tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23378995524590131002024-02-20T00:44:34.621-08:00JOLLYGOOD BABYLONTales of witless madnessIvanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-10062567823737998232016-06-17T12:25:00.001-07:002016-06-20T12:21:12.067-07:00Gothroads: a 50th anniversary celebration of Dark Shadows<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Imagine <b>Crossroads</b> if the motel staff were attacked by a werewolf. Or, if you prefer, <b>Acorn Antiques </b>if all the antiques were cursed. And Miss Berta's new baby was really a malevolent Lovecraftian god. Well that, in a nutshell, is <b>Dark Shadows</b>.</div>
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It couldn't have happened on purpose. Nobody, not even Alan Partridge on hallucinogens, would have pitched a daily afternoon soap opera about a time-travelling vampire and his cursed family. But, bizarrely, it happened. And for a brief, dreamlike window of time in the late 60s and early 70s it was one of the biggest things on American TV. Presumably because everyone felt compelled to keep tuning in to make sure they hadn't imagined it.<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2337899552459013100" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>Hardly anyone in Britain's heard of <b>Dark Shadows</b>. If the name means anything to the person in the street (and I don't advise you to approach random strangers about it), it'll probably be Tim Burton's big screen version of a few years back. And even that's not very likely, as nobody liked it (except one crazed Johnny Depp fan I once saw in a comments section under a Guardian article) and it was swiftly forgotten. I haven't seen it (goodness knows I've passed up enough opportunities to buy it in charity shops for a quid), but I've seen <i>a </i>Tim Burton film, so I think I get the gist.<br />
The genuine article did, briefly, make it to British TV screens, but not till nearly 25 years after it was cancelled, as one of a raft of old shows transmitted by the Sci-Fi Channel when it launched here in 1995. That's when my obsession with it stems from. I was 15 and had been taken out of school, diagnosed with clinical depression (which isn't easy to identify at that age, as the symptoms are very similar to those of being a teenager). The Sci-Fi Channel's afternoon schedule, rerunning series like <b>Lost in Space</b>, <b>Night Gallery</b>, and Boris Karloff's <b>Thriller</b>, became my school, building on my existing love of <b>Doctor Who</b> and <b>The Avengers</b> to instil a fascination with old TV and everything 60s and 70s that continues to take up a lot of my time. But <b>Dark Shadows </b>was my favourite subject. I taped every episode. In the absence of any reference works on the show (I acquired loads later on) I created my own by making a note of the cast and crew of each episode, and even adding a suitably haunting phrase from each episode's opening narration to serve as its title. Though when I started watching it wasn't the most obviously compelling of viewing. I'm going to give you a little history of <b>Dark Shadows </b>now, and it has quite a lot of spoilers in, if that sort of thing worries you.<br />
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The word nobody can avoid when describing <b>Dark Shadows</b> is "gothic". But when it started it was gothic in the <b>Jane Eyre</b>/Mary Stewart sense, rather than the <b>Dracula </b>sense. The show was the creation of Dan Curtis, a wildly creative lunatic whose first success had come with putting golf on TV. <b>Dark Shadows </b>was his dream project. No, literally, it was: he dreamt about a beautiful, dark-haired young woman getting off a train and approaching a spooky old mansion, and decided it was the ideal basis for a TV show.<br />
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<img alt="Image result for victoria winters" height="307" 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The girl became Victoria Winters (played by Alexandra Moltke, who claimed to have been cast as she was the only innocent-looking actress in New York, where the show was recorded), and the house became Collinwood, in Collinsport, Maine, where she came to work as a governess for the Collins family. These included (in a casting coup for daytime TV) scandal-haunted former movie queen Joan Bennett, as scandal-haunted matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. With no idea of her parentage, Victoria hoped to find the secret of her origins, but she never did, as other, far weirder, things got in the way.<br />
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At first the show dealt in melodramatic stories of revenge, blackmail and murder that might have been exciting if they didn't unfold at a pace that felt appreciably slower than real time. Several weeks of story revolve almost entirely around a fountain pen. It's not even a haunted fountain pen. All this didn't prove a magnet for viewers, and facing cancellation when they'd hardly even started, Curtis and his writers decided "Why the hell not?" and made a decision that would change everything: they chucked in a ghost.<br />
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The phantoms of Collinwood had been mentioned since the show began, but it was always intended that the real ghosts would be the secrets of the past that haunted Elizabeth and her brother Roger.<br />
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(A quick word about Roger: originally intended as the show's main baddie, he quickly mellowed to become more like the actor who played him, the wonderfully louche and sardonic Louis Edmonds. I love Roger. When I was 15 he gave my nascent gaydar one of its very first pings.)<br />
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Anyway, one Friday afternoon, the ghost of 18th century ancestor Josette Collins climbed down from her portrait in a special effect nobody had ever expected to be used on a daytime soap. All she did was waft about a bit, and none of the other characters even saw her, but it turns out that "the ghost's out of the portrait" means exactly the same thing as "the genie's out of the bottle". Word got round, and the viewing figures started to climb. Things stayed fairly low-key on the supernatural front for a while - a ghostly voice here, the briefly-glimpsed spectre of a character murdered a few weeks ago there. But they were strictly rationed - these were uncharted waters, and who knew what effect too many spooky goings-on in the afternoon might have on America's housewives and schoolkids?<br />
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This first, timid flirtation with mysterious forces beyond comes to a climax when a whole herd of apparitions manifest themselves just in time to prevent Collinwood's mad caretaker from killing Victoria by scaring him to death. In time, <b>Dark Shadows </b>would plunder most major works of gothic literature for plot elements: <b>Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</b>, <b>The Turn of the Screw</b> (twice), <b>Rebecca </b>(the <b>Dark Shadows </b>version was set in a parallel universe and had Rebecca return from the grave as a heat vampire masquerading as her own twin sister), etc etc, but its first fully-fledged supernatural storyline involved an original creation. It had always been intended that Laura Collins, mother of Victoria's young charge David, would return and try to get custody of him. Originally, she was meant to be an alcoholic. In the event, she was a human incarnation of the legendary phoenix, who returned to life every hundred years to have a child she'd eventually lead to a fiery death. I've read that last bit a few times now, wondering if I could rewrite it to make more sense. I couldn't. It's not me who's not making sense, it's <b>Dark Shadows</b>. It is, I think inarguably, the strangest TV series there's ever been. And this was when it was still in its boring phase, with only one thing of any consequence happening a week (ie per five episodes). This is where I came in, but I was lucky: the Sci-Fi Channel showed two episodes a day, so I got to see two things happen a week.<br />
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If people know anything about <b>Dark Shadows</b>, it's that the main character's a vampire. This is Barnabas Collins, another ancestor, who gets released from his chained coffin by a treasure-hunting petty crook and passes himself off at Collinwood as a cousin from England, an origin that seems to satisfactorily explain to the other characters any odd behaviour he might display. That's something to bear in mind if I ever find myself stateside. Jonathan Frid, a Canadian stage actor, took the role (apparently against Dan Curtis' wishes) as a short-term assignment before starting a job as a drama professor. Nobody expected what happened: Barnabas Collins became a phenomenon. The character was intended as a black-hearted villain, but that was swiftly undermined by the soulfulness Frid played him with. Frid found memorising pages of new dialogue every day a nightmare, but to the audience at home his halting delivery and panicked glances at the teleprompter made it feel like he was talking to them.<br />
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Where <b>Dark Shadows </b>got <i>really </i>interesting for me was with the arrival of Grayson Hall. A flamboyant, Oscar-nominated character actress with the looks and voice of a Disney villainess, she too joined the cast on a short-term basis, in the role of Julia Hoffman, a doctor who starts off as a Van Helsing figure, but - in a brilliant twist - offers to find a cure for his condition (the decision to cast a woman in the role was last minute, and before she appears the character's referred to as male - so if you want you can interpret her as TV's first major trans character). Hall brings a remarkable, high camp intensity to the show. When I first saw her I didn't really know what camp was. I definitely didn't know what a gay icon was. I just thought she was the most fascinating person I'd ever seen. And I still do. Like Frid, she became too popular to lose: as a pairing, they were dynamite, and they swiftly establish themselves as the beating heart of the show, shunting poor old Vicki Winters off to the sidelines.<br />
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You can't really call Barnabas and Julia heroes: in any sensible TV show of the time they would have been the baddies: he's an undead ghoul with a penchant for trying to turn hapless young ladies into the recreation of his lost love, while she proves happy to cover up for him, hypnotising the unfortunate girls into losing their memory of it all when things don't quite work out. One unusually harrowing episode sees the two of them kill a friend of Julia's who learns what's going on. This leads to an episode that comprises 20 of the most peculiar minutes of TV ever, with Grayson Hall giving what's practically a one-woman show of screaming, wailing and sobbing as Julia's taunted by a vengeful ghost. It's an understatement to say her performance is over the top: the top is so far beneath her as to be invisible. It's perhaps the worst possible way to introduce someone to <b>Dark Shadows</b>, but here it is anyway:<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2337899552459013100" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2337899552459013100" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2337899552459013100" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2337899552459013100" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2337899552459013100" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2337899552459013100" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2337899552459013100" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2337899552459013100" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>Seven months after Barnabas came out of the coffin and turned a ponderous afternoon drama into a monster hit, the show's writing team (greatly boosted by the addition of Grayson Hall's husband Sam, whose witty, inventive scripts had a huge impact on the show's overall quality) hit on TV's most insane, brilliant idea since the makers of <b>Doctor Who </b>figured out how to excuse the recasting of their lead character. They decided to thrust the show's audience, along with the hapless Victoria Winters. back to the year 1795, to find out how their unlikely hero became a vampire in the first place (well, the audience finds this out - Vicki remained infuriatingly unaware of most of the supernatural events happening around her until Alexandra Moltke became so bored of the character she got pregnant in order to be released from her contract).<br />
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The real masterstroke (not least from a budgeting point of view) was that the characters in 1795 were played by the same actors who played the 1960s characters. One key character though, was played by a new addition to the cast. The beautiful witch Angelique, whose unrequited love for Barnabas eventually leads her to curse him to become a vampire, was Lara Parker's first professional acting job - something that's almost impossible to believe as she's so brilliant, so malevolent and - most importantly - so much fun to watch. Trips through time (including one to the far-off year of 1995) would become a regular feature of the show, with most of its regular cast becoming a repertory company who got the chance to play a new character every few months. But (to Jonathan Frid's increasing chagrin) Barnabas remains a constant - and wherever in time he may go, Angelique's invariably there to cause some kind of trouble.<br />
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I started off with a mention of <b>Crossroads</b> (I like to think of <b>Dark Shadows </b>as <b>Gothroads</b>):<b> </b>as a daily soap of the 60s and 70s, that's probably the British show <b>Dark Shadows </b>is most like (but with vampires) - and, shot live-to-tape, it's prone to the same pitfalls that Victoria Wood so lovingly spoofed in <b>Acorn Antiques</b>: misjudged performances, flubbed lines (Jonathan Frid's relationship with the script is the same as William Hartnell's in <b>Doctor Who</b>, and just as endearing), unscheduled guest appearances by boom mics, flies and crew members, and (more like early <b>Doctor Who</b>, this one) special effects that don't quite do what they're meant to. These mistakes are cherished by fans of the show, and add immeasurably to the show's fun factor. My favourite is actor David Ford, <i>never </i>able to get his lines right, guiltily hiding a script when he realises the camera is on him. Perfection is the most boring thing possible, and one thing <b>Dark Shadows </b>could never be accused of is perfection.<br />
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My initial affair with <b>Dark Shadows</b> was intense, but brief. In 1996 my dad got a new girlfriend, and we moved in with her. For some reason we couldn't get cable there, so it was no more Sci-Fi Channel and no more <b>Dark Shadows </b>for me. I wasn't quite devastated, as at the time my interest in old TV shows was being edged out by a new interest in the same sex (many years later I'd learn that most of <b>Dark Shadows</b>' male cast members shared that interest).<br />
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Now it's 20 years later (surely that can't be right?), I've managed to reconcile those two interests, and, as <b>Dark Shadows </b>has reached its 50th anniversary, I've decided I'm going to watch every single episode. That's 1225 episodes, made in just under five years. For a soap opera, intended to continue indefinitely, that's actually a pretty short run. But <b>Dark Shadows </b>is the only programme with that sort of episode count that's ever been released on DVD, streaming and what have you in its entirety (indeed it's the only soap of its time that still in exists in its entirety - well, almost. There's one lost episode, but that's from the show's ill-regarded Barnabas- free final story arc - Frid declined to continue in the show unless he got to play another character, so in the show's last months he's Barnabas' non-vampire son from a parallel universe, re-enacting <b>Wuthering Heights</b> with a doppelganger of Angelique), and it's quite a fearsome challenge. But it's exciting. Right now I'm pretty much exactly where I left off, at the show's insanely overcomplicated 1968 episodes (sample plot thread: an evil warlock is trying to create a race of devil-worshipping supermen using a Frankenstein monster and a lady monster who has the soul of the most evil woman in history. Though there's a lot more to it than that...), and I still have the introduction of heart-throb ghost/werewolf/Dorian Gray rip-off Quentin Collins (the only character to rival Barnabas' popularity with viewers) and the extended trip to 1897 that's widely regarded as the show's golden period ahead of me. I'm obsessed all over again. Though now we've got the internet I suppose I don't need these index cards any more.<br />
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There are a million more things to say about <b>Dark Shadows</b>, and if you want to hear them, Danny Horn's <b><a href="https://darkshadowseveryday.com/">Dark Shadows Every Day </a></b>blog, which examines each episode in turn, is much funnier and more perceptive about the show than I could ever dream of being. If you'd like to give <b>Dark Shadows </b>a go, but are intimidated by the tedium of the early episodes, Danny <a href="https://darkshadowseveryday.com/2013/09/01/introduction/">recommends </a>episode 250, with kidnapped waitress Maggie Evans trying to escape from Barnabas' clutches as a good starting point. Indeed, it's a great episode. If you don't like it, you won't like <i>anything</i> <b>Dark Shadows </b>has to offer.<br />
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Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-45880186467059359572016-03-31T14:43:00.000-07:002016-03-31T14:43:06.206-07:00The House in Marsh Road (1960)<div style="text-align: center;">
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Jean Linton (Patricia Dainton) is a bit of a cross patch, and it's not surprising given the feckless behaviour of her husband David (Tony Wright). He's supposed to be writing a novel but all he ever finishes is the odd book review when he's running out of money for booze. The pair live in a succession of boarding houses, leaving a trail of unpaid landladies behind them. And now Jean's had to suffer the ultimate humiliation of getting a job.</div>
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But their luck suddenly changes with the death of Jean's auntie (it's all right, she barely knew her), who leaves her a house in the country. It comes complete with a superstitious Irish housekeeper (Anita Sharp-Bolster - what led her from classic Hollywood films of the 40s like Fritz Lang's <b>Scarlet Street</b> to low-budget British fare like this I don't know) who's convinced the house has a permanent resident: a poltergeist she's named Patrick. And it looks like she might have something there, what with doors mysteriously slamming and an armchair that keeps scuttling across the floor.</div>
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David's all for flogging the house (Sam Kydd's offered him the astronomical fee of £6000 for it) and squandering the cash on living the high life in London. When Jean refuses he finds alternative entertainment in the form of local strumpet Mrs Stockley (Sandra Dorne, the poor filmmaker's Diana Dors), ostensibly employed as his typist. Jean, meanwhile, is comforted by local estate agent Derek Aylward. Gradually David comes round to the idea of murdering poor Jean for her inheritance, but Patrick might have something to say about that...</div>
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Directed by b-movie veteran Montgomery Tully, <b>The House in Marsh Road</b> looks exactly like what it is - a cheap, quick, second feature. but Dainton and Wright snipe at each other entertainingly, Dorne's pouty performance is irresistibly camp, and there are some surprisingly effective shocks (a mirror smashing when Mrs Stockley looks into it, a grate suddenly slamming into place to save Jean's life as David tries to push her down a lift shaft), and it's hard not to admire just how brazen a steal from (sorry, homage to) Hitchcock's <b>Suspicion </b>the scene where David brings Jean a glass of poisoned milk is.</div>
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Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-52607188859929130602016-01-04T12:06:00.001-08:002016-01-05T03:25:12.536-08:00The Terror (1938)<div class="MsoNormal">
My first post in quite a while, inspired by a viewing of a film considerably older than anything else I've featured here before...</div>
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The 1920s: London is being terrorised by a criminal
mastermind known as Mike O’Shea, whose true identity is always concealed
beneath a gas mask (he’s quite the sinister sight). It’s even a mystery to his henchmen (Henry
Oscar and Alastair Sim), who are eventually caught by the police and sentenced
to 10 years in prison, while O’Shea escapes with a fabulous amount of gold. Understandably consumed with resentment, the
pair each plot to track their former boss down and relieve him of the loot once
they are released. When the day comes,
the former partners go their separate ways to find O’Shea, but both are
eventually led to a curiously inhospitable country guest house run by the conspicuously
suspicious Colonel Redmayne (Arthur Wontner), who seems very keen not to add
any more guests to the three he already has: self-professed psychic Mrs Elvery
(Iris Hoey) and her featherbrained daughter (Lesley Wareing), and mild-mannered
retiree Mr Goodman (Wilfrid Lawson). <o:p></o:p></div>
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Based on a play by the then-exhaustingly ubiquitous Edgar
Wallace (whose death in 1932 had, if anything, only accelerated the tide of
films based on his work), <b>The Terror</b>’s
plot doesn’t hold any surprises, but this is all part of its charm. Look away now if you don’t want spoilers, but
it’s hard to believe that any viewer wouldn’t immediately identify Lawson as
the villain due to his character’s excessively underlined pleasantness
(everyone even pronounces his name “Good<i>man</i>”
in case we didn’t get it). Similarly,
from the first appearance of pleasingly-named drunken wastrel Ferdy Fane (Bernard Lee) it’s
obvious he’s going to both turn out to be the crack Scotland Yard detective
everyone’s talking about and get the girl (the Colonel’s daughter, played by
beautiful Linden Travers). But who cares if it's obvious when it's all so entertainingly played by such a brilliant cast? As well as the above-named, there are brief but very welcome
appearances from Kathleen Harrison and Irene Handl as the Colonel’s kitchen
staff, while Richard Murdoch has a small role as an incompetent detective. It’s a shame, though, that Wontner, a twinkly
Sherlock Holmes in the early 30s, is short-changed by a script that gives him
little to do but behave in a sinister manner.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Good fun all the way through, the film steps up a gear in
its final third with the return of Sim’s character, who's been absent for most
of the film, disguised as a mild-mannered country parson in order to have a
good sniff round the ruins near the Colonel's abode.
