Arrival of incoming, dear blog reader, here's the latest From The North bloggerisationisms update. And, we begin with some proper startling news; several of these gentlemen (and lady) have being doing stuff this past week. Of course, you'd all like to hear about their doings, no doubt? Excellent. Off we go then.
The soon-to-be-newest occupant of the TARDIS, Ncuti Gatwa, is expected to begin filming his first series of Doctor Who in November, according to the US publication The Hollywood Reporter in what they claim is an 'exclusive'. Quite how they got to know before anyone in this country - you know, where the BBC's popular, long-running family SF drama is actually made - is anyone's guess but, there you have it. That's the way of the world these days.
The Doctor that Ncuti is replacing, Wor Geet Canny Jodie Whittaker (you knew that , right?) has told Empire magazine (in another claimed 'exclusive') that her forthcoming finale is 'one for the Whovians.' Hopefully not since, as we've discussed on this blog on many previous occasions, no Doctor Who fan with an ounce of dignity or self-respect (two attributes, admittedly, not normally associated with Doctor Who fandom) uses that hateful word, made up in the late 1970s by a bunch of American students because 'Star Trek fans have a name for themselves so we'd better have one too.' Sorry Jodie, please continue: 'It's a huge treat if you're a proper fan,.' As opposed to, what, an improper one? 'It's got all the iconic things that you associate with Doctor Who. It's massive.' And, claim Empire, exclusively, it sounds like this Doctor's final scene will be an emotional one. 'I love the dialogue Chris [Chibnall] wrote for my regeneration,' Jodie added. 'It captures my Doctor beautifully. It's simple, epic and beautiful.' It is a sequence, Jodie suggests, that was all delivered in one long take. 'When I could see the crew was happy with that last shot, that's when my bottom lip started going,' she recalls. 'I was like, "Well, they can't say they need another take now because I've fucking lost it!"' Empire also included a further 'exclusive', a new image from The Power Of The Doctor (scheduled for broadcast on 23 October). But, since that's their 'exclusive', here's a different illustrative image.
Moving, now, to a former (and, technically, future) Doctor. Monday and Tuesday of this week saw the broadcast of the new drama by The Lord Thy God Steven Moffat (OBE), Inside Man, starring yer actual national heartthrob David Tennant. You might have noticed. Radio Times certainly did, describing the opening episode as 'a dark, gripping thriller which earns its secrecy.' It is a 'deliciously deviant drama' according to Yahoo Entertainment. A 'rollicking death row drama' writes That Awful Mangan Woman at the Gruniad Morning Star. 'Darkly riotous and very daft,' suggests The Times. 'A weeknight crowd pleaser,' adds the Independent and That Awful Singh Woman at the Torygraph describes it as 'Steven Moffat's fun and rather silly, drama.' Christ, even the loathsome Daily Scum Mail seemed to like it ('black comedy at its best'). This blogger, for what it's worth dear blog reader, thought it was great. So, no surprise there, then.
So, David Tennant has reunited with Steven Moffat (Thou Shalt Worship No Other Gods Before He) for Inside Man - again, you may have noticed - but David almost missed out on the role of Harry Watling. Almost, but not quite. The Moffster revealed to Radio Times that David was his first choice for the part, but that the actor's lack of availability initially ruled him out. 'Once I'd written the first couple [of episodes], or maybe just the first one and shown it to Sue [Vertue, producer and Steven's missus, of course], we both agreed that it'd be a perfect part for David Tennant and we know David really well because we hang out with David and Georgia quite often and, obviously, I'd worked with him before. We just thought he'd be perfect, but he wasn't at all available. His entire schedule was booked up, largely with theatre.' It was only after they had 'gone around the houses looking for a Harry' that the COVID-19 pandemic began, shuttering theatres. 'COVID closed the world down for two years and David was suddenly much more available,' Steven explained. Inside Man also reunited Steven with Dracula star Dolly Wells, who plays maths teacher Janice Fife and was the first actor cast. 'I'd been writing it in front of the monitors for Dracula and once I got to the end of episode three and Dracula was finished filming, I remember just thinking, "God, it's Dolly, isn't it? Dolly should be Janice. She'd been so great as Sister Agatha - such a fantastic, unknowable, off-kilter, funny, but quite moving performance. I thought, "She can do it" - and you'd never quite know what Janice was thinking if Dolly plays it.'
