“He was here before Christ, before civilisation. He was king here! Rawhead, that’s what they called him! RAWHEAD!”

It's easy to discount The Reptile as being the most hackneyed and cliché-ridden of all the Hammer Gothics - but that's only because it takes the natural progression of such films to almost its logical conclusion. 

Because it is so much of a full-blown Gothic horror in every sense of the word, The Reptile takes on every ingredient of the films which went before it, and mixes them together into a film so special it’s impervious to snide comments. 

It really has got everything. For a start it's set in Cornwall - there's a small village beset by what appears to be an evil curse, and a huge manor house owned by a dodgy doctor. In the first reel a man is bitten to death by an unseen monster in full view of the doc, so you know he's in it up to his eyeballs. No "whodunnit" this one, I can tell you. 

With foam frothing from his lips and his face turning black, the poor unfortunate who dared to enter the manor suffers what has to be one of the worst deaths committed to celluloid by Hammer - for some reason this seems more realistic and frightening than the usual neck gougings, head removals and stake-plungings that go on in these films. 

The dead bloke is hastily committed to the ground by the frightened locals, who fear he has contracted "the black death". Enter the chap's brother and his new wife - who have inherited the dead bloke's cottage and plan to live there. 

On entering the pub (after leaving his wife outside, because women weren't allowed in pubs in those days), our hero is given the most fantastic "silent treatment" any hated stranger has ever received in such a film, before or since. After clearing the pub with his impertinent questions, our hero eventually gets the landlord to speak to him. 

Full comedy value of the pub emptying antics is achieved when our hero returns to the pub again later on, and the same thing happens.

As well as the manor, the fog-shrouded moors, the creature and the hatred of strangers, the village also contains "Mad Peter", who also gets it in the neck, and an evil-looking “Indian” type (surely there were some Indian actors around in the late 60s?) 

Everything fairly gallops along until our hero suffers the same fate as his brother - luckily his very capable wife knows what to do when faced with snakebite (she's a bit of a gem all round, really) and he survives long enough to sort everything out - the manor house (of course) getting consumed by flames at the end. 

If you ever needed to watch a film to remind yourself why you love this genre, this is the one.