Even at this early stage in his screen career (he’d made his first film three
years earlier) he’s an obvious star, stealing every scene with his facial
expressions alone. The film takes a sharp turn into gothic melodrama territory for its marvellously overripe climax, with Lee
and Travers held prisoner in the catacombs of the ruins, garbed in a monk’s habit and giving it the full Tod Slaughter
as he exposes the non-existence of his sanity by promising
to marry the luckless pair before killing them (I need hardly add that he then
proceeds to play a conveniently-located organ). They’re
saved when Sim, who Lawson thought he’d put out of the way, returns from the
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Obvious though both identities may be, the idea of the identity
of both hero <i>and</i> villain being a
mystery is makes for a fun twist. And
for modern viewers there’s a good chuckle to be had from a reckless young
investigator we first see (with his back to us) being scolded by his crusty
superiors turning out to be played by a man who’d become best known as James
Bond’s grumpy boss.<o:p></o:p></div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-64213287040631348442015-08-21T02:56:00.000-07:002015-08-21T02:56:15.177-07:00Road to St Tropez (1966)<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Wendy Richard and Raquel Welch are maybe not names that you'd normally put together, but they're the two women with whom Mike Sarne will always be linked. In 1962 he and the future Pauline Fowler reached number one with 'Come Outside', which I'm sure you know. </div>
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A change of career later Sarne directed Raquel Welch in the film adaptation of Gore Vidal's <em>Myra Breckinridge</em>, which ever since its release has been recognised near-universally as one of the worst films ever made. <i>Road to St Tropez</i>, an enjoyable bit of fluff, was the first thing Sarne directed (he also wrote and sang the theme tune - although Wendy Richard's distinctive vocals are sadly absent). It's a curious blend of travel documentary, comedy and drama: Fenella Fielding reads us a cheerily ironic commentary over images of the sights of the French Riviera that should delight any fans of Stella Artois adverts, interwoven with a perfunctory and mainly silent romantic drama. The commentary subtly mocks a very chic Melissa Stribling (Mina in Hammer's <em>Dracula</em>), a lonely traveller who picks up a beautiful couple of drifters (Gabriela Licudi and an especially gorgeous young Udo Kier) and embarks on a naive but temporarily blissful holiday romance with gigolo Udo after Gabriela's packed off on a plane. It's basic, but charming and very lovely to look at. Here are some Riviera postcards for you to enjoy:</div>
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Tip: anything you read on this blog will be more enjoyable if you imagine it being read by Fenella Fielding. But then, let's face it, that's true of anything you'll ever read.Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-28317557775837892802015-08-19T07:18:00.000-07:002015-08-19T07:18:19.027-07:00Twisted Nerve (1968)<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 20px 5px; text-align: center;">
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“Ladies and gentlemen: in view of the controversy already aroused, the producers of this film wish to re-emphasise what is already stated in the film – that there is no established scientific connection between mongolism and psychotic or criminal behaviour” – the very serious announcement that opens Twisted Nerve.</div>
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Film making twins John and Roy Boulting are best known for their satires of the late 50s and early 60s: Private’s Progress, I’m All Right, Jack, etc. This psycho thriller is a bit of a departure for the pair. John produces and Roy directs: like their comedy The Family Way from a couple of years earlier it’s a vehicle for Roy’s future wife Hayley Mills, and as in that film she stars alongside a young, startlingly beautiful Hywel Bennett (he looks a bit like a sexy owl). In The Family Way they played an innocent young married couple unable to consummate their marriage because of Bennett’s sexual hang-ups. Martin, the character he plays in Twisted Nerve, has sexual hang-ups of his own, and they’re a lot more dangerous. Twisted Nerve’s one of a trio of British films (the others being Goodbye Gemini and Straight On Till Morning, both from 1970) that make up a very specific little subgenre: stories about pretty blond boy-men with murderous <img alt="Twisted Nerve (1968)" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2613 left" src="http://www.attackfromplanetb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/TwistedNerve1.jpg" height="228" style="background-color: black; border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; float: left; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;" title="Twisted Nerve (1968)" width="300" />tendencies. They’re all direct descendants of Psycho and Peeping Tom, but it’s in Twisted Nerve the lineage is most obvious: Peeping Tom’s writer Leo Marks co-wrote the Twisted Nerve screenplay with Roy Boulting (Mills and Bennett’s relationship in Twisted Nerve’s vaguely reminiscent of Carl Boehm and Anna Massey’s in the older film), and like Psycho it’s got an unforgettable score by Bernard Herrmann. In fact, Herrmann’s haunting, whistled theme is far better known than the film itself, having been given a new lease of life by Quentin Tarantino’s use of it in Kill Bill (and, more recently, it was heavily featured in the first series of American Horror Story). It turns up here in several variations, including a wonderfully silly party version and a slowed down, oddly circus-like version used for the film’s denouement.</div>
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<img alt="Twisted Nerve (1968)" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2614 right" src="http://www.attackfromplanetb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/TwistedNerve2.jpg" height="228" style="background-color: black; border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;" title="Twisted Nerve (1968)" width="300" />Aside from the music, the best thing about the film is Bennett’s remarkable performance. Martin’s a spoilt, indolent rich kid who nonetheless is haunted by the fate of his older brother, placed in an institution by their mother (Phyllis Calvert), unable to cope with (but mostly just embarrassed by) his Down’s Syndrome (or ‘mongolism’, in the now rather awkward 60s terminology). When we first see him, visiting his brother, he seems like a perfectly ordinary young man. Next time we meet him, he’s disconcertingly different. He’s invented another persona, the childlike ‘simpleton’ Georgie, which he uses to charm library assistant Susan (Hayley Mills), and, when his exasperated stepfather’s had enough and chucks him out (which eventually Martin takes bloody revenge for), to inveigle his way into her home. Bennett is convincingly innocent as Georgie, and his sudden switches to snarling, dangerous Martin are truly chilling. The split personality angle’s heavy-handedly underlined by his tendency to strip off and fondle himself in front of a mirror. There’s a stack of musclemen magazines nearby to act as a casually homophobic signal that he’s a bit odd sexually.</div>
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<img alt="Twisted Nerve (1968)" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2611 left" src="http://www.attackfromplanetb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/TwistedNerve3.jpg" height="228" style="background-color: black; border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; float: left; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;" title="Twisted Nerve (1968)" width="300" />Susan’s the only person Martin shows any sexual interest toward though – although her slightly tarty mother Joan (Billie Whitelaw) meets a sticky end after a clumsy attempt at seducing him. The sight of Susan helping to dress a clearly aroused Martin, secure in the belief he’s completely unsexual, is the film’s queasiest moment, but dodgy as the premise of someone pretending to be learning disabled might seem, the main problem with the film is that it’s not offensive enough. It’s far too restrained and genteel, and despite its obvious channelling of Hitchcock (most bizarrely when, in an echo of the ending of Psycho, Hywel Bennett starts speaking in the badly dubbed voice of Phyllis Calvert) it’s seriously lacking in suspense. Interestingly, as well as echoing one Hitchcock film, Twisted Nerve foreshadows another: Barry Foster’s Gerry, Joan’s lodger/lover, is an only slightly more benign version of Bob Rusk, the jolly psycho he plays in Frenzy. Gerry works for a film distributor (presumably based in Soho), and is a type you can sense Twisted Nerve’s makers looking down their noses at: “If you want me to sell your crummy films, you’ve gotta give it a dose of the old S&V – sex and violence! Cartoon, ice cream, the old S&V, and everyone’s happy.” If Gerry had been involved with the making of Twisted Nerve it probably wouldn’t look or sound as good, and it certainly wouldn’t have such a top-drawer cast. But I can’t help thinking it would have been a lot more lively.</div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-61734993053230573792015-08-19T07:08:00.000-07:002015-08-19T07:08:23.810-07:00Night After Night After Night (1969)<div style="text-align: center;">
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Lewis J Force, the curiously named director of Night, After Night, After Night is in fact Britsploitation stalwart Lindsay Shonteff under an assumed name. Take the fact that the man at the helm of such trashfests as Permissive and Big Zapper didn’t want his own name attached to this film as a warning. Night, After Night, After Night is an hour and a half of wallowing in sleaze, and a fine example of the bright lights of the swinging 60s dimming to the gloom that would dominate British cinema in the 70s (even in films that weren’t meant to be gloomy). It’s a genuine B movie, from second feature specialists Butcher’s Film Distributors, and to some degree it feels like an update of another Butcher’s film, Cover Girl Killer, from ten years earlier. Like that film it features a crazed moral crusader in a strange disguise targeting young women they see as depraved but, well, there was a hell of a lot more to make moral crusaders crazed in 1969 than there was in 1959.</div>
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<img alt="Night After Night After Night (1969)" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2741 left" height="225" src="http://www.attackfromplanetb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/NightAfterNightAfterNight1.jpg" style="background-color: black; border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; float: left; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;" title="Night After Night After Night (1969)" width="300" />Young women are being stabbed to death in London by a mysterious man clad in leather. The case is being investigated by Detective Inspector Rowan (Gilbert Wynne) and becomes very personal when his wife (Linda Marlowe) falls victim to the killer. She’s knifed in the shower, which is a bit of a mistake because the last thing an extremely modest film like this should be doing is reminding people how good Psycho was. Anyway, Rowan begins a vendetta against cocky scofflaw Pete Laver (Donald Sumpter), who he’s convinced is the man responsible. Laver’s attitude to the opposite sex is pretty repellent (“makin’ birds is like a career with me… I bang every bird I meet” – that’s an example of the ridiculous dialogue he gets throughout), but he’s not the only suspect.</div>
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<img alt="Night After Night After Night (1969)" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2742 right" height="225" src="http://www.attackfromplanetb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/NightAfterNightAfterNight2.jpg" style="background-color: black; border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;" title="Night After Night After Night (1969)" width="300" />Judge Charles Lomax (sepulchural-voiced Jack May, best known to my generation at least as the voice of Igor in Count Duckula and hamming it up a treat here) is a “modern witchfinder” obsessed with putting a stop to “the filth and horror of the age”. He hands out grotesquely disproportionate sentences to defendants he views as morally unsound and has a near breakdown after delivering each verdict. Could he have taken to handing out rough justice of his own? Then there’s his clerk, Carter (Terry Scully, whose shifty appearance is perfectly used here) whose ringing denunciations of the permissive society draw even Lomax’s disdain for their extremity, but who spends his spare time goggling at porn mags and pawing at strippers in the fleshpits of Soho.</div>
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The killer’s identity, it must be said, doesn’t come as a massive surprise. And as the reveal comes half an hour before the film’s ending, we’re left with 30 minutes of him going increasingly barmy (including a strange incident of him dressing in appalling drag to evade police and then encountering some queerbashing youths who he swiftly turns the tables on) while Rowan and his colleagues encounter various obstacles in getting to him.</div>
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<img alt="Night After Night After Night (1969)" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2739 left" height="225" src="http://www.attackfromplanetb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/NightAfterNightAfterNight3.jpg" style="background-color: black; border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; float: left; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;" title="Night After Night After Night (1969)" width="300" />Night, After Night, After Night is not, in itself, a very fulfilling film (unless, perhaps, you’re especially keen on long scenes of heavy petting) but it’s an interesting one in terms of its place in British horror cinema. It revives the themes of Cover Girl Killer and Peeping Tom from ten years before but also looks ahead to the corrupt moral guardians of Pete Walker’s House of Whipcord and House of Mortal Sin. In fact, watching Night, After Night, After Night I found myself regularly thinking how much more frightening and wittier it would have been with Walker and his screenwriter David McGillivray behind the scenes. It can also be seen in terms of a sort of crude British version of the Italian giallo film. That seems almost an inherently funny idea, British filmmakers’ attitudes to sex and violence being generally so different from Italians’ – and certainly Night, After Night, After Night has no trace of the stylishness that makes gialli interesting. But while its killer doesn’t wear black leather gloves, he wears black leather everything else, and its plot’s as easy to imagine unfolding in the glamorously violent world of Dario Argento and his compatriots as it is against the grottier backdrop of a Butcher’s B-feature. Of course if it was a giallo it would need a far more absurd title: in deference to the most eccentric part of the murderer’s get-up it would surely have to be Death Wears a Beatle Wig.</div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-88578513589858540042015-08-19T07:02:00.001-07:002015-08-19T07:02:17.559-07:00Scream and Scream Again (1969)<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 20px 5px; text-align: center;">
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src="data:image/jpeg;base64,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" 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Yes, it’s a thoroughly generic title that could have been applied to any horror film ever made, but then a more specific title would probably have been just as confusing as the film itself. Scream and Scream Again is based on a novel by Peter Saxon (a pseudonym used by various writers of horror and sci-fi fiction in the 60s) called The Disorientated Man, and that’s a pretty good description of any man who sits down to watch Scream and Scream Again. For such a thoroughly commercial movie – it was a co-production between Britain’s Amicus Films and Hollywood’s American International Pictures – it’s got a pretty ambitious narrative structure. We’re given seemingly unconnected events in disparate locations, and the connection between them only slowly becomes clear (for some viewers, anyway. Others are left scratching their heads as the credits roll). This approach is largely down to screenwriter Christopher Wicking, confusing scripts for horror films being his stock in trade: see also Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb and Demons of the Mind – but Gordon Hessler’s psychedelic direction plays its part in baffling the viewer too.</div>
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<img alt="Vincent Price & Michael Gothard - Scream and Scream Again (1969) " class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2691 left" height="169" src="http://www.attackfromplanetb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/screamandscreamagain1.jpg" style="background-color: black; border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; float: left; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;" title="Vincent Price & Michael Gothard - Scream and Scream Again (1969) " width="300" />The puzzle pieces dished out to us: a runner (played, fans of cult TV may be interested to know, by Nigel Lambert, who did the voiceover for spoof schools programme Look Around You) collapses in central London and wakes to find himself in a private hospital ward complete with sinister/sexy nurse, and a new limb amputated every time we cut back to him (wonderfully bizarre, this). Also in London, Superintendent Bellaver (Alfred Marks) is investigating the murder of a girl whose body was drained of blood. The trail leads to her employer, the rather shifty Dr Browning (Vincent Price). And in an unnamed militaristic state (presumably in Eastern Europe somewhere) the seemingly superhuman Konratz (the rather wooden Marshall Jones, hilarious later in the film stalking the streets of London in a bobble hat) is letting nothing and nobody stand in the way of him seizing power, disposing of superiors who get in his way (including Peters Cushing and Sallis) with a deadly shoulder squeeze.</div>
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<img alt="Vincent Price - Scream and Scream Again (1969) " class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2692 right" height="169" src="http://www.attackfromplanetb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/screamandscreamagain2.jpg" style="background-color: black; border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;" title="Vincent Price - Scream and Scream Again (1969) " width="300" />The international intrigue elements of the film are a bit dull – the London sections are much more interesting, greatly benefiting from a droll performance from Marks, playing one of a long line of disgruntled detectives who pop up in British horror films. The gold standard is Donald Pleasence in Death Line, but Marks’ splendidly gruff Bellaver comfortably takes silver. The film’s most memorable character, however, is the mysterious Keith (Michael Gothard) the man behind the vampire murders (sorry for the spoiler, it’s not much of one). A louche dandy with an enormous blond bouffant and ruffled purple satin shirt, he’s the world’s most Swinging 60s looking person. We initially encounter him in the regulation 60s nightclub scene, which is pretty impressive here – the club looks huge and it’s chock-full of people dancing extremely self-consciously in wonderfully absurd outfits. The Amen Corner (of “If Paradise is Half as Nice” fame) are on stage, and their set obligingly includes a catchy number called “Scream and Scream Again”. However, a few rather too close shots of the singer reveal he’s not even opening his mouth. This club is where Keith picks up his victims, who he then brutally rapes and kills. One of them turns out to be an undercover policewoman, and this leads to the film’s main set piece, an incredibly long but pretty absorbing chase sequence that dominates the whole middle section of the film. This sequence is so lengthy compared to the head-spinning speed of the first part of the film that it throws Scream and Scream Again off balance, with scarcely half an hour left to explain what the hell’s going on.</div>