In a separate Radio Times piece - all part of the same interview, but they managed to get two bits out of it rather than one (actually, three, see below) - Steven said that some 'lost' TV show ideas may still see light of day. In yet another 'exclusive' (what the fek is it with people desperate for an 'exclusive' these days?), the interview notes that although Inside Man is Steve's first project not based on any existing source material since 2000's Coupling, it was never Steven's plan to become a serial adapter. That 'was certainly not an intention of mine ... at all. I never really think of myself as someone who adapts things - but yeah, I think it is my first absolute original [since then]. I never know if that means anything at all. It would be ridiculous to suggest that it somehow limits your creativity if you've got to write a Doctor Who. It doesn't! I mean, fucking Hell that's a monster. So the fact that you exist sometimes within existing frameworks is not taking a day off - it really, really isn't. No one who thinks that has ever tried to write the bloody Doctor!' Having served as showrunner on both Doctor Who and Sherlock (you knew that, yes?) from 2010 to 2017, Steven revealed that he had plenty of ideas for original projects during that period - but simply no time in which to work on them. 'There's a pile up - I occasionally find them written on scraps and think, "Oh, I should do that!" - it's one of the nice things about no longer doing Doctor Who and Sherlock all the time, which is what I did for seven to eight years. Every time I had an idea, I had to stand on it unless it fitted into one of those shows. I just quashed it and threw it away, so it's nice now, you can just think, "That's an idea, I might go and do that, I might sell that."'
Steven also told Radio Times (which used to be run by adults) that he doubts he'll be returning to Doctor Who as a writer for the foreseeable future: 'It's quite recent for me.' All so the magazine could get a third 'exclusive' out of their interview with him. And, when speaking to the Independent (which has never been run by adults, just all of the Middle Class hippy Communists who weren't good enough to get a job at the Gruniad) he suggested that the BBC 'will never be safe in the hands of the government.' True enough, one imagines but it does rather beg the question what are we going to do about that other than vote for someone else at the next general erection. Which, this blogger imagines, most of the people reading this blog were planning on doing anyway.
This blogger has been thinking a lot about this subject recently after spotting a stray post on Facebook proclaiming 'I absolutely [expletive deleted] hate the Tories.' As though a) that's an original thought, b) that no one has ever said it previously and c) that roughly fifty percent of the population don't agree with it. The next, obvious question though is 'okay, so what are you going to do about that?' You have a couple of choices, basically; one is mentioned above. Actually come to think of it, that's really most people's only choice unless you particularly fancy going down to London finding the subject of your ire, cutting their head off and sticking it on a pole. Which you should not do, by the way, this blogger cannot be clearer on that score. That's called murder and you get twenty five-to-life in The Slammer for that shit. So, what other options are open to those who think the government stinks? There's nothing, really - just whinging about them on social media. Which everyone does, anyway. You don't like the government? Me neither, squire, but we're stuck with them until we're not stuck with them any more. At which point, no matter which party wins, the government still gets in. If any dear blog reader wishes to start a one man or one woman revolution, leap over the barricades and do something dramatic and pointless, go ahead. This blogger is sure we'll all be right behind you - well, actually, quite a bit behind you - to see how you get on with smashing the system. This is the biggest problem with social media, dear blog readers - it's not the frequent nastiness, or the vile abuse, or the general triviality of it all; it's that we all surround ourselves with a bubble of like-minded people so that we can feel safe in doing the 'the world today, though, isn't it awful?', 'oh, I know', thing all day, every day to make us feel secure in our worldview. It's comforting. If utterly self-defeating. Here endeth today's 'ooo, bit of politics, there' moment. We now return you to From The North's usual raison d'être, talking about Doctor Who. Have you had enough, or do you want some more?
