with their aunt (Kathleen Byron) and witch-hunting uncle (Peter Cushing). Although the twins’ characters appear to have grown up together, Frieda speaks in foreign accented English, whereas Maria’s accent is closer to Received Pronunciation (both actresses were dubbed). This was probably done to help viewers to tell them apart. Interestingly, foreign accented Frieda is the more adventurous of the two. She soon gets drawn into the mysterious goings-on in the castle above the village.
The other two main characters are Weil (the aforementioned witch hunter) and Count Karstein (Damien Thomas).
Weil is determined to rid the village of satanic elements. Cushing, as usual, takes the role very seriously and portrays a multifaceted character torn between his obligations to God and the Brotherhood and his growing realisation that burning young women at the stake might not be the most effective way to eradicate evil. Cushing steals each scene that he is in- his increasing fear for the safety of his twin nieces is palpable.