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<img alt="Peter Cushing - Scream and Scream Again (1969) " class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2689 left" height="169" src="http://www.attackfromplanetb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/screamandscreamagain3.jpg" style="background-color: black; border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; float: left; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;" title="Peter Cushing - Scream and Scream Again (1969) " width="300" />What the hell is going on? Well, I won’t spoil it for you – Scream and Scream Again is definitely worth a watch even if you can’t quite get your head round it. But it all winds up with a glut of exposition from Price (though there’s nobody I’d rather listen to a glut of exposition from) and a pretty perfunctory twist ending.</div>
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Scream and Scream Again’s main selling point was that it featured the big three horror stars of the time – Price, Cushing, and Christopher Lee – all together for the first time. It’s a con really, as only Price has more than a cameo (Cushing’s the worst served, with less than five minutes on screen before falling victim to Konratz’s deadly grip), and though Lee and Price have a scene together it’s more than a tad suspicious that they’re not seen in the same shot.</div>
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It’s difficult to see Scream and Scream Again as anything other than a confusing mess, but it is one<i> hell </i>of a confusing mess.</div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-4696021238412115522015-08-19T06:57:00.000-07:002015-08-19T06:57:16.088-07:00The Sorcerers (1967)<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 20px 5px;">
It's not unusual for a marriage to disintegrate from loving companionship into bitter battle of wills, but in The Sorcerers it happens both more quickly and more literally than usual. The film revolves around a trio of characters, linked in an ingenious way: Marcus and Estelle Monserrat are an elderly couple living a meagre existence in a dingy flat that seems a world away from the nightspots haunted by handsome swinging Londoner Mike (director Michael Reeves’ regular hero Ian Ogilvy) – although the film’s low budget means the nightclub setting seems scarcely less grotty than the Monserrats’ home. Marcus (a perfectly shabby, weary-looking Boris Karloff, seeming nothing like a Hollywood star on a visit home) is a medical hypnotist whose claims of his lasting fame are belied by his need to advertise in a poky local newsagent’s. Estelle (Catherine Lacey) is a loving companion who has patiently gone without as Marcus spent a fortune on building a bizarre machine in their spare room. Marcus’ quest for a subject to try his mysterious apparatus out on brings him into contact with jaded, thrill seeking Mike. Their late night meeting in a Wimpy bar (one of a series of joyous period bits, including a stack of Nova magazines and Cliff Richard’s “In the Country” on the radio) seems like an uneasy pick-up – “I could offer you an unusual evening,” Marcus promises, “some extraordinary experiences” – but Mike’s game enough to go along with it.</div>
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<img alt="The Sorcerers (1967) " class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2591 right" height="177" src="http://www.attackfromplanetb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/TheSorcerers2.jpg" style="background-color: black; border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;" title="The Sorcerers (1967) " width="300" />Marcus and Estelle hook Mike up to the machine, and several minutes of strange noises and a very 1967 light show later, they’re able both to control his actions and feel every sensation he does. Idealistic Marcus has conceived this as a way of allowing old people a new lease of life by letting them share the experiences of the young – and the couple’s initial excitement is rather sweet: the first thing they do is send Mike swimming. But a quick dip isn’t enough, for Estelle at least. Marcus shares the viewer’s horror as it emerges that far from the sweet little old lady she first appeared, Estelle is a monster. Estelle is one of the most frightening characters in any horror film: because she’s one of the most believable. Seemingly kind and gentle, as soon as she’s offered the opportunity to do anything she likes without consequence she seizes it with both hands, gleefully making Mike steal, viciously attack his friend Alan, and finally murder two girls (including anextremely young Susan George). There’s an uneasy message in all this to us, the audience, sat here experiencing all this violence on screen with no threat to ourselves.</div>
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<img alt="The Sorcerers (1967) " class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2588 left" height="177" src="http://www.attackfromplanetb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/TheSorcerers3.jpg" style="background-color: black; border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; float: left; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;" title="The Sorcerers (1967) " width="300" />Having been denied pleasure for so many years, Estelle’s impulses easily override Marcus’s more benign ones, and he helplessly finds her gaining complete control of Mike. Catherine Lacey’s performance is just incredible: her transformation from meek housewife to blood-crazed harpy is horribly convincing (the highlight perhaps being her queasily post-coital sigh of “that was the best yet” after she forces Mike to beat up Alan). And poor, good-natured, bewildered Marcus is one of the finest performances of Karloff’s career. It’s a real achievement of Reeves and his actors that The Sorcerers’ most compelling scenes consist of two old people talking.</div>
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If there’s one thing central to swinging London films it’s youth. Older people might turn up as local colour in the form of Irene Handl or Arthur Mullard but they’re rarely more than caricatures. This is what makes The Sorcerers startling even now: it’s one of the few films of the era that addresses the feelings of old people left behind by a society geared to the desires of the young. The film’s view of the older generation is stark and unsentimental, but it acknowledges that they’re people with desires as noble or as depraved as those of the young.</div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-46275810437334742432015-08-19T06:52:00.000-07:002015-12-22T06:26:14.372-08:00Goodbye Gemini (1970)<div style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white;">Alan Gibson is probably best known for two films he directed for Hammer: that masterpiece of kitsch <em>Dracula A.D. 1972</em> and its much more sober sequel <em>The Satanic Rites of Dracula</em>. <em>Goodbye Gemini</em> is an earlier Gibson effort that shares <em>A.D. 1972</em>’s setting of a swinging London past its best, but not its cartoonish feel. The revellers in <em>A.D. 1972</em> are crazy kids led astray by their craving for new kinds of fun; the denizens of <em>Goodbye Gemini</em>’s London are jaded deviants for whom fun is probably a distant memory. It’s hard to imagine a character like Freddie Jones’s laconically malicious queen in <em>Gemini </em>reacting to the suggestion of a black mass with more than a stifled yawn.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Infantile but strangely endearing twins Jacki and Julian (Judy Geeson and Martin Potter) are innocents abroad in this decadent metropolis, but there’s a very dark side to their love of childish games. Moving in to a palatial flat owned by their distant father, they’ve no compunction in removing the grim housekeeper when she threatens to limit their fun. An accident on the stairs involving the twins’ ever-present teddy bear Agamemnon is arranged shortly after they move in: we don’t find out if the poor woman survives it but she and her spoilsport rules aren’t seen again.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The twins are disturbingly close, but while Julian’s attempts at molesting Jacki show he loves her in a more than brotherly way, she’s becoming more interested in their new acquaintance Clive. He’s a debonair bisexual hustler who runs “queer boy circuses”, he’s played by <em>The Prisoner</em>’s Alexis Kanner and despite his ridiculous sideburns and even more absurd accent he’s probably the sexiest character called Clive in film history. In a fascinating scene for anyone familiar with London’s gay scene the twins first meet Clive at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, where popular drag act of the time (and a quick Google reveals he’s still going) Ricky Renee is stripping on the bar: a clear sign of the queer world they’re being dragged into. It’s a world Vito Russo, author of the influential study of gay characters in cinema <em>The Celluloid Closet</em>, would have been unimpressed by, but which from this distance seems more bizarre than offensive.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">It’s a world of non-stop partying, where the twins become a sort of sideshow attraction to onlookers including Freddie Jones and Terry Scully giving it their all as a bitchy gay couple and Michael Redgrave lending a touch of class as a furtive MP who becomes quietly obsessed with them. Clive quickly gets fed up with Julian’s possessiveness of his sister, so he decides to seduce the brother as well. In the film’s most startling scene Clive brings Julian to a hotel room where he’s raped by two drag queens (including the above mentioned Mr Renee) as Clive gleefully photographs the whole thing. His plan to use the photos to blackmail Julian so he can pay charmingly world-weary gangster Mike Pratt goes a bit wrong, however, and he soon falls victim to one of the twins’ little games.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Appropriately enough, <em>Goodbye Gemini</em> is a film of two halves: the first half, climaxing in the twins’ terrifying ritual murder of Clive, fizzes with energy and interesting characters, and is thoroughly absorbing. Sadly after that it all comes unstuck. Somewhat implausibly, considering her cheerful connivance in offing the housekeeper, Jacki’s role in Clive’s death causes her a mental breakdown: she loses her memory and spends most of the rest of the film wandering around London in a balaclava looking for her brother while Michael Redgrave behaves terribly concerned. Alexis Kanner’s such a weirdly charismatic presence that once he’s gone nobody really seems to know what to do. The film meanders to a talky conclusion and it’s all just horribly disappointing.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">One thing that doesn’t disappoint is the film’s frankly incredible soundtrack. The film kicks off with the Peddlers performing the thrillingly funky “Tell the World We’re Not In” over the credits and Christopher Gunning’s score bears comparison with Roy Budd’s music from the same year’s <em>Get Carter</em>. The music played at the parties in the film is music that would still sound bloody amazing at parties now. A re-release is more than overdue.</span></div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-56022290620752991122015-08-19T06:42:00.000-07:002015-12-22T06:15:50.054-08:00Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly (1970)<div style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white;">The best thing about <em>Halliwell’s Film Guide</em> is the capsule reviews that read like the work of a disapproving Victorian maiden aunt. The verdict on <em>Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly</em> is my absolute favourite: “Revolting black comedy for masochists, representing the British cinema at its lowest ebb”. Wow – who wouldn’t watch a film that inspires a write-up like that?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Halliwell’s ideas of what makes for a good British film are obviously very different from mine – and probably yours too as you’re visiting this blog.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><em>Girly</em> (as the title was abbreviated to in the US) is surely one of the most unusual and most entertaining of all British horror films – as well as one of the most thoroughly British. What does that mean? Well, for goodness’ sake, it’s got toasted teacakes and a Sooty doll in it! In short, it’s a film that’s got ‘Cult Classic’ stamped on every frame.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The nightmare of family life is frequently explored in 70s horror films: <em>Girly</em> takes a different tack from most by using the idealised English middle class family and its way of life as a gloriously macabre joke. The family at the centre of this film are psychopaths, yes, but <em>happy</em> psychopaths – because they live by the rules. These rules are handed down by supremely smug matriarch Mumsy (Ursula Howells), who’s aided in enforcing them by the not-terribly-bright Nanny (Pat Heywood). They’re obeyed implicitly by the dear children (actually grown-up, but clad in school uniform with behaviour to match) Sonny and Girly (Howard Trevor and Vanessa Howard). Some of the guests who the children find to bring back to the family’s big house (homeless men and bewildered drunks) are more troublesome, though, and frequent rule-breaking guarantees a trip on the train to see the angels…</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The family’s happiness is jeopardised by the arrival of a new friend (Michael Bryant). A drunken reveller picked up by the children, he’s accidentally responsible for the death of his girlfriend (Imogen Hassall, whose elegant beauty’s too much of a contrast to the film’s nursery rhyme world for her to stay around for long) during one of their games, and blackmailed into becoming the family’s new house guest. But he turns out to be far more cunning than previous visitors, and by skilfully twisting the rules to his own ends and exploiting the unspoken tensions behind the family’s jolly façade, he proves just as dangerous as they are.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Bryant’s great as the unwilling guest who eventually realises he can have a lot of fun with the women of the household, seducing them and playing them off against each other (personally I’d have liked to see him have a crack at the fey Sonny as well) – and it could be argued there’s a misogynistic agenda here, the female-dominated family perverted through lack of a father figure and the new friend putting things back to how they should be. But the film’s strongest (and deadliest) character turns out to be Girly. Vanessa Howard’s compelling performance regularly shifts from wide-eyed innocent to naughty schoolgirl to self-assured young woman, and her response to the new friend’s reassurances after he’s taken her virginity (he assumes) is to coldly spit “don’t be so bloody naïve” – a jolting moment that brings the whole nature of what’s really going on in that house into question. It’s never clear quite who has the upper hand in their relationship, and the film’s ending preserves the ambiguity.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Freddie Francis’s career as a director is to say the least a bit uneven, but <em>Girly</em>’s one of its highlights. The film’s scenes of violence are few, but Francis makes those literalising children’s games startling and highly effective (especially the “Tony Chestnut” scene – you’ll see what I mean). I haven’t read Maisie Mosco’s play <em>Happy Family</em>, which the film was based on (I don’t think it’s ever been published in book form) so I don’t know how much the film differs from it (though I’d guess that it ups the violence a bit), but the screenplay by Brian Comport is packed with grim humour, whether his own or Mosco’s.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">One of the strangest things about the film is how oddly hip the family’s little world now looks, with its broken dolls and twee Edwardiana (the work of art director Maggie Pinhorn and set decorator Dimity Collins – brilliant names, the pair of them). Mumsy and Girly’s wardrobes both look pretty trendy now as well, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see either of them swanning around the streets of Brighton (but with a few more tattoos).</span></div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-9436440207303945772015-08-19T06:35:00.002-07:002015-12-22T06:11:39.401-08:00Crucible of Horror (1970)<div style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white;">At the end of the 60s, ‘anti-psychiatrist’ R D Laing’s ideas about the family as an oppressive institution causing untold psychological damage to its members started to filter down into popular culture. Makers of horror films took them up with particular aplomb, and in the 70s unhealthy family relationships become as much of a horror cliché as fog-shrouded graveyards were in previous decades. They’re at the centre of some of the most interesting British horrors of the time, including <em>Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly</em>; <em>Goodbye Gemini</em>; <em>Demons of the Mind</em>; <em>The Creeping Flesh</em>; <em>Frightmare</em> – and this little curio.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">An arty, small-scale project, it was the brainchild of director Viktors Ritelis and actor Olaf Pooley, who wrote it and also pops up as a suspicious neighbour. The film’s original title was <em>The Corpse</em>. That’s a creepy and appropriate enough title but in their infinite wisdom the film’s American distributors retitled it <em>Crucible of Horror</em> (“crucible” is one of those words that sounds good in a horror film title even if it doesn’t have much to do with the film: see also the Mike Raven extravaganza <em>Crucible of Terror</em> – although that was called <em>Unholy Terror</em> in the US).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Michael Gough gives a pretty restrained performance (by his standards) as domestic tyrant Walter Eastwood. The first indication we get that his relationship with his teenage daughter Jane (Sharon Gurney) is a bit out of the ordinary is the sight of him furtively squeezing her bike seat shortly after she’s dismounted.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The second is the sight of him beating her senseless with a riding crop after learning she’s stolen money from the local golf club (and aroused the interest of its lecherous proprietor).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Jane gets no sympathy from her brother Rupert, an odious creep who idolises his father despite or because of his general terrorising of the family (and is played by Gough’s real-life son Simon). Mother Edith (Yvonne Mitchell) retreats from her nightmarish home life into her room, where she paints monstrous portraits of Walter.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The family’s strained dinner table conversation, full of subtle putdowns that wouldn’t be out of place in an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel, makes for uneasy viewing. “Oh God,” says Rupert, on realising he’s forgotten to buy a canvas for his mother. “I hardly think <em>He </em>would be interested”, Edith replies with subtle self-pity. Her face perfectly communicating a lifetime of disappointment, Mitchell’s brilliant performance is the heart of the film: Edith’s faraway manner conceals a burning hatred for her husband that quietly comes to a head after the assault on Jane. “Let’s kill him,” she says to her daughter at breakfast the morning after, and it’s her lack of emotion that makes it such a heartrending moment.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Edith and Jane follow Walter on a shooting weekend at the family’s country retreat, where Edith shoots her husband after explaining she’s been inspired by reading the Marquis de Sade in an effort to understand how his mind works: “it’s full of the most unutterable filth, but it opened a few windows for me”. Walter’s fear of his impending death is outweighed by his sheer outrage that his wife would dare handle one of his firearms. The women’s efforts to make the death look like an accident afford us the sight of a half-naked Michael Gough, something perhaps few people have ever wanted to see.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">But Walter proves no easier to handle in death than he did in life, his body disappearing and reappearing in disturbing fashion, leading to a creepy and entirely inexplicable conclusion. Meanwhile, Edith’s decaying mental state’s conveyed to us through the kind of psychedelic dream sequence that’s always a highlight of films from this era.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">This probably isn’t everyone’s idea of a classic horror film: anyone drawn in by the title and John Hotchkis’s utterly generic horror music (it sounds more like the theme to <em>Dark Shadows</em> than anything else) might be driven up the wall by the self-conscious artiness, the many talky scenes and the lack of any especially gruesome moments, let alone the lack of explanation for the strange goings-on. But it’s a disturbingly pessimistic portrait of middle-class family life as an inescapable prison, with a steadily mounting atmosphere of dread.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The current US DVD release of <em>Crucible of Horror</em> has absolutely diabolical picture quality, and the sound’s no better. If ever an obscure British film deserved to be given a brush-up by the BFI’s Flipside department it’s this one.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Oh, and even more inexplicable than the film’s ending is the presence of <em>this</em> in the Eastwood home:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Yes – it’s a Michael Gough mask! Why these aren’t readily available in the shops is beyond me: I don’t know about you but I now want one of these more than anything else on Earth.</span></div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-3355921998256482742015-08-19T06:27:00.001-07:002015-08-19T06:27:28.075-07:00Stratosfear<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<strong>Shadows</strong> is usually admirably spooky (when it doesn't get sidetracked into the realm of twee fantasy), but Ewart Alexander's <strong>The Eye, </strong>directed by Neville Green, is the only episode that's genuinely scary, even for an adult viewer (well this adult viewer, anyway). With its weird atmosphere and unfathomable story (seemingly) involving something gone wrong with time it feels more than anything like a <strong>Sapphire and Steel </strong>story a few years early. But there are no clever trans-dimensional agents to help out the kids caught up in this nightmare (and the feeling of being caught up in a nightmare is exactly what <strong>The Eye </strong>evokes).</div>