Speaking of former Doctors, part two. Yer actual Peter Capaldi may be back playing a time traveller in the intriguing first trailer for the much-anticipated The Devil's Hour. Capaldi plays a reclusive nomad, driven by a murderous obsession, in the forthcoming Prime Video series. Capaldi's character, Gideon, is seen facing off with Jessica Raine's Lucy Chambers in the six-part drama, which is written and created by Tom Moran and produced by Hartswood Films and which premieres on 28 October. The Devil's Hour follows Raine's character, who is woken every night by terrifying dreams at exactly 3.33am - the titular devil's hour. Her eight-year-old son is withdrawn and emotionless, her mother speaks to empty chairs and her house is haunted by the echoes of a life that isn't her own (as far as she knows). When Lucy's name is inexplicably connected to a string of brutal murders, the answers that have evaded her all these years will finally come within touching reach, while Capaldi's character becomes the prime target of a police manhunt led by detective Ravi Dhillon (Nikesh Patel). In the trailer, Capaldi is heard to claim that his 'perception of time is better than anyone's' and, when quizzed by Dhillon as to whether he believes himself to be 'a time traveller or a fortune teller,' he replies: 'Neither... and both.'
Speaking of former Doctors, part three. Christopher Eccleston is amongst a number of big names reported to be joining the already star-studded fourth series of HBO's True Detective. Big Ecc, who has in recently been working on dramas like The A Word, Dodger and Channel 4's Close To Me, will join Fiona Shaw, Finn Bennett and Anna Lambe in the new series of the From The North favourite according to Variety. The fourth series of the anthology series will see Jodie Foster and Kali Reis in the lead roles. Officially titled True Detective: Night Country, the description for the new series claims: 'When the long winter night falls in Ennis, Alaska, the six men that operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station vanish without a trace. To solve the case, Detectives Liz Danvers (Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Reis) will have to confront the darkness they carry in themselves and dig into the haunted truths that lie buried under the eternal ice.'
Speaking of former Doctors, part four. This blogger once again caught up with the latest two episodes of House Of The Dragon this week - We Light The Way and The Princess & The Queen. And, now - finally - it's starting to click into gear with all of the elements that one would expect from a Game of Thrones prequel; incest, sexual deviancy, political rivalry, patricide and a plethora of blood and snots and fire. Lots of fire. The former episode got a decent review in Esquire whilst the latter had the Daily Torygraph drooling into their morning cappuccino. From The North favourite yer man Smudger remains the best thing in it but the whole thing is starting come together now, the characters are getting more established and more interesting and all of the nefarious skulduggery one would hope for is present and correct.
Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has said that the story 'could' return to television with a new creative team. He told BBC Midlands Today the period drama could continue with 'possible new stories into the Fifties.' The sixth series of the From The North favourite was billed as the final series for the drama, but Knight said: 'If there is an appetite for the world then it will continue.' He also said that he planned to 'hand over the baton' of writing after the Peaky Blinders movie is released in 2024. Knight made the comments on Tuesday at the world premiere of a new Peaky Blinders dance show at the Birmingham Hippodrome called The Redemption Of Thomas Shelby. He had previously planned for a seven-season run of the drama, which is set in post-World War I Birmingham and follows the story of the Shelby family. But, in 2021 it was announced the sixth season would be the last on TV and that the story would conclude with a movie. Filming for that is due to begin in early 2023. Throughout its run, a host of awards followed, including National Television Awards and a BAFTA for best drama series in 2018. This blogger, as you know, thought it was great.
