Crew
Director – Ben Fortune, Screenplay – Robert Dunn, Additional Material – Simon Cluett, Based on an Original Idea/Doctor Plague Created by Robert Geoffrey Hughes, Producer – Jonathan Sothcott, Photography – James Westlake, Music – Robert Geoffrey Hughes & Chris Hurst, Production Design – Caitlin Rachel Mills & Felix Jordan. Production Company – Shogun Films/Empire Studios.
Cast
Martin Kemp (John Verney), Peter Woodward (Professor Altman), Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott (Francesca Rossi), Harry Walters (Liam Verney), David Yip (Chief Inspector Parker), Wendy Glenn (Dr Cole), Gary Webster (Eddie), Malcolm Modele (Sam Jones), Michael McKell (Mike), Pierse Stevens (Stokes), Johnny Palmiero (Jake Tortelli)
Plot
Police detective John Verney heads the investigation into a series of murders plaguing London. The killer has been nicknamed Doctor Plague because they wear a plague doctor mask. While his superiors are prepared to dismiss the killings as gang related, Verney notes a number of similarities to the Jack the Ripper killings. After digging into history, Verney believes that Doctor Plague comes from a secret society known as the Brethren of the Flame who periodically emerge to purge the world of sinners.
The plague doctor mask is a peculiar historical artifact. First recorded in Europe in the 17th Century, it mostly exists through drawings and descriptions and there are only two surviving costumes. The plague doctor would attend victims of the Black Death. Their distinctive outfit would consist of a mask with glass eyeholes and a long-birdlike beak, black costuming and black brimmed hat. The beak would hold herbs and dried flowers that kept away the smells of death. A variation of the mask was later incorporated into comedia dell’arte. In recent years, the plague doctor mask with its outlandish appearance has been resurrected as a novelty Halloween costume and in assorted horror movies. Here with the addition of a set of glowing green goggles, it becomes the basis for the film itself.
Beyond the novelty of its costume, Doctor Plague is no more than a tatty Police Procedurals. The detective is played by Martin Kemp, one half of the 1980s pop band Spandau Ballet, who rediscovered himself as an actor in the 1990s. Kemp looks dogged as he determinedly pursues the case around London. Some of the leads he follows are frankly bizarre – the theory that the killer is using old plague tunnels – so it is no particular surprise that he gets suspended.
In the most ridiculous of his deductions, after seeing a crime scene where several gangland members, men and women, are killed, Kemp’s detective makes the absurd assertion that the killings mimic the Jack the Ripper killings. A read of the facts in the Jack the Ripper casefile will tell you in a matter of minutes that the Ripper always killed women who were prostitutes. There were no known male victims, nor any scenes where multiple victims were killed all together – the closest we get is the Double Event of September 30, 1888, where the Ripper killed two women in two different locations.
Doctor Plague is a poorly made film. All of this is due to a shabby, ill thought-out script that knows little about police procedure or has done zero historical research into its subjects. It has been quickly shot with the addition of fake gore and a particularly fake looking severed head. Even if one is prepared to accept this, it falls apart at the end revelation of the identities of the Doctor Plague (multiple), which becomes so many and so far-fetched as to defy any plausibility.
Doctor Plague was a directorial debut for British director Ben Fortune.
Trailer here