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In a rain-lashed house in Wales (decorated with several varieties of truly startling 70s wallpaper), nervous teenager Steve is frantically trying to tidy up before his dad's return home. Meanwhile his creepy sister George sits in the dark, staring at the pictures of historical figures pinned to her bedroom wall, and murmuring about time.</div>
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Steve's made uneasy by the strange atmosphere given off by a Greek urn in the hall commemorating the mythical blind wanderer Stratos. George is almost as obsessed with this as with her pictures from the past, and has taken up smashing crockery to make a huge mosaic of Stratos in the garage. As she seems to drift further into her own little world, Steve is increasingly terrified by strange sounds and images that fill the house, centred (for a reason that's never explained) on an over-boiling saucepan on the stove.</div>
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Eventually Dad arrives home - or does he? The figure that enters the house is wearing his bike gear, but is silent (apart from some scary heavy breathing) and apparently unable to see. And it seems to be searching for something...</div>
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What's going on in <strong>The Eye </strong>might be anyone's guess, but thanks to its weird, almost subliminal spectral images, a memorably frightening monster and John Sanderson's convincingly terror-stricken performance as Steve it becomes a classic of TV horror .</div>
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Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-82376655530716452232015-08-19T06:23:00.001-07:002015-08-19T06:23:48.747-07:00Deer Grandad<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
The opening titles of <strong>Shadows</strong><strong> </strong>bring the supernatural into the modern (for 1976) age of the high-rise. They're especially appropriate for <strong>The Inheritance</strong>, an episode written by Josephine Poole that contrasts that world unfavourably with the mysterious old ways of the countryside.</div>
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For many years Eli (John Barrett) has been a harbourer, or deer keeper, and is a countryman through and through. He feels a deeper connection with his deer than with any human being. But now he has a terminal illness, and goes to stay with his daughter Margaret (Priscilla Morgan) in the city, for what he knows will be his final days. In contrast to the slow, quiet Eli Margaret symbolises all that's inane about the urban world, with her endless chatter and fascination with her television and electric blanket. She's proud to have secured a job in an insurance firm for her school leaver son Martin (Dougal Rose), but Martin's only interest is nature, and it becomes clear that he and his grandfather are kindred spirits.</div>
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Eli tells Martin all about the ways of deer, and about the legendary horn dance, performed by antlered men, which he has always wanted to take part in. Later, on a visit to the local park, Martin sees ghostly figures performing the dance - but there are only five, where there should be six.</div>
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You've probably guessed the ending already - Eli dies during the night, while Martin dreams about the dance again: this time all the dancers are present, and when it ends the sixth dancer is revealed as Eli. Later Martin finds Eli's cottage and livelihood as harbourer has been left to him, and he takes it up, grateful to have escaped from a lifetime of insurance.</div>
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It's a slight story, but a quietly affecting one, and an example of how frequently themes of paganism, folk rituals and paeans to rural life turn up in 70s children's TV - see <strong>Children of the Stones</strong>, <strong>Sky</strong>, <strong>Raven</strong>, <strong>The Changes, </strong>etc. etc. The negative dream-images of the horn dance are especially haunting and make <strong>The Inheritance </strong>more than worth watching in themselves.</div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-17285805928527717432015-08-19T06:20:00.002-07:002015-08-19T06:20:56.339-07:00Brutalist Nightmare<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Hello. Here are some images from the wonderfully strange and creepy opening titles to the second series of Thames' fantasy and supernatural show for kids, <strong>Shadows</strong>, first broadcast in 1976 - in which a crow turns into a block of flats and then various other disturbing things happen.</div>
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Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-4812869809473071122015-08-19T06:10:00.001-07:002015-08-19T06:10:44.060-07:00This Body Is Mine<div class="mceTemp" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
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<em>Out of the Unknown </em>was a science fiction anthology show from the BBC, but it was always more likely to show two people chatting in a kitchen than any kind of special effects. A sort of speculative <em>Play for Today</em>, it was broadcast in the 60s and early 70s and due to the infamous lack of foresight of the era’s TV executives, few episodes still exist. This one, from 1971, does. Obviously.</div>
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Not one of the more conceptually ambitious episodes, <em>This Body is Mine</em> uses the well-worn notion of the bodyswap, adding a dollop of domestic drama and, most importantly, a splendid cast. Strapped into the requisite mind-switching machine are Hammer stalwart (as he seems destined always to be referred to) John Carson, and Jack Hedley, whose later career highlights include the lead role in Lucio Fulci’s infamous <em>The New York Ripper</em>. Carson plays milquetoast (I’ve always wanted to use that word) scientist Allen Meredith, who’s been shafted (in a financial sense) by his boss, gruff businessman Jack Gregory (Hedley). Allen’s charmingly simple plan for revenge is to swap bodies with Gregory (drugged) and then embezzle a large amount of money from his firm. Manning the controls of the machine is Allen’s bullying wife Ann, played by the wonderful Alethea Charlton, known to all Doctor Who fans as cavewoman Hur in the show’s very first story. Charlton’s good value in anything she pops up in, and I can think of few actors who do “devious” as well. Here are some pictures of Allen in a silly helmet and Ann looking evil in a remarkable pair of earrings:</div>
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Allen and Ann’s plan immediately hits a couple of snags: they’re seriously under-informed about Gregory’s stormy home life, and Allen’s a terrible actor (unlike Jack Hedley, who brilliantly conveys the scientist’s sheer awkwardness with the whole situation). The highlight of the episode is the scene where Allen (in Gregory’s body) returns to Gregory’s home, startling his wife in the middle of a dalliance with one of his accountants. She’s played with histrionic fervour by Sonia Graham, whose earrings are almost as impressive as Alethea Charlton’s. She spills out her frustrations with her marriage to the man in her husband’s body, who can only react with embarrassed bewilderment:</div>
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Things get worse at the office, as the hapless Allen has to contend with an amorous secretary, business dealings he doesn’t understand, and the violent lackeys of a gangster Gregory owes a lot of money. Meanwhile Ann’s keeping her husband’s body captive and is beginning to take a shine to its new, more assertive inhabitant, while Gregory’s starting to see his new anatomy as the perfect escape from his problems. Carson's just as good as Hedley, gleefully addicting a whole new body to nicotine.</div>
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As I’m sure you can imagine, it doesn’t end well. <em>This Body is Mine</em> is a diverting way to spend 50 minutes, especially if you have a particular interest in earrings. </div>
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Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-37126947388362274462015-08-19T06:02:00.005-07:002015-08-19T06:02:40.226-07:00The Phantom of the Opera (1962)<br />
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the time Hammer got round to their version of Gaston Leroux’s familiar tale of backstage blackguardery their initial cycle of classic horror remakes was running out of steam.</span> <span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s a lot to enjoy in this film and it looks really sumptuous in ‘Hammerscope’ but, bar the odd moment, there's a distinct lack of oomph.</span><br />
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anthony Hinds’ script deviates a lot from the book. For instance at the start of the film, instead of the opera’s leading lady being traumatised by a falling chandelier (that’s saved for later), here it’s a swinging body crashing through the scenery in a moment that would have looked great in 3D:</span><br />
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most obvious change is in the setting: Paris has been exchanged for a full-blooded 19<sup>th</sup> century London, shrouded in fog and populated by classic Victorian grotesques, all played by splendid character actors.</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s Michael Ripper and Miles Malleson as jolly cabmen:</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Scavenging theatre charladies, led by Miriam Karlin</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And best of all, the great Patrick Troughton as an over-enthusiastic ratcatcher: “They make a lovely pie, y’know!”</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sadly Patrick never gets to have his pie as he’s soon dispatched when a feral dwarf (Ian Wilson) stabs him in the eye – nothing else in the film quite matches this scene, a wonderfully gratuitous slice of grand guignol that’s among Hammer’s most startling moments:</span><br />
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You might well be thinking ‘A dwarf with a knife? I thought this was <em>Phantom of the Opera</em>, not <em>Don’t Look Now</em>’. Well, the dwarf’s another new addition – he’s the phantom’s sidekick and carries out all the brutal slayings of the film of his own volition, meaning that Herbert Lom as the phantom himself can get on with being all tragic and romantic. Lom’s really good at this – his resonant voice is especially effective – but one of the reasons the film doesn’t quite work is that his phantom’s just not crazed or vengeful enough. For the most part he’s a perfectly reasonable chap who’s just had a bit of bad luck in the face department. There’s a great moment of pure melodrama when the dwarf drags unconscious heroine Christine to the Phantom’s lair while the masked ghoul plays Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor – that favourite of organ-playing baddies everywhere - he doesn’t even have the standard obsessive romantic interest in Christine. This Phantom’s quite happy for her to carry on seeing handsome leading man Edward De Souza, he just wants to be her voice coach. Mind you, that’s not all that surprising seeing as Christine’s played by Heather Sears, whose most notable quality is her startling resemblance to 1980s Doctor Who companion Adric.</span><br />
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<img alt="" data-mce-src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/adric.jpg?w=200" height="400" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/adric.jpg?w=200" width="400" /></div>
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Uncanny, no? Anyway, neither dwarf nor phantom is the film’s real villain. That role’s taken by Michael Gough as the wicked Lord Darcy, playing him with the kind of campy relish generally reserved for the role of Abanazer in panto. Here he is. Boo! Hiss!</span><br />
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Darcy bought some music composed by mild-mannered, poverty-stricken Professor Petrie for a scandalously small amount and has made a huge amount of money by publishing it in his own name. Understandably aggrieved, the professor started a fire at the printer’s, but it just resulted in him being hideously scarred and retreating to the sewers to mope about in a mask as the Phantom. This is all revealed to us in a flashback in the film’s last half hour which badly dents the pacing of the film. The film’s conclusion is maddeningly unsatisfying: The Phantom turns up at Darcy’s home but rather than getting any real revenge on him is just satisfied with the scare the rotter gets when he pulls off the unfortunate professor’s mask (at this point Michael Gough’s performance goes so far over the top we almost lose sight of it):</span><br />
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<img alt="" data-mce-src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/phantom16.jpg?w=300" height="326" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/phantom16.jpg?w=300" width="640" /></div>
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Any of the tension you’d expect in the last 15 minutes of a horror film’s completely absent. Instead we get to see highlights from the Phantom’s opera about Joan of Arc, starring Christine in a wig that makes her look even more like Adric.</span><br />
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Phantom watches from his balcony with a tear in his remaining eye. But don’t worry, he doesn’t get a happy ending. That troublesome dwarf’s up in the rafters and (quite by accident, disappointingly) brings down the chandelier - Adric’s standing right underneath it! Quick as a flash the heroic phantom leaps from his box to get crushed under it instead, considerately tearing his mask off before he does so to let us get a look at his gooey, raspberry-ripple coloured visage.</span><br />
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<span data-mce-style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s all quite sad, really.</span><br />
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Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-71025410167360237902015-06-08T12:28:00.000-07:002015-06-13T08:56:34.627-07:00Adam and Nicole (1976)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirvJGQ9cyxVWSUJH3Mnk0C2Jrgn0sl8It2ZH_VzKbFg2j4VTNq7ustrIt_LLx-t6DGya_3pjgapyVMl7a43kx2gvRqtiifVZpl2RfGvzMQyERHRfkfaR0cUsb0xzxa2c_7t3ejyTHWLt9w/s1600/erotic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirvJGQ9cyxVWSUJH3Mnk0C2Jrgn0sl8It2ZH_VzKbFg2j4VTNq7ustrIt_LLx-t6DGya_3pjgapyVMl7a43kx2gvRqtiifVZpl2RfGvzMQyERHRfkfaR0cUsb0xzxa2c_7t3ejyTHWLt9w/s320/erotic.jpg" width="223" /></a></div>
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<b>Adam and Nicole</b>, originally titled <b>Erotic Inferno</b>, was seasoned sexploitation producer Bachoo Sen’s
first film since 1970’s <b>Love is a
Splendid Illusion </b>(which I’ve written about <a href="http://jollygoodbabylon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-z-of-britsploitation-l-is-for.html">here</a>), and the sole directorial
effort of Trevor Wrenn, who’d photographed <b>Symptoms
</b>and <b>The House That Vanished </b>for
José Larraz. It concerns a pair of
brothers, Martin and Paul Barnard (future <b>Emmerdale
</b>star Chris Chittell and pretty-eyed Karl Lanchbury), who are summoned to
the family home after the death of their father. Solicitor Mr Gold (Michael Sheard, before
gaining TV immortality as <b>Grange Hill</b>’s
Mr Bronson) informs them that they won’t be allowed in the house until the
reading of the will, and they’re forced to stay in the cottage occupied by
their father’s servants, the Adam and Nicole of the title (Michael Watkins and
Jenny Westbrook). As well as chauffeur and
procurer of bedmates (including his own lover Nicole) for Mr Barnard, Adam was
his eldest (though illegitimate) son, and Martin in particular is terrified he’ll
inherit all the old man’s moolah. </div>
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Tensions run high between the
three brothers, but this is all very much secondary to the film’s many sexual encounters:
it turns out that despite Adam’s possessive attitude toward her, Nicole is more
interested in Martin, while Paul instantly gets hot and heavy with Martin’s
girlfriend Brenda. There’s also a subplot (well, plot’s stretching it a bit)
featuring the lesbian activities of stablehands Gayle (Heather Deeley) and Jane
(Mary Maxted, shortly to rename herself Mary Millington and become Britain’s
biggest sex star). In the unlikely event anyone cares enough not
to want the twist ending spoiled, look away now: it turns out that old Mr
Barnard is still alive and living it up in his mansion with a lively pair of
blondes (Lindy Benson and Lynne Worral) – he was just playing a joke on his
sons. Adam is livid, Martin’s relieved,
and Paul’s too busy in bed with Brenda to care.</div>
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<b>Adam and Nicole</b> is as close as British softcore gets to proper
porn: what little story exists is there purely to string together the sex scenes
that take up most of the running time.