As discussed in several previous From The North updates, via Keith Telly Topping's recent essays on British post-war B-movies, The Corpse, The Yellow Teddy Bears, Saturday Night Out and The Black Torment, The Pleasure Girls, Hell Is A City, Cup Fever, Face Of A Stranger and Yield To The Night, Hell Drivers and, most recently, The Day The Earth Caught Fire and Game For Three Losers, From The North has, of late, frequently turned into a film blog which, sometimes, discusses telly. Rather than the other way around which is, in theory, its raison d'être (that remains yer actual French, that does). To which this blogger is happy to report that there still seems little reason to stop such malarkey any time soon. So, let us therefore speak about this blogger's favourite movie production company.
Founded in 1934 Hammer Films was (and still is), of course, best known to the majority of cinemagoers for the series of Gothic horror and fantasy movies they made between the mid-1950s and the 1970s. Many of these involved classic horror icons such as Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula and The Mummy, which Hammer presented to audiences in vivid Technicolor for the first time. In the process, they revived the horror genre which had flowered in the US in the 1930s and then rather faded a decade later as the real-world horrors of war occupied many minds. During its most successful years, Hammer dominated both the domestic and international horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success and spawning several imitators (of varying degrees of quality). But, of course, that wasn't all the company did. Hammer also produced science fiction movies, psychological suspense thrillers, film noir, pirate, war and adventures movies and a smattering of comedies (mostly adaptations of popular television sitcoms). Anything, in fact, that the public told them they wanted.
In November 1934, William Hinds, a comedian and businessman, registered his film company, Hammer Productions. It was housed in a three-room office at Imperial House on Regent Street. The company name came from Hinds' stage name, Will Hammer, which he had taken from the area of London in which he lived, Hammersmith. Work began almost immediately on the company's first film, now lost, The Public Life Of Henry The Ninth at the MGM/ATP studios. Filming concluded on 2 January 1935. The film tells the story of Henry Henry, an unemployed London street musician and the title was 'a playful tribute' (they claimed) to Alexander Korda's The Private Life Of Henry VIII. Hinds met Spanish émigré Enrique Carreras, a former cinema owner and in May 1935 they formed the film distribution company Exclusive Films. They also made the Paul Robeson vehicle Songs Of Freedom and The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste, featuring Bela Lugosi as well as quota quickies and featurettes such as Polly's Two Fathers (1935) but a slump in the British film industry forced Hammer into bankruptcy and the company went into liquidation in 1937. Exclusive, however, survived and in July 1937 it purchased the leasehold on a building in Wardour Street and continued to distribute films made by other companies.
Enrique's son, James Carreras joined Exclusive in 1938, closely followed by William Hinds' son, Anthony. At the outbreak of World War II, both left to join the armed forces and Exclusive continued to operate in a limited capacity as a distributor through the war years. In 1946, James Carreras rejoined the company after demobilisation. He resurrected Hammer as the film production arm of Exclusive with a view to supplying quota-quickies, cheaply (and swiftly) made domestic B-movies designed to fill gaps in cinema schedules and support more expensive features. He convinced Tony Hinds to join him and a revived Hammer Film Productions set to work on Death In High Heels, The Dark Road and Crime Reporter. Not able to afford big name film stars, Hammer acquired the screen rights to a number of popular BBC radio serials such as The Adventures Of PC Forty Nine and Dick Barton: Special Agent. All were filmed at Marylebone Studios during 1947. Whilst making Dick Barton Strikes Back (1948), it became apparent that the company could save money by shooting in country houses instead of studios. For the next production, Doctor Morelle: The Case Of The Missing Heiress (another radio adaptation featuring Valentine Dyall), Hammer rented Dial Close, a twenty three-bedroom mansion beside the Thames in Maidenhead. On 12 February 1949, Exclusive registered Hammer Film Productions as a limited company. Hammer moved into the Exclusive offices in Soho and the building was rechristened Hammer House. In August 1949, complaints from locals about noise during night filming forced Hammer to leave Dial Close and move into another large house, Oakley Court, also on the banks of the Thames near Windsor. Five films were produced there: Man In Black (1949), Room To Let (1949), Someone At The Door (1949), What The Butler Saw (1950) and The Lady Craved Excitement (1950).
In 1951, Hammer began shooting at their most fondly-remembered base, Down Place. The company signed a one-year lease and began its 1951 production schedule with Cloudburst. The house, virtually derelict, required substantial work, but it did not have the construction restrictions which had prevented Hammer from customising their previous locations. A decision was made to remodel Down Place into a substantial studio complex which subsequently became known as Bray Studios. The expansive grounds were used for much of the later location work in Hammer's films and became a key to the 'Hammer look'. Also in 1951, Hammer and Exclusive signed a four-year production and distribution contract with Robert Lippert, an American film producer. The contract meant that Lippert Pictures and Exclusive effectively exchanged products for distribution on their respective sides of the Atlantic - beginning in 1951 with The Last Page and ending with 1955's Women Without Men. This was the period of The Dark Light, Lady In The Fog, Blood Orange, The Flanagan Boy, Man Trap, The House Across The Lake, A Stranger Came Home, The Glass Cage and Murder By Proxy among others. It was for The Last Page that Hammer made a significant appointment when they hired director Terence Fisher, who would play a critical role in their forthcoming horror cycle.
It was Lippert's insistence on having a Hollywood name in the Hammer films that he was to distribute in the US which led to the prevalence of American leads in many of the company's productions during the mid-to-late 1950s. Towards the end of 1951, the one-year lease on Down Place expired and with its growing success Hammer looked towards more conventional studio-based productions. A dispute with the Association of Cinematograph Technicians blocked this proposal and the company purchased the freehold of Bray. It would remain Hammer's principal base until 1966. In 1953, the first of Hammer's science fiction films, Four Sided Triangle and Spaceways, were released.
Hammer's first significant experiment with horror came in a 1955 adaptation of Nigel Kneale's BBC science fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment, directed by Val Guest. As a consequence of the contract with Robert Lippert, American actor Brian Donlevy was imported for the lead role (much to Kneale's chagrin) and the title was changed to The Quatermass Xperiment to cash in on the new X certificate rating for horror films. The film was unexpectedly popular and led to the popular 1957 sequel Quatermass 2 - again adapted from Kneale's television scripts, this time by Kneale himself. In the meantime, Hammer produced another Quatermass-style horror-SF crossover, X The Unknown. Then came The Curse Of Frankenstein and everything changed.
Well, perhaps not everything. Because running alongside production of their 1950s and 1960s horror movies, Hammer made a series of what were known at the time as 'mini-Hitchcocks'; thrillers (usually with non-supernatural horror elements) mostly scripted by Jimmy Sangster and directed by the likes of Val Guest, Freddie Francis and Seth Holt. These low-budget suspense chillers, often in monochrome, were made in the mould of Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques (1955), although they were more often compared to the later Psycho. Here, then are around a dozen examples of Hammer working away from their usual niche.
There were Hammer pirate movies, for example - several of them, in fact - including 1963's The Scarlet Blade and one of this blogger's favourites Captain Clegg (1962). Loosely based on Doctor Syn by Russell Thorndike, Captain Clegg starred Peter Cushing, Yvonne Romain and Oliver Reed. In 1776, a sailor (Milton Reid) had his tongue removed and is marooned on an island after assaulting the wife of the notorious pirate captain Nathaniel Clegg. By 1792, Clegg has supposedly been captured by the Royal Navy and hanged for his wicked piratical ways, his final resting place being the coastal village of Dymchurch on the Romney Marsh. The surrounding countryside is alleged to be home to The Marsh Phantoms, skeletal figures on horseback who ride by night bringing terror and brown underpants to the village. Humourless Captain Collier (Patrick Allen) and his rough, tough detachment of sailors arrive in Dymchurch to investigate reports that the locals are involved in the illicit smuggling of alcohol from France.