The performers are generally more convincing when, well, performing,
than when they’re delivering dialogue, though Chris Chittell shows some of the
same roguish twinkle he still deploys in <b>Emmerdale</b>
(no, not <i>that</i> roguish twinkle – thankfully
we don’t get to see that). Tony Kenyon,
who plays old Mr Barnard, impresses by giving the worst performance even though
he wasn’t hired to get his kit off. He, Michael Sheard and Brian Hawksley, who
plays a vicar – the only three members of the cast to remain clothed throughout
- are all listed in the credits as “guest stars”.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr5KtSIQKRiZNQcGQpu9YVs-SLWG8SIQP7xPrYIvOD2KMnMH8M56DYLjv27uvc9Pyt1vei1EJNR7T00qWaS5QyZdF1OR_fEeWMDkuG62Q2x429tpYG7n4_tQ-bsUoS-pW5rKY3nIEr-uT3/s1600/AN5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr5KtSIQKRiZNQcGQpu9YVs-SLWG8SIQP7xPrYIvOD2KMnMH8M56DYLjv27uvc9Pyt1vei1EJNR7T00qWaS5QyZdF1OR_fEeWMDkuG62Q2x429tpYG7n4_tQ-bsUoS-pW5rKY3nIEr-uT3/s400/AN5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Trivia</b></div>
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The music in <b>Adam and Nicole</b> all comes from the KPM library. Simon Haseley's "Precint", used to soundtrack a sex scene between Martin and Nicole, would have been familiar to viewers as the theme to Jon Pertwee-fronted ITV panel show <b>Whodunnit</b>.</div>
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Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-82106356917552589942015-06-04T11:11:00.003-07:002015-08-19T04:44:01.215-07:00The Abominable Snowman (1957)<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSRdwI8QNamfM8mqkOyijafe14R9E9sXGkZA9Zc6xQy4mUP8RjNLlPcn6SqR6Zu35nPrbOn6PCDkOVRPDEQtgRAIkh07TcYIUWxocf6DcaExBv0gqfDav9vzn6YosaiDVEKb4kcQ_fm_pH/s1600/Abominable.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSRdwI8QNamfM8mqkOyijafe14R9E9sXGkZA9Zc6xQy4mUP8RjNLlPcn6SqR6Zu35nPrbOn6PCDkOVRPDEQtgRAIkh07TcYIUWxocf6DcaExBv0gqfDav9vzn6YosaiDVEKb4kcQ_fm_pH/s400/Abominable.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><b>The
Abominable Snowman</b>, Hammer’s film of the same name tells us, is not in fact
the missing link between humanity and its ape ancestors, but a parallel
evolutionary development. The film
itself has a similar relationship to another Hammer film, <b>The Curse of Frankenstein</b>, made shortly beforehand. Both are attempts at following up the hugely
successful adaptations of Nigel Kneale’s <b>Quatermass</b>
series that had put the studio on the map, but they go about it in radically
differing ways. The makers of the Frankenstein
film jettisoned the sci-fi trappings of the <b>Quatermass </b>films and ramped up the horror content for an
Eastmancolor orgy of ripped bodices and even more ripped bodies; <b>The Abominable Snowman</b> cleaves closer
to the <b>Quatermass </b>template – it’s
another remake of a Kneale-scripted TV production (the 1955 play <b>The Creature</b>), and keeps the same
director, Val Guest. But here, the
horror is dialled down and <b>Quatermass</b>’s
scientific and philosophical elements brought to the fore. As you can see from the poster, this wasn't considered an attractive enough basis on which to sell the film.</div>
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Both films share the same leading man, Peter Cushing (who
reprises his role from <b>The Creature </b>in
its film adaptation), and in both he plays a scientist – but the two characters
are as different as the two films. Baron Frankenstein is a selfish monomaniac,
while John Rollason, hero of <b>The Abominable
Snowman</b>, is a sensitive soul horrified by the plans of Tom Friend, his
partner in the search for the yeti, to exploit the creature for financial
gain. In the TV version of the story,
Friend was played by Stanley Baker; for the film the role goes to visiting
American Forrest Tucker. It was standard
Hammer practice at this time to improve its films chances abroad by casting
American leads (as with Brian Donlevy in the <b>Quatermass </b>films), but Tucker very definitely isn’t the hero of
this piece, and by making the character American a whole new dimension is added
(an unflattering one to the Americans the film depended on for success).</div>
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Guest was adamant that the object of Cushing and Tucker’s
quest should never be fully shown on screen, believing the odd hint of its
appearance would be more powerful than an unforgiving shot of a man in a
monster suit. He may have had a point,
as what little we see of the creature is pretty underwhelming, but the lack of
any chance to see what it looks like properly means there’s little pay-off for
the endless scenes of men trekking through snow (in the Pyrenees in long shot
and Pinewood closer up) and arguing. Cushing and Tucker certainly play their
arguments well though, and there are excellent supporting performances from
Maureen Connell and Richard Wattis as his wife and assistant, fretting in a Tibetan
monastery during the yeti hunt. As is
usually the case in film and TV of this vintage, the non-speaking monks are
played by actual Asians (mostly waiters from the Chinese restaurants of Soho),
and the Lama - the only one who gets lines - by a white actor (German-born
Arnold Marlé) in highly unconvincing makeup.</div>
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<b>The Abominable
Snowman</b> (<b>of the Himalayas </b>was
tacked on to the title for its US release, possibly in case of litigious
abominable snowmen from other regions) did well in cinemas, but nowhere near as
well as <b>The Curse of Frankenstein</b>. Few can have been surprised to learn it was
blood and guts, not thoughtful science fiction, that audiences were more fired
up by, and it was the Frankenstein film’s visceral thrills that would determine
Hammer’s future direction – and that of Peter Cushing’s career.</div>
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<b>Trivia</b></div>
<br />
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal">10 years after its
release, <b>The Abominable Snowman </b>provided
inspiration for a <b>Doctor Who</b>
story with the near-identical title of <b>The Abominable Snowmen</b>.
As well as striking similarities in title, theme and setting, this
serial featured Wolfe Morris (the expedition’s native guide in both the
film and its TV forebear) as a character very like Arnold Marlé’s (though
a lot more sinister).</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">For the close-up of the yeti's shadowy face, it was played by character actor Fred Johnson, chosen by Val Guest for his wise, kindly eyes. Johnson had also been in <b>The Curse of Frankenstein</b> (as the old man who unwisely shoots at the Baron's monster) and would later appear in Hammer's <b>The Brides of Dracula </b>and <b>Taste of Fear.</b></li>
</ul>
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<div>
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Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-23211375425213185422015-05-28T11:38:00.003-07:002015-08-19T04:50:02.060-07:00The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZfKWhkwgyAPa6HZbvu20wpUNDR8m4n1PmLJ0n79Ngwm_-1ritncg-RPYoLEDbkOR4m_dmSKtTURwrPjdTmydOMEUUjRDLYIKGx4ZrgSgpJYaTUZGKDiN5UK2JksQ6UHiTbSeETFOGzEA-/s1600/Phibes7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZfKWhkwgyAPa6HZbvu20wpUNDR8m4n1PmLJ0n79Ngwm_-1ritncg-RPYoLEDbkOR4m_dmSKtTURwrPjdTmydOMEUUjRDLYIKGx4ZrgSgpJYaTUZGKDiN5UK2JksQ6UHiTbSeETFOGzEA-/s400/Phibes7.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Director Robert Fuest first came to international attention
with his work on the last series of TV’s <b>The
Avengers</b>, his idiosyncratic visuals a natural match for a show whose style
was its substance. Fuest’s fourth
feature film, <b>The Abominable Dr Phibes</b>
has the feel of an extended, unusually gruesome episode of <b>The Avengers </b>- but here, instead of doing battle with diabolical
masterminds, the sophisticated man and glamorous woman at the centre <i>are </i>the diabolical masterminds. The goodies here are grouchy Joseph Cotten
and a gaggle of more-or-less incompetent detectives (Peter Jeffrey’s Inspector
Trout being the least). The baddies are
a far more interesting proposition: Dr Anton Phibes (Vincent Price) is a
world-renowned organist and theologist, believed to have died in a car crash
but in fact hiding out in a sumptuous underground lair and plotting revenge on
the medics he holds responsible for his wife’s death on the operating
table. Mrs Phibes is played by 70s
horror icon Caroline Munro, but we only see her in photographs and, at the film’s
climax, as an embalmed corpse – the female half of the deadly duo is the beautiful
Vulnavia (Virginia North), who assists Phibes for reasons that remain entirely
mysterious. One thing that's missing is the witty repartee shared by <b>The Avengers</b>’
protagonists: Vulnavia is silent throughout, while that car crash robbed Phibes
of the power of speech, meaning that for most of the film Price is an entirely
physical presence, in a manner more expected from Christopher Lee (and one
which seems downright perverse for an actor known above all for his distinctive voice). We do eventually hear Price’s voice in distorted form, played through a
device Phibes has invented to speak with.