Despite the American title (Night Creatures) and the subplot concerning apparent ghosts on horseback, Captain Clegg isn't the horror movie it was marketed as and nor does it pretend to be; it's more of a period crime melodrama adventure with a romantic subplot (reflected by its A certificate as opposed to an X). This may be one of the reasons why this remains one of the more obscure Hammer thrillers. And that's a pity because Captain Clegg is a rip-roaring rollercoaster of a film and those who seek it out will hugely enjoy its swashbuckling, its colour and its razor sharp wit. The story is solid and entertaining and the performances are strong throughout, particularly from the ever reliable Cushing, Reed and good old Michael Ripper (who pretty much steals the movie with a grand turn as the local undertaker). Variety was positive, writing that the film had a 'good' screenplay (by Tony Hines) and 'savvy' direction from Peter Graham-Scott. 'The range of technical credits are all on the plus side, especially Arthur Grant's photography,' they continued. The Monthly Film Bulletin, however, was negative, claiming, 'the script is feeble, the acting, apart from Patrick Allen's forceful hero, uninspired and the obsession with injury, degradation and death more dispiriting than ever.' Which proves the arsehole who wrote that never got invited to any of the cool kids parties. Among later reviews, Leonard Maltin called it 'good fun with some scary moments' and it has also been described as 'one of the best Hammer Films productions.' Not quite - it's no Dracula, Prince Of Darkness, for example - but it is great fun.
Hammer also produced several straight crime thrillers such as Val Guest's superb Hell Is A City (previously reviewed on From The North) and the marvellously tense Cash On Demand. A 1961 neo-noir thriller directed by Quentin Lawrence, Cash On Demand was envisioned by the company as a simple programme-filler, Hammer investing around thirty seven grand to produce the film. To optimise its budget, the film used a limited number of sets; an interior street set, the trading area of a bank, the manager's office, the stairway between office and the vault and the interior of the vault itself. The plot is clever: André Morell walks into the office of the manager of a provincial bank (Peter Cushing) on the pretense of being an insurance inspector and, when they're alone, threatens to have an accomplice kill the manager's wife and son if he doesn't do exactly what he's told. Morell then coolly takes ninety thousand knicker from the vault and casually makes his getaway. Cash On Demand was, as previously stated in From The North's essay on British second features, selected by the film historians Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane as one of the fifteen most meritorious B films made between World War II and 1965. They note that it received enthusiastic reviews at the time of its release from the Monthly Film Bulletin and Kinematograph Weekly. 'Above all,' the duo write, 'it is Peter Cushing's performance of the austere man, to whom efficiency matters most (though the film is subtle enough to allow him a certain integrity as well) and who will be frightened into a warmer sense of humanity, that lifts the film well above the perfunctory levels of much B film-making.'
Cyril Frankel's astonishing Never Takes Sweets from A Stranger (Sweets being replaced in the title by Candy in the US, obviously), was a deadly serious and still horrifyingly timely, chiller about a small Canadian town terrorised by an elderly child molester. The screenplay was developed by John Hunter from the play The Pony Trap by Roger Garis. Despite its nominal Canadian setting, exterior filming for Never Take Sweets From A Stranger took place in Black Park in Wexham, Buckinghamshire. Black Park would feature in numerous Hammer productions due to its atmospheric appearance on film and, perhaps more importantly, its close proximity to Bray. The film stars Patrick Allen, Gwen Watford, Janina Faye as their victimised daughter and Felix Aylmer, the latter cast very much against type. The twin themes are child sexual abuse and the way in which those with sufficient influence can corrupt and manipulate the legal system to evade responsibility for their actions. Nowadays, the film is regarded as a bold and uncompromising work for its time. On its original release in 1960, however, it made little impact at the box-office and its what reviews it received were mainly negative. This was, at least partly, because at the time the crime of paedophilia wasn't widely discussed within society. Merely to produce a film dealing so openly with the issue was deemed rather sordid and in desperately poor taste. Another hindrance to commercial success was that the film was far from easy to categorise, so it was difficult to market to any specific audience demographic. In terms of genre it had elements of suspense, courtroom drama and social commentary, but it did not fit neatly into any general classification. In addition some of the publicity chosen for the film, (such as a promotional poster with an image of armed police with tracker dogs and the tagline 'A nightmare manhunt for maniac prowler!'), was misleading, as it implied a fugitive-on-the-run chase thriller. James Carreras later commented: 'Message pictures? I tried one: Never Take Sweets From A Stranger. Nobody bought it. I'm not an artist. I'm a businessman.'
The film did garner some positive reviews, notably from Variety who said: 'Gwen Watford and Patrick Allen, as the distraught parents and Alison Leggatt, as a wise, understanding grandmother, lead a cast which is directed with complete sensitivity by Cyril Frankel. Both Watford and Allen are completely credible while Leggatt, well-served by John Hunter's script, is outstanding. Aylmer, who doesn't utter a word throughout the film, gives a terrifying acute study of crumbling evil.' The film quickly disappeared from view after its brief theatrical run and for many years remained little-known - even to Hammer enthusiasts - and was rarely screened. Indeed there is no indication that it was ever shown on British terrestrial television. By the 1990s, at a time when a general reassessment and re-evaluation of Hammer's back catalogue, including its more obscure entries, was under way, critics and aficionados revisited Never Take Sweets From A Stranger with a fresh eye and found it to be a brave, honest and in many ways groundbreaking film. In 1994, Christopher Lee - who knew what he was talking about with regard to Hammer and chillers - said: 'Never Take Sweets From A Stranger, an excellent film, was decades ahead of its time.'
Oscar-winning cinematographer Guy Green directed The Snorkel (1958), about a young girl who cannot convince anyone, least of all her mother, that her stepfather is a murderer. The film opens with one of the more memorable pre-credits sequences to be found in any thriller, the viewer witnessing what seems to be a 'perfect murder' being committed. In a stylish European style sitting room, we see a calm, debonair man (Peter Van Euck) take a needle off a gramophone record, then use thick tape to seal a window closed. He rolls up a rug on the floor and sets it against the bottom crack of the room's closed door. The man then retrieves a coil of rubber hose and moves another rug to reveal a hidden space under the floorboards. He crawls in the cramped space, shooing mice out of his way and connects the hose to pipes which lead to the outside of the building. He crawls back through the cobwebs into the room. Then he lets gas escape through the room's lighting fixtures, at which point the audience notices for the first time a woman lying unmoving on the couch. The man sits in a chair as he waits for the gas to, slowly, kill the woman. He won't be affected, however, as he has attached the other end of the hose to a snorkel, which covers his face and provides him with oxygen. Over a close-up of the man's snorkeled head, the opening credits roll. It's a brilliant start to a movie telling a whole story without a word being spoken.
In Tom Johnson and Deborah Del Vecchio's 1996 book Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography, Green recalled working on The Snorkel with producer Michael Carreras, whom he described as 'very cooperative, as well as a delightful person to be with and very much responsible for making the film a most pleasant experience. He and I had a great time casting the smaller roles.' The film was primarily a vehicle for the child star Mandy Miller (fourteen at the time of production); Green described her as 'a natural talent and a very professional girl, but a bit too mature for the part and all our efforts failed to disguise this.'