The doctor’s face was also horribly disfigured in the crash, meaning he wears
a ghastly, pallid mask of his own former visage. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLO8i0dIt08-37lfFstAGGmWim50KlkRhNJip4dtWFSSX42ibDC8Cx3IN2IfTf1EG_e2cqHHVx243WYNZ9iuk2GOAm7en5rU53AdjQp2S3utolhY1yy5cCynt4wLKva5rsenGwQWAipeFW/s1600/Phibes4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLO8i0dIt08-37lfFstAGGmWim50KlkRhNJip4dtWFSSX42ibDC8Cx3IN2IfTf1EG_e2cqHHVx243WYNZ9iuk2GOAm7en5rU53AdjQp2S3utolhY1yy5cCynt4wLKva5rsenGwQWAipeFW/s400/Phibes4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The climactic reveal of his horrifically burnt face at the film’s climax (a
callback to a similar scene in an earlier Price vehicle, <b>House of Wax</b>) was severely diminished by the heavy use of his skull-like features in the film’s publicity.</div>
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<b>Phibes</b>’ 1920s
setting is a refreshing novelty, and in keeping with it the plot is as
diaphanous as a flapper’s dress: Phibes kills each of the medics in a manner
based on one of the 10 plagues of Egypt (he’s very big on the Old Testament),
and the police try to stop him with the assistance of Dr Vesalius (Cotten),
whose name’s on the list. That’s it, but
it’s all strung together in highly entertaining fashion. Any real theologist is likely to raise an
eyebrow at the film’s interpretation of the plagues: the plague of lice is
replaced by one of bats, and despite sucking the blood of poor Dr Dunwoody
(Edward Burnham) they’re played by fruit bats rather than the genuine vampire
variety. Presumably these were chosen
for their impressive size, but they look entirely unthreatening. </div>
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Later, the plague of wild animals is
represented by Dr Whitcombe (Maurice Kaufman) being impaled on the horn of a
brass unicorn, which seems tenuous to say the least. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhglG-hbo4rMqPOzvQQDYf5hcPGo44bvd787KD_oIUP8F0pMrguyYeZcJvkqoF3umyofvkZvFgcF9WA7GY5yphQKTZl-h-RSovWtToc6AZN6R81E3OOXRNVWI0s6a9bhlIyRhpEhjQHTeKO/s1600/Phibes3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhglG-hbo4rMqPOzvQQDYf5hcPGo44bvd787KD_oIUP8F0pMrguyYeZcJvkqoF3umyofvkZvFgcF9WA7GY5yphQKTZl-h-RSovWtToc6AZN6R81E3OOXRNVWI0s6a9bhlIyRhpEhjQHTeKO/s400/Phibes3.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The most impressively staged of the murders
see Dr Hargreaves (Alex Scott) garrotted by a gorgeous, bejewelled frog’s head
mask, and Dr Kitaj (Peter Gilmore) eaten alive in the cockpit of a plane by rats. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnOO0nnpjlRGXdRohdHS7Ha4NcWGq8F4z5rKtVtlRAL3e2tqbz58NXewu1pAcvB1RmRFNiz4bo3V1GvpEvOC9kPI3vug4xEBeSuuPbSePbpU6Hh_I8r4y8Q_K8kI4CzqKK8DnO1kjifT6z/s1600/Phibes5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnOO0nnpjlRGXdRohdHS7Ha4NcWGq8F4z5rKtVtlRAL3e2tqbz58NXewu1pAcvB1RmRFNiz4bo3V1GvpEvOC9kPI3vug4xEBeSuuPbSePbpU6Hh_I8r4y8Q_K8kI4CzqKK8DnO1kjifT6z/s400/Phibes5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Phibes’ dousing of the sleeping Nurse Allen
(Susan Travers) in pureed sprouts through a hole in the ceiling before setting
a horde of locusts on her is agonisingly drawn out, but the pay-off of her
fleshless face covered in the crawling insects is nearly worth it.</div>
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There are some witty lines in James Whiton and William
Goldstein’s script, and a distinctive score by cult favourite composer Basil
Kirchin, but it’s how <b>Phibes </b>looks
that makes it unforgettable, and Brian Eatwell’s remarkable art deco sets and
Elsa Fennell’s costumes (particularly Vulnavia’s striking ensembles),
beautifully photographed by Norman Warwick, linger in the mind longer than
anything else.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGhk3uFBHCWkm3CmmdSPu-tDYmiJEtF4ZSANr5Vp1lgG2rnEOKESwkTJl85_4ndM1z_f0NLD-PJs8FZgGy5x6WUcjH7OCRzszT9ftCx0iRWrOcK9uH1OeimeBgWnArFEuYZSzbpPaOqiTq/s1600/Phibes1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGhk3uFBHCWkm3CmmdSPu-tDYmiJEtF4ZSANr5Vp1lgG2rnEOKESwkTJl85_4ndM1z_f0NLD-PJs8FZgGy5x6WUcjH7OCRzszT9ftCx0iRWrOcK9uH1OeimeBgWnArFEuYZSzbpPaOqiTq/s400/Phibes1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Trivia<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 37.5pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Familiar faces in the cast include Hugh Griffith
and Terry-Thomas, billed third and fourth but with minimal screen time as an
exposition-spouting rabbi and a victim of Phibes who’s bled to death
respectively. John Laurie makes a tiny appearance
(that looks like it’s been heavily cut) as a senile music seller. Future <b>Doctor
Who </b>companion Ian Marter and <b>Inspector
Morse</b>’s boss James Grout both appear briefly as policemen.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 37.5pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Joanna Lumley had a small role as a lab
assistant, but her scenes were cut from the finished film.</div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-72755050929206358622015-05-25T13:03:00.001-07:002015-08-19T04:55:50.297-07:00Adventures of a Plumber's Mate (1978)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpUVzcW-AarTFjr2jsb8yi4Y3yxrnf6BD_kZVhPQ82XW6EkDAGOnC519r_-6WWZso3S4WsoRGuJ5QKpvnPunHl7evB3NTeIvA6uN1FxO977XM81K8GukmY_QVyguEcKYGjchzPiEFA1ID1/s1600/Adventures_of_a_Plumber%2527s_Mate_FilmPoster.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpUVzcW-AarTFjr2jsb8yi4Y3yxrnf6BD_kZVhPQ82XW6EkDAGOnC519r_-6WWZso3S4WsoRGuJ5QKpvnPunHl7evB3NTeIvA6uN1FxO977XM81K8GukmY_QVyguEcKYGjchzPiEFA1ID1/s320/Adventures_of_a_Plumber%2527s_Mate_FilmPoster.jpeg" width="221" /></a></div>
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The third film in Stanley Long’s <b>Adventures </b>series starts off with a
credits sequence featuring crude, lavatory-themed cartoons. But where the previous films in the series
had theme songs related to the hero’s profession (<b>Taxi Driver </b>and <b>Private Eye</b>
respectively), this time we just get a generic disco song called “I’m
Flying”. As with <b>Private Eye</b>’s theme it’s written and sung by star Christopher Neil,
and he’s not the only one who seems to have found little inspiration in the
world of plumbing: much of what happens in the film itself is entirely
unrelated to it.</div>
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The absence of reliable
screenwriter Michael Armstrong this time round is keenly felt. In what initially seemed a bit of a coup,
Long had engaged the services of Stephen D Frances to write the script. Though his own name was unknown, Frances had
originated the Hank Janson series of spicy pulp thrillers that became a
publishing phenomenon in the 50s. Unfortunately,
Long found that Frances’ ideas about what was sexy, and what was funny, were
stuck in that era. The attempt to cobble
together a workable script is sadly all too apparent: the film’s really just a
string of barely related sketches, but with far more of a feel of desperation
about it.</div>
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Initially it seems like the film’s
going to revolve around the toilet seat Neil replaces for bondage-loving
housewife Prudence Drage: unknown to either of them it’s made out of gold bars
melted down by her criminal husband (Leon Greene), who’s just got out of prison
and wants it back (the Golden Toilet Seat sounds like an award given to films
of this type). However, this plotline
comes to a premature end after the seat’s acquired by detective Richard
Caldicot, with only a callback to it at the very end of the film, by which time
the audience is likely to have forgotten all about it. The remainder of the action sees Neil attempting
to get hold of enough money to pay off a superannuated pair of bookies’
enforcers (Arthur Mullard and Jerold Wells), in brief sketches that see him
alternating legitimate work for his plumber boss B A Crapper (Stephen Lewis doing
his usual Blakey schtick) and small-time villainy for seedy crook Dodger
(Willie Rushton in a role intended for Jimmy Edwards, who proved too drunk to
play it).</div>
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Memorable moments (“highlights”
would be stretching it a bit far) include a housewife (Lindy Benson) getting
her dress pulled off after catching it in a waste disposal unit, and Neil
attempting to blackmail a massage parlour owner but ending up black and blue at
the hands of mammoth masseuse Claire Davenport.
Most mind-boggling of all is the wild party held by wealthy dominatrix
Anna Quayle (doing an “Ah do declayuh” Southern US accent for no obvious
reason) at which Neil attempts to steal a Picasso. Here, Christopher Biggins can be seen as a
young man in love with a blow-up doll, and we reach the peak of 70s sexcom
homophobia with an old queen (David Rayner, who played a similar character in
Hylda Baker sitcom <b>Not on Your Nellie</b>)
who gets off on the threats of violence with which Neil greets his advances.</div>
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<b>Adventures of a Plumber’s Mate </b>has a much grimmer feel than either
of the earlier films in the series, and Neil’s character is, generally, much
less likeable than the hapless berk he played in <b>Private Eye</b>. Here he’s
deliberately written as a male chauvinist pig, and his less-than-convincing
Cockney accent doesn’t do anything to increase his appeal. After this role, Neil decided to concentrate
full-time on music and, give or take a few episodes of BBC children’s programme
<b>You and Me</b>, it was his last screen
performance. His subsequent achievements
included discovering Sheena Easton and producing hits as diverse as Dennis
Waterman’s “I Could Be So Good for You”, Celine Dion’s “Think Twice” and Cher’s
“Walking in Memphis”. You may recall
that the heroes of the previous <b>Adventures
</b>films were named Joe North and Bob West.
The lead character in this opus is Sid South. Although <b>Plumber’s
Mate</b> did better financially than <b>Private
Eye</b>, Stanley Long decided to end the series with this one, meaning that sadly
the compass was never completed – though there’s some consolation in the fact
that John M East was a key figure in British sexploitation’s final years.</div>
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<b>Trivia </b></div>
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</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Elaine Paige, an unknown actress friend of
Christopher Neil’s, was given the part of Suze, the regular girlfriend for whom
he contemplates chucking in his womanising ways.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">By the time of </span><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Adventures of a Plumber’s Mate</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">’s release, she had become a West End
star thanks to her lead performance in Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s </span><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Evita</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">
</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Despite keeping her clothes on throughout, the film proved an
embarrassment to her and she exerted legal pressure on Stanley Long to keep her
name off any publicity.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Richard Caldicot, Willie Rushton, Anna Quayle,
Leon Greene and Jonathan Adams all return from the previous </span><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Adventures </b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">film.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Stephen Lewis and Prudence Drage were both in
</span><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Adventures of a Taxi Driver</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Stephen Riddle, who played drag queen Bunny
McQueen in </span><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Taxi </b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"><b>Driver </b>(and was the casting director on <b>Private Eye</b>), appears
briefly as a heavily-bandaged former victim of Arthur Mullard.</span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Other familiar faces in the cast include
former </span><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Please Sir!</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> star Peter Cleall
and Derek Martin, best known in years to come as </span><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">EastEnders</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">’ Charlie Slater.</span></li>
<li><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Confessions
of a Plumber’s Mate</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"> had been mooted as a fifth and final entry in Columbia’s
rival sexcom series before Stanley Long started work on this film, though this
appears to have been simply a coincidence.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-84497337529633520672015-05-25T13:00:00.000-07:002015-08-19T05:06:17.054-07:00Adventures of a Taxi Driver (1976)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsgHdHYxvGuFmlq4wo73TZZR6nwY02lrGXdRa2I_8VlKI_gRjTVz_yxLWbELYDGbCR1NlJoC_UUWQwf7HM5KLnxK0JnqRliX6Wtzksbc5xIBQPlXBfxpj_MdvVgEnn30QyKb2vV-7XTTNb/s1600/taxi+driver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsgHdHYxvGuFmlq4wo73TZZR6nwY02lrGXdRa2I_8VlKI_gRjTVz_yxLWbELYDGbCR1NlJoC_UUWQwf7HM5KLnxK0JnqRliX6Wtzksbc5xIBQPlXBfxpj_MdvVgEnn30QyKb2vV-7XTTNb/s320/taxi+driver.jpg" width="232" /></a></div>
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Any search for the ancestors of the 70s sex comedy would be
bound to light on Clive Donner’s 1967 film <b>Here
We Go Round the Mulberry Bush</b>.
Cycling around the sparkling new streets of Stevenage (a surprisingly
vivid setting) and lusting after every female in sight, the film’s hero, 17
year old Jamie McGregor (Barry Evans) is a prototype for the randy Jack the
Lads who’d infest the nation’s fleapits in the next decade. Scenes of him fantasising about the older
women he delivers groceries to could almost be subtitled <b>Confessions of a Delivery Boy</b>.
But for the most part, fantasise is all Jamie does: his attempts to get
his end away with an assortment of dolly birds are all frustrated, until he
finally loses his virginity to the beautiful, seemingly unattainable girl (Judy
Geeson) he wanted most of all – after which it becomes clear she’s not the girl
for him after all. The film ends with
Jamie poised on the edge of growing up as he heads for university and a
relationship with sensible Diane Keen.
His lustful ways, we’re led to infer, are just an inevitable teenage
phase.</div>
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<br /></div>
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In the sex comedies of the 70s, men never surrender willingly
to the passing of this phase . There’s
no better way of comparing their outlook with that of <b>Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush </b>than <b>Adventures of a Taxi Driver</b>, the first of three “On the Job”
sexcoms from Stanley Long. Made nine
years later, it reunites four of <b>Mulberry
Bush</b>’s young cast members. Barry
Evans (whose cheeky chappie persona was by now familiar from the TV sitcoms <b>Doctor in the House</b> and <b>Doctor at Large</b>) stars again, this time
as cab driver Joe North. As in <b>Mulberry Bush</b>, he keeps the audience
aware of his thoughts by talking to the camera throughout (it gets a bit creepy
at times here, with him informing us of his plans to seduce women who in
reality would be able to hear every word he’s saying). Judy Geeson again plays the unattainable girl
who’s the summit of his ambition: though this time it’s simply because his
friend Tom (Robert Lindsay) got there first.
Geeson’s character, Nikki, is a stripper, yet she’s one of the few women
in the film who remains clothed throughout.
At one point Joe goes to pick her up from the club where she works in
the hope of seeing her act, but misses it and instead sees her colleague Helga
(Anna Bergman, daughter of Ingmar, who would star alongside Evans in the sitcom
<b>Mind Your Language</b> from the
following year. She only has one line in
<b>Taxi Driver</b>: “Ouija board? What
Ouija board?”). After a game of “strip
spin the bottle”, Joe and Helga end up in bed, where they’re discovered by Joe’s
fiancée Carol (Adrienne Posta).</div>
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<br /></div>
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As in <b>Mulberry Bush</b>,
Posta (who also sings the theme song, which designates the hero as a “Cruising
Casanova”) represents a fate from which Evans’ character is trying to
escape. In the earlier film she was the
slow-witted, common-as-muck former classmate of Jamie’s, his abortive attempt
at seducing her demonstrating to him how far up the social scale his grammar
school education had taken him. Here,
her character’s only purpose is to drag Joe down, to entrap him in a clearly
unwanted marriage. Carol also keeps her
clothes on, though the sense is that for Joe at least this is a mercy. Despite her role as the conventional,
marriage-minded girl, Posta’s look – cropped peroxide hair and Bride of
Frankenstein makeup – is pure punk. She
looks, quite literally, a fright.</div>
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The final cast member of <b>Mulberry Bush </b>to turn up in these reduced circumstances is Angela
Scoular<a href="file:///C:/Users/Ivan/Documents/Britsploitation%20from%20A%20to%20X/Adventures%20of%20a%20Taxi%20Driver.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. As in the earlier film, she’s one of the
girls who the hero dallies with along the way (though this time with
considerably more success). In <b>Mulberry Bush </b>she was a hoot as
upper-crust featherbrain Caroline. Here
she’s given the generic role of a housewife customer who Joe ends up sharing a
bath with, only for it to be interrupted by the premature arrival of her
husband. He’s a grey executive played by
Brian Wilde (one of several sitcom stars making an appearance), who voices his
disapproval of a colleague who “runs a Ford Anglia and doesn’t play golf” while
Jamie hides underwater, almost drowning.
Other conquests during the course of the film include posh Prudence
Drage and a suicidal young woman played by Jane Hayden, lookalike sister of <b>Confessions of a Window Cleaner</b> star
Linda (as if to underline the point, her character’s called Linda). Joe talks her down from Lambeth
Bridge and takes her home to deliver his own brand of comfort. Her husband turns up too – he’s played by <b>Dad’s Army</b>’s Ian Lavender. </div>
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<br /></div>
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There’s also a “narrow escape” with female impersonator
Bunny McQueen (Stephen Riddle), whose sex Joe only discovers when he reaches a
hand up his skirt (the response to this is comparatively free of homophobia,
Joe simply pondering to camera “I wonder if I could have him done under the
trades descriptions act?”).