Of Van Eyck, Green said that 'he had to do a lot of difficult swimming and, one day after spending most of the morning manfully keeping up with a motorboat from which he was being photographed, Peter said, "You never asked me if I could swim before giving me the part."' The budget on The Snorkel was reported to be about twenty per cent higher than the average Hammer movie, due to the extensive location photography (the Italian villa used in the movie was Villa Della Pergola, in Alassio, Liguria's Riviera). The film was reportedly produced without a distribution deal in place. Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography claims that an agreement with Warner Brothers had fallen through and James Carreras only later struck a deal with Columbia for both The Snorkel and its double-bill co-feature, the war movie The Camp On Blood Island. The film's story, credited to Anthony Dawson, has sometimes been attributed to Italian director Antonio Margheriti, who often used that anglicised pseudonym. In 2010, however, Margheriti's son denied his father was involved with the production, stating that he did not begin using the name Anthony Dawson until 1960. It seems likely, therefore, that the true author of The Snorkel's story was the actor Anthony Dawson, who also appeared in Hammer's The Curse Of The Werewolf. The film had its premiere aboard the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth, during a crossing of the Atlantic in May 1958. Having made a big impression as an eight year old in her second movie, Mandy, Miller had been a hot property in the 1950s, famously having a huge hit with her recording of 'Nellie The Elephant' (produced by George Martin) and appearing in Raising A Riot, The Feminine Touch and Child In The House. She's really good in The Snorkel although, ironically, it was the last film she made. After a few years of TV roles she, effectively, retired at the age of eighteen, moving to New York to become an au pair.
The Man Who Could Cheat Death was a horror-inflected 1959 tale starring Anton Diffring as Doctor Georges Bonnet, a chap with a hideous obsession to live forever. All he needs, apparently, are the Parathyroid glands of some extremely unwilling donors once a decade. Jimmy Sangster adapted the screenplay from the play The Man In Half Moon Street by Barré Lyndon, which had been previously filmed in 1945. Also starring Christopher Lee and From The North favourite Hazel Court, this was a suspense-filled helter skelter of a movie for anyone who enjoys classic noir cinema. The role of Bonnet was originally offered to Peter Cushing, who turned it down shortly before shooting started. Cushing's reason was that he was 'completely exhausted following the shooting of The Hound Of The Baskervilles, which had just wrapped.' The loss of Cushing caused Hammer to threaten one of their biggest stars with legal action. However, as Cushing had not signed a final contract they withdrew the threat although an angry Paramount, which was partly financing and distributing the film, 'relegated the picture to the lower half of double bills in the States.' Diffring had played the role of Bonnet eighteen months earlier in the ABC adaptation of The Man In Half Moon Street, an episode of their Hour Of Mystery strand.
It went into general release in the UK on 30 November 1959 as the first film on a double-bill with the French thriller The Evil That Is Eve. The European release of The Man Who Could Cheat Death reportedly featured a scene in which Hazel Court appeared topless. She was paid 'an extra two thousand pounds' for the scene, in which she was seen posing for a sculpture being made by Diffring's character. The stone bust of Janine which is shown repeatedly in the film was, in fact, 'a plaster cast made from Court's torso' according to Chris Fellner's The Encyclopedia Of Hammer Films. The scene does not appear in existing UK or US prints and the footage is now presumed to be lost although an on-set photo does exist. Director Terence Fisher - fresh from Dracula, The Revenge Of Frankenstein, The Hound Of The Baskervilles and The Mummy - continued his winning streak for the studio with this tale of scientific debauchery, one that this blogger believes to be amongst Hammer's most underrated gems. The Hammer Story: The Authorised History Of Hammer Films does not agree, describing the film an 'odd mish-mash of mad scientist sci-fi flick and gothic flannel' that 'suffers from an excess of dialogue and a lack of action.' This assessment is reflected in several contemporary reviews. Harrison's Reports says that the movie's 'chief drawback' is 'that it is given more to talk than to movement'; Variety called it 'well acted and intelligently conceived. But invention and embellishment in this field appear to have been exhausted.' They're all wrong. Take Keith Telly Topping's word for it.
On the other hand, film scholar Phil Hardy writes that, visually, the film 'looks like one of Hammer's more lavish productions', although it is a 'minor item' in Fisher's filmography. He describes the movie as having a 'perfunctory script', which makes it a 'rather awkward variation on the Dorian Gray motif.' In the chapter on Hazel Court in Scream Queens: Heroines Of The Horrors, author Calvin Thomas Beck praises the performances of the three main actors. He writes that Diffring shows 'unique and excellent villainy' and is a 'magnificent heavy who