Intriguingly, Joe seems to fancy Bunny more than any of the actual women
he meets. Could his claim that Bunny’s
(fake) breasts are the “most wonderfully shaped” be a subtle reference to the
unrealistic expectations men have of women? (It’s unlikely). Liz Fraser connects the <b>Adventures </b>films with their <b>Carry
On </b>forebears (and also to the <b>Confessions
</b>films, the next instalment of which she’ll appear in) as a gossipy
prostitute who regularly sees clients in Jamie’s cab (one of the film’s rudest
jokes has her going down on a city gent in the back of the car when Jamie has
to brake quickly: the man’s anguished gasps are accompanied by a close-up of an
advert for <b>Jaws)</b>.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Adventures of a Taxi
Driver</b> is clearly a response to Columbia’s massively successful <b>Confessions </b>films (though made for a
fraction of the cost), although Stanley Long played this down, insisting his
films were based on “comic truth” rather than the slapstick of the rival films. Disingenuous as this sounds, there’s some
truth in it, particularly in the kitchen sink feel of the scenes at home with
the North family (as far down market from the suburban, lower middle class
McGregors as <b>Adventures of a Taxi Driver
</b>is from <b>Here We Go Round the
Mulberry Bush</b>): resentful single mother (Diana Dors in full-on fishwife
mode), thieving brother Peter (Marc Harrison, star of spooky kids’ show <b>Sky</b>, minus the wig and freaky contact
lenses) and lawless baby sister. What
little plot the film features between its set pieces revolves around Joe
leaving the family home to move in with Tom and Nikki, and becoming unwillingly
involved with a gang of thieves that includes both Tom and Peter. Evans makes a more engaging (and attractive)
sexcom lead than most, in turn helping to make <b>Adventures of a Taxi Driver</b> more engaging and attractive than many
of its contemporaries.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Trivia</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Other familiar faces in the cast include </span><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">On the Buses </b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">star Stephen Lewis in a
brief cameo as a strip club doorman and Jack Haig, who’d later become best known as
useless spy LeClerc in </span><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">‘Allo, Allo!</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">,
uncredited for his tiny role as a priest.</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">The film begins with a spoof documentary-style
celebration of the London cabbie, with a voiceover from David Brierley, who’d
stand in as the voice of robot dog K9 for the 1979-80 series of </span><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Doctor Who</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Michael Armstrong, who wrote most of the film’s
script uncredited, appears briefly as a
customer of Joe’s, while another key figure in British sexploitation, Pete
Walker, has a cameo as a Rolls Royce driver.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div>
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<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Ivan/Documents/Britsploitation%20from%20A%20to%20X/Adventures%20of%20a%20Taxi%20Driver.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Several other young cast members from <b>Here
We Go Round the Mulberry Bush</b>, including Christopher Timothy, Nicky Henson
and the above-mentioned Diane Keen would also turn up in 70s sex comedies,
though as with Robert Lindsay in <b>Adventures
of a Taxi Driver</b> they were stopping off on the way to more respectable TV
fame.</div>
</div>
</div>
<br />Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-54710752834022606812015-05-19T13:27:00.001-07:002015-08-19T05:18:39.636-07:00Adventures of a Private Eye (1977)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifSMuT3nkN7LhIFPWWX_-oth74wsKGiPVI_5UN1nE8eU5nxElT-vV92JmiL4NWgzBpGAmMWhotrRipKm79j8oDqZGuIIYCTbUnKtkZHPNRanAKhnIrfw9hTpFDKnTvZpp92wwV1rrHsHi0/s1600/adventures_of_a_private_eye_ukquad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifSMuT3nkN7LhIFPWWX_-oth74wsKGiPVI_5UN1nE8eU5nxElT-vV92JmiL4NWgzBpGAmMWhotrRipKm79j8oDqZGuIIYCTbUnKtkZHPNRanAKhnIrfw9hTpFDKnTvZpp92wwV1rrHsHi0/s400/adventures_of_a_private_eye_ukquad.jpg" width="280" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A beautiful young woman is targeted by a mysterious
blackmailer. She turns to a private
detective for help and he finds himself drawn into a web of intrigue, murder
and bare breasts involving a sinister, cursed family and a night club run by
gangsters. It could be the plot of one
of the Italian <i>giallo</i> films Suzy
Kendall starred in during the 70s, but in fact it belongs to a film she made
back home in Britain that’s about as far from a <i>giallo</i> as it’s possible to get.
Other than the bare breasts.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Laura Sutton (Kendall) could be about to lose out on an
inheritance from her octogenarian millionaire fiancé Ashley Grimsdyke when she’s
threatened over some explicit photos of her being unfaithful with <b>Bless This House</b>’s<b> </b>Robin Stewart. The private
eye she seeks out is Judd Blake (Jon Pertwee, associated in the public mind
with mystery as host of TV panel game <b>Whodunnit?</b>). But he’s just gone abroad, so his inept
assistant Bob West takes charge of the case instead. His name’s clearly a riff on that of Joe
North, hero of Stanley Long's previous film <b>Adventures of a Taxi
Driver</b>, but Barry Evans passed up the chance to appear in the follow-up (though he starred in the even further downmarket <i>Under the Doctor </i>the same year) and was
replaced by Christopher Neil, whose sexcom pedigree included roles in <b>The Sex Thief</b><i> </i>and the Stanley Long-produced <b>Eskimo Nell</b>. Neil also sings
the film’s theme song, which he co-wrote with Paul Nicholas, whose hits “Dancing
with the Captain” and “Grandma’s Party” Neil was also partly to blame for.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As if to compensate for being taken off theme song duty this
time round, Adrienne Posta performs two numbers in her role as Lisa Moroni, an
unsubtle spoof of Liza Minnelli. “Make
my pendulums swing,” she demands in one of them, and sure enough we get to see
her pendulums in full swing in the very next scene. Several other members of Long’s “repertory
company” also return from the first <b>Adventures
</b>film: Ian Lavender gets a bigger role this time around as Bob’s friend Derek,
who does most of the actual detecting alongside Bob’s comically “ugly”
secretary Maud Gubbidge (future <b>Coronation
Street </b>star Veronica Doran) while Bob has various cack-handed encounters
with loose women. One of these is Angela
Scoular, another returnee, once again playing a lustful housewife, this time
with a very unattractive grey perm. Diana
Dors is back too, popping up for one scene only as a charwoman, and sporting the
same vividly floral tabard she wore in <b>Taxi
Driver</b>. Finally, Liz Fraser plays
eccentric vegetarian Violet, one of the dysfunctional Grimsdyke clan who are
the prime blackmail suspects. The other
family members are boggle-eyed lecher Harry H Corbett, bonkers psychic Anna
Quayle and buxom (and seemingly dubbed) Linda Regan. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes,
Neil and Regan have sex in a boat in full view of a rowing team (Neil’s manhood
can be briefly spotted in this sequence).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As you might expect, the mystery plot is a wholly
perfunctory excuse to string together a lot of a comic sketches: the final
denouement, arrived at by Lavender, Doran and seedy reporter Willie Rushton, is
rushed, barely comprehensible, and intercut with vivid images of Neil escaping
from Posta’s mafia boyfriend (head Tomorrow Person Nicholas Young) disguised as
an Arab woman. For reasons too baffling
to recount, he ends up naked in an open grave, at a funeral. Still, it’s one of the most agreeable films
of its type, with a couple of truly wonderful moments. One of these has Fred Emney, in his final
film role, being absolutely hilarious as a sozzled aristocrat trying to get
into the knickers of a dragged-up Christopher Neil. The other sees Neil, on his way to dispose of
a body, waylaid by yet another horny housewife (Hilary Pritchard), whose
voracious consumption of “sex films” has led her to believe that all passing
men are up for it. And it seems
she’s not wrong (“I would have suggested <b>Deep
Throat</b>, but I tried it with the window cleaner last week and nearly choked
myself”). It’s a return to the satire
of the porn industry writer Michael Armstrong had previously given us in <b>Eskimo Nell</b>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Adventures of a
Private Eye</b> saves its most grimly memorable moment for its final scene: Pertwee
returns from Beirut and tells everybody how bloody obvious everything was all along
while in the nude (he’s getting a massage).
Then a desk fan falls on his crotch after Bob trips over a wire. I imagine there wasn’t a dry eye in any house
where this film played.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Trivia <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Other familiar faces in the cast include Irene
Handl (doing her posh voice) as a nosy neighbour called Miss Friggin, <b>Rocky Horror Picture Show</b> star Jonathan
Adams as Angela Scoular’s police inspector husband, and Peter Moran (later <b>Grange Hill</b>’s Pogo Patterson) as their
young son (who’s named Willy, purely so his father can exclaim “What a big
Willy I’ve got!”). Richard Caldicot, who
plays the Grimsdykes’ butler, co-starred with Jon Pertwee on radio in <b>The Navy Lark</b> for many years.</div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-79118417625295492852013-03-31T12:31:00.001-07:002013-03-31T12:31:25.200-07:00Britsploitation from A to Z: Z is for Zeta One (1969)<br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; line-height: 19.09090805053711px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
<img alt="" class="aligncenter" height="493" scale="0" src="http://images.moviepostershop.com/zeta-one-movie-poster-1970-1020209244.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="368" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, I’m feeling in a bit of a party mood as here we finally are at the end of this A-Z thing. And there couldn’t possibly be a better film to celebrate with than this. You need to understand from the off that <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zeta One </em>makes no sense at all. It’s utterly disjointed and any attempt at a storyline takes a distant second place to ensuring as much screen time as possible is devoted to scantily-clad women. It’s exploitation film-making in the incoherent tradition of American directors like Doris Wishman and Ed Wood. And where Wood had Bela Lugosi, <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zeta One</em>’s director Michael Cort has Charles Hawtrey (they even wear similar hats).</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; line-height: 19.09090805053711px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It belongs to that most 60s of genres, the Bond spoof-sci-fi-sexploitation film (quite a specialist genre, I grant you). Here the 007 substitute is called James Word (just one of many things that will have you spluttering ‘Eh?!’ at the screen if you ever dare to watch this film), and he’s played by Robin Hawdon. Hawdon is perfect casting as he looks exactly like a cross between Sean Connery and Roger Moore (yes, I know Roger Moore hadn’t been cast in 1969: perhaps this gave them the idea. OK, probably not). Here he is pulling as typical a sex comedy face as you’ll ever see (slightly different to a comedy sex face):</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; line-height: 19.09090805053711px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/sex-comedy-face.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-217 aligncenter" height="224" originalh="224" originalw="292" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/sex-comedy-face.jpg?w=292&h=224" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/sex-comedy-face.jpg?w=438&h=336" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Sex comedy face" width="292" /></span></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; line-height: 19.09090805053711px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We have the requisite Maurice Binder on the (very) cheap title sequence, accompanied by an unnamed singer Basseying nonsensical lyrics (“Call Zeta! Zeta! Zee-E-T-A Zeta!”) over a Johnny Hawksworth tune that starts off all John Barry and ends as an amazing psychedelic freakout. For some inexplicable reason our M substitute (W) has an American accent, but we’ll pass over that. Substituting for Miss Moneypenny is future <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lust for a Vampire </em>star Yutte Stensgard as Ann Olsen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The main thrust of the film involves superwomen from a mysterious place called Angvia (think of it as a Countdown conundrum) kidnapping the beautiful young women of Britain (well, mainly strippers) and forcibly recruiting them to their cause (not entirely sure what that cause is, but I imagine it involves death and destruction to all men, that’s the usual drill). But just where is Angvia? “I think it’s out in space somewhere,” Word muses, “or perhaps it’s not”. Wherever it is, it’s accessed via an interdimensional portal in the back of a removal van. It’s a “vast supernatural ant colony” apparently, and the queen ant is the mysterious Zeta (Dawn Addams, who’d later reprise her role as leader of a world of women in TV’s<em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Star Maidens, </em>wearing an even more absurd costume than the meringue she sports here). The Angvians’ archenemy is master criminal Major Bourdon, who’s determined to winkle the secrets of their amazing technological advances out of them. Improbably enough, Bourdon’s played by that stalwart of the <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Doctor</em> films (and bear sex symbol) James Robertson Justice. It’s frankly quite distressing seeing Justice play Bourdon, a drooling sleazeball whose point of view shots generally involve women’s crotches. There’s no shortage of ridiculous dialogue in<em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zeta One</em>, but Justice’s outraged cry of “There’s a bint in the bushes!” is an especially giddy highlight. He’s quite something to see, and as Davina McCall might say, here’s a selection of his best bits:</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/jrj1.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-226" height="230" originalh="230" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/jrj1.jpg?w=300&h=230" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/jrj1.jpg?w=450&h=345" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="JRJ1" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/jrj2.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-227" height="219" originalh="219" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/jrj2.jpg?w=300&h=219" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/jrj2.jpg?w=450&h=329" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="JRJ2" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/jrj3.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-214" height="230" originalh="230" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/jrj3.jpg?w=300&h=230" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/jrj3.jpg?w=450&h=359" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 4px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="JRJ3" width="300" /></span></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes, he is actually twirling his moustache.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Charles Hawtrey has much less fun as Bourdon’s chief henchman Swyne. It’s a thoroughly generic part, and bereft of the camp joie de vivre of a Carry On script, Hawtrey’s a subdued, rather sad presence. One shot in particular, of his translucently pale face peering out of a phone box, has a strangely haunting quality:</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/phonebox-charlie.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-215" height="230" originalh="230" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/phonebox-charlie.jpg?w=300&h=230" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/phonebox-charlie.jpg?w=450&h=345" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Phonebox Charlie" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Apart from that Hawtrey only gets one decent scene, sparring with Rita Webb, who pops up briefly as a belligerent bus conductor. Unless you count the bit where he shows some thigh, of course.</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/charlie-and-rita.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-211" height="227" originalh="227" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/charlie-and-rita.jpg?w=300&h=227" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/charlie-and-rita.jpg?w=450&h=341" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Charlie and Rita" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/charlies-thigh.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-212" height="230" originalh="230" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/charlies-thigh.jpg?w=300&h=230" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/charlies-thigh.jpg?w=450&h=345" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Charlie's thigh" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bourdon hires Edwina Strain, star attraction of the Tease for Two strip lounge, to infiltrate the Angvians, but once through the back doors of that van she’s swiftly seduced by the delights of Zeta’s world, including wrestling classes and ‘the self realisation chamber’ (a wobbly silver wall):</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/discombobulation2.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-223" height="229" originalh="229" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/discombobulation2.jpg?w=300&h=229" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/discombobulation2.jpg?w=450&h=345" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="discombobulation2" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/wrestling.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-222" height="222" originalh="222" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/wrestling.jpg?w=300&h=222" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/wrestling.jpg?w=450&h=333" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Wrestling" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/self-realisation.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-216" height="230" originalh="230" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/self-realisation.jpg?w=300&h=230" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/self-realisation.jpg?w=450&h=345" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Self realisation" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We have to eat every few hours,” Edwina’s tour guide informs her, “but not the food you would know”: cut to Angvians eating…a bowl of fruit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Angvians’ final confrontation with Bourdon’s men is tremendously odd: undoubtedly the most prolonged scene of men in tweeds being felled by nearly naked women raising their arms a bit I’ve ever witnessed. But where’s our intrepid agent during all this: in bed with another Angvian actually, so you might wonder what the point of him being in the film is at all. However, it seems <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zeta One</em> was considerably under-running as all of the above-described nonsense is padded out with an interminable framing sequence set in Word’s flat, as he relates the adventure to Miss Olsen (even though he was distracted for the majority of it) in bed after they play the world’s most tedious game of strip poker. And smoke an awful lot:</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/smoking1.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-218" height="229" originalh="229" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/smoking1.jpg?w=300&h=229" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/smoking1.jpg?w=450&h=345" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Smoking1" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/smoking2.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-219" height="230" originalh="230" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/smoking2.jpg?w=300&h=230" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/smoking2.jpg?w=450&h=347" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Smoking2" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/smoking3.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-220" height="230" originalh="230" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/smoking3.jpg?w=300&h=230" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/smoking3.jpg?w=450&h=347" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Smoking3" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It might drive some viewers up the wall, but I find <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zeta One</em>’s makers’ obvious awareness of the film’s essential rubbishness rather endearing: during the main action Robin Hawdon sports a silly false moustache that visibly starts to peel off at one point. The framing sequence (added in later) starts with Yutte Stensgard demanding he removes it as it’s so unconvincing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Difficult to believe though it might be, there was never a <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zeta Two</em>. I can’t help seeing that as a great loss to humanity at large. Still, at least we have <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zeta One </em>to boggle uncomprehendingly at. Nearly every shot in the film deserves to be framed (and hung on the wall of a lunatic), and here’s a random selection:</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/special-guest-star-rihanna.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: #c40000; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-221" height="230" originalh="230" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/special-guest-star-rihanna.jpg?w=300&h=230" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/special-guest-star-rihanna.jpg?w=450&h=357" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 4px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Special guest star - Rihanna!" width="300" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Tonight’s special guest star: Rihanna!</div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/hello.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: #c40000; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-225" height="227" originalh="227" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/hello.jpg?w=300&h=227" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/hello.jpg?w=450&h=354" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 4px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Hello" width="300" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Hello.</div>
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<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_224" style="background-color: #f8f8f4; border: 1px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; line-height: 19.09090805053711px; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 1px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; width: 310px;">
<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/dont-come-in.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: #c40000; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-224" height="229" originalh="229" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/dont-come-in.jpg?w=300&h=229" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/dont-come-in.jpg?w=450&h=357" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 4px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Don't come in" width="300" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Don’t come in here.</div>
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<span class="embed-youtube" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; display: block; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; line-height: 19.09090805053711px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe class="youtube-player" frameborder="0" height="306" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tmUYl4z6awI?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" style="background-color: transparent; border-width: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" type="text/html" width="490"></iframe></span>Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-91946218077115397552013-03-31T12:28:00.002-07:002013-03-31T12:28:35.129-07:00Britsploitation from A to Z: Y is for The Yellow Teddybears (1963)<br />
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/yellowteddybears.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #c40000; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-202" height="223" originalh="223" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/yellowteddybears.jpg?w=300&h=223" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/yellowteddybears.jpg?w=450&h=335" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); float: left; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px 15px 10px 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="YellowTeddyBears" width="300" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From the dread hand of Robert Hartford-Davis, who we last saw presiding over Peter Cushing’s descent into stalk’n’slash in <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Corruption</em>, here comes a brutally frank drama ripped from the headlines (as it might have been called at the time). <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Yellow Teddybears </em>is based on a tabloid exposé of a girls’ school whose pupils signalled they were sexually active by wearing Robertson’s jam golliwog badges, changed to teddybears in the film. Which is just as well because if it was called <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Black Golliwogs</em> I’d be stuck for a Y. Anyway, perhaps the most impressive thing about the film is how Hartford-Davis and colleagues manage to make it both sensationalist and very, very dull.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The main thing keeping it vaguely watchable is historical interest. Supposedly it was due to feature the Beatles’ first film appearance, but they baulked at Hartford-Davis’s insistence on writing the songs. And indeed the fairly excruciating “Yellow Teddybear” seems unlikely to have found a place in their pantheon of classic songs. Instead the role of performing goons at the ubiquitous awkward dance hall scene goes to the Embers, notable mainly for their astonishingly geeky looking keyboardist (somewhere between Buddy Holly and Bamber Gascoigne) and the alarming faces pulled by their Terry Scott-esque drummer, who seems to be enjoying himself <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">far </em>too much.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; line-height: 19.09090805053711px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also helping to make <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Yellow Teddybears </em>an intriguing historical document is its setting in that postwar would-be utopia, the new town. This one’s called Peterbridge (a cross between Peterborough and Stevenage?). Its houses are pristine boxes filled with contemporary modern knickknacks and occupied by dodgy businessmen, their empty-headed wives and their bored teenagers. Chief among the bored teenagers is Linda (Rita Tushingham lookalike Annette Whiteley), permanently sulky ringleader of the Yellow Teddybear gang. In true kitchen sink drama style she’s got pregnant by goofy would-be pop star Kinky Carson (Iain Gregory). The overplayed scene where they discuss what to do with the baby feels almost like a parody of kitchen sink clichés – but Linda already knows what she wants to do. She’s fallen in with a bad lot – chiefly June (Jill Adams), a slinky, sinister call girl who promises to procure her an abortion (it’s strange hearing people actually say words like ‘abortion’ and even ‘sex’ in a film of this vintage – something the actors seem aware of by the way they hesitantly spit the words out). It soon becomes clear that in order to pay for the procedure Linda will need to become rather better acquainted with some of June’s friends.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mouthpiece for the film’s moral message is young biology teacher Anne Mason (Jacqueline Ellis). She’s horrified when she finds out about her students’ club, but she’s a woman of the world. She and her boyfriend (an art teacher who’s popular with the girls, even though his nose and teeth seem to be locked in a battle to decide which is scarier) have done more than hold hands. She earnestly tries to convince the schoolgirl sexpots to save themselves for someone they really love, in a charmingly period way: ‘What sort of a world are you girls living in – is it a world where sex is given out like soap coupons?’ (soap powder tends to figure heavily in 60s critiques of the affluent society and its morals). Her attempts are sadly hindered by her bizarre use of metaphor, as in this memorable exchange:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anne: It’s degrading – it’s like taking a Picasso and using it as a fire screen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Linda: It’s <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">our </em>Picasso!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anne: So you want to hang it on the walls of a public lavatory!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps not surprisingly this all falls on deaf ears. Linda’s off for her abortion via a wistful trip through the town centre gazing sadly in shop windows at baby clothes and a rather surprising service offered by the Woolwich:</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/buying-a-ho.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-203" height="229" originalh="229" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/buying-a-ho.jpg?w=300&h=229" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/buying-a-ho.jpg?w=450&h=345" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Buying a ho" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the operation, due to be carried out by a shifty-looking doctor in June’s flat, is interrupted by Linda’s enraged dad before it can begin. Cast out of the family home, she runs off to a transport café, where despite the sage advice of a motherly tart (much more sympathetically drawn than the would-be sophisticate June), she’s last seen being picked up by a lorry driver wearing the undeniably sinister combination of a donkey jacket and a paisley cravat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, that’s the reasonably entertaining part of the film over with. It grinds on for another 15 minutes or so with an interminable enquiry into poor Anne Mason’s morals by the Pharisees of the school’s board of governors, presided over by ubiquitous Britfilm authority figure Raymond Huntley. The most rabidly moralistic member’s played by Hilary Mason, star of <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t Look Now </em>and <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Maid Marian and Her Merry Men</em> (what a CV!). It’s all rather heavy-handed, to say the least. There are just about enough incidental details about <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Yellow Teddybears</em>to stop it being a <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">complete</em> borefest. But only just.</span></div>
Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2337899552459013100.post-54060682945172724162013-03-31T12:26:00.003-07:002013-03-31T12:26:59.242-07:00Britsploitation from A to Z: X is for Xtro (1982)<br />
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro_poster_02.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #c40000; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-199 alignleft" height="300" originalh="300" originalw="196" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro_poster_02.jpg?w=196&h=300" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro_poster_02.jpg?w=294&h=300" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); float: left; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px 15px 10px 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="xtro_poster_02" width="196" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Britain loves a good moral panic, and the video nasties controversy of the early 80s was a classic. The new home video market was flooded with uncertified, uncut films, many of which would never have got past the censor intact or even edited (and in some cases still haven’t). Compared to the parade of American psychos and Italian cannibals that hit the tabloid headlines Britain’s own horror output looked pretty innocuous, and only two homegrown films got into any hot water. One was the erotic thriller <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Exposé, </em>for its sexual violence. The other was <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Xtro</em>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The film’s directed, co-written and scored (with requisite 80s synthesiser sounds) by Harry Bromley Davenport. His name may sound more evocative of Ealing-style comedy than sci-fi body horror, but here he’s crafted an imaginative, often disgusting and very enjoyable blend of <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Alien</em>, <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">E.T. </em>and Cronenberg (and obviously it’s all the more enjoyable for being British).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The film starts with young Tony (Simon Nash) witnessing his dad Sam (Philip Sayer) being beamed aboard a spaceship. Three years later Sam’s wife Rachel (Bernice Stegers), thinking she was just abandoned, is living with grumpy American photographer Joe (Danny Brainin, who looks rather like TV irritant Alex Zane with a bad hangover):</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro13.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-172" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro13.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro13.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro13" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See what I mean? Anyway, Joe and Tony don’t get on too well, but never mind as Tony’s dad’s on his way back, sort of. In the countryside the spaceship returns and beams something down (Tony, meanwhile, wakes up covered in blood). A hideous, crawling creature emerges from the earth, and after a temporary setback when it gets run over by a Sloaney couple (it kills them horribly though, so that’s all right) has the luck to stumble on a lonely cottage inhabited by an attractive blonde. This leads to what’s probably the film’s most infamous scene:</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro4.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-173" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro4.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro4.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro4" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro6.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-174" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro6.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro6.jpg?w=450&h=266" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 4px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro6" width="300" /></span></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sex face</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro8.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-176" height="167" originalh="167" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro8.jpg?w=300&h=167" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro8.jpg?w=450&h=251" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro8" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro9.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-177" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro9.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro9.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro9" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro10.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-178" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro10.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro10.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro10" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro11.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-179" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro11.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro11.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro11" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes, she’s impregnated through the mouth by the creature’s impressively flexible organ, and then gives birth to a fully grown man, who obligingly bites through his own umbilical cord. Which is just as well as the mother didn’t survive the birth, and meanwhile the father’s looking like a right dog’s dinner:</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro7.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-175" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro7.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro7.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro7" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once he’s cleaned himself up a bit we can see that the unusually large newborn looks just like Tony’s dad Sam. He steals the Sloaney man’s clothes and car and heads off to pick Tony up from school. Rachel’s understandably shocked by his reappearance. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demands, ‘I’m back’ he replies, ‘Back? Back from where?’ I was hoping he was going to say ‘back from outer space’ and launch into a Gloria Gaynor-inspired production number but sadly it wasn’t to be. Sam denies all knowledge of the last three years and uncomfortable domestic drama ensues when Rachel brings him home to stay with her, Tony and Joe (and their French <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">au pair</em> Analise, played by future Bond girl Maryam D’Abo). Joe gets even grumpier than before, and even Tony, who was overjoyed to see his dad again, is a bit distressed when he catches Sam gulping down his pet snake’s eggs. Fortunately Sam manages to restore the father-son bond by granting Tony amazing mental powers. The way he does this, by sucking a phallus of skin out of his son’s shoulder, looks dodgy to say the least, like child porn directed by David Cronenberg:</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro14.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-182" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro14.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro14.jpg?w=450&h=252" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro14" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro15.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-183" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro15.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro15.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro15" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro16.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-184" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro16.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro16.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro16" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro17.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-185" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro17.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro17.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro17" width="300" /></span></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; line-height: 19.09090805053711px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By this point <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Xtro</em> is already far more peculiar than most of the sci-fi horror films that followed in the wake of <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Alien</em>, but it gets really bizarre when the now noticeably more evil Tony uses his new powers to turn a toy clown into an extremely sinister dwarf henchman with a lethal yo-yo. Here he is, being sinister with his yo-yo:</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro19.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-186" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro19.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro19.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro19" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In his creepy, silent way, the clown eggs Tony on to take a terrible revenge on mean old neighbour Mrs Goodman (Anna Wing, who in a couple of years would be cast as <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EastEnders</em>’ original matriarch Lou Beale), who we earlier saw beating his snake to a bloody pulp with a meat tenderiser after it escaped and ended up in her salad. In a scene that’s pure 70s <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Doctor Who</em> (if a bit more violent), a giant Action Man figure breaks into Mrs Goodman’s flat and thrusts a bayonet through her as she cowers under an armchair:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro20.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-187" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro20.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro20.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro20" width="300" /></a></span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro21.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-188" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro21.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro21.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro21" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro22.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-189" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro22.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro22.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro22" width="300" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s no stopping Evil Tony now. As things between Sam and Rachel go all soap opera and they head off to their old country cottage in the hope of a reconciliation, he puts a malevolent alien plan into action. Analise is jumped in the lift by the clown, and her boyfriend is savaged to death by a black panther that Tony’s conjured up. Analise’s eventual fate is especially grim – in another particularly disturbing bit, Tony does something unpleasant to her midriff area. She’s then imprisoned in a cocoon and starts producing eggs from a strange protuberance, which the clown stores in a gunge-filled upturned fridge:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro24.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-191" height="169" originalh="169" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro24.jpg?w=300&h=169" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro24.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro24" width="300" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro25.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-192" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro25.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro25.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro25" width="300" /></a> <a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro26.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-193" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro26.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro26.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro26" width="300" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Things are starting to get a bit nasty in the country as well, as bits of Sam start flaking off and Rachel notices during sex that he’s covered in open wounds (that can be a bit of a passion killer). He’s changing into something else, and he’s not the only one. In case you want to watch <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Xtro </em>(why’s it called <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Xtro </em>anyway?) for yourself I won’t spoil the ending, but I can tell you it’s not quite as brilliantly weird as the ending originally planned, which featured a pregnant Rachel returning home to a flat full of Tony clones. The effect was achieved with a group of masked and bewigged children. It wasn’t used on the grounds that it doesn’t look very convincing, but it certainly looks wonderfully spooky:</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro32.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-194" height="168" originalh="168" originalw="300" scale="1.5" src-orig="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro32.jpg?w=300&h=168" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro32.jpg?w=450&h=254" style="background-color: transparent; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Xtro32" width="300" /></span></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; line-height: 19.09090805053711px; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Xtro</em> is certainly a much better film than most of the others that were vilified as video nasties. The cast (especially Sayer and Stegers) are excellent, although Tony sounds a bit too working class for a child with such RP parents. It’s a shame that Harry Bromley Davenport never did anything else very interesting after <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Xtro,</em>getting stuck in world of the straight-to-video horror film. His subsequent work of in-name-only <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Xtro </em>sequels<em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </em>that went straight to video – <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Xtro II: Watch the Skies</em>is on the same DVD as the original but I don’t know if I’ll ever bother to watch it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, my favourite thing in <em style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Xtro</em>: the toaster in the background here. Good pans too.</span></div>
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<a href="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro121.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-181" height="575" originalh="575" originalw="1024" scale="1.5" src="http://jumblesalefrenzy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/xtro121.jpg?w=1024&h=575" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 5px solid rgb(255, 193, 193); display: block; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; height: auto; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" title="Xtro12" width="1024" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can watch the whole film here if you feel so inclined:</span></div>
<span class="embed-youtube" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; display: block; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; line-height: 19.09090805053711px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe class="youtube-player" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VaxmWiKgT_8?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" style="background-color: transparent; border-width: 0px; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" type="text/html" width="420"></iframe></span>Ivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16238278453004957454noreply@blogger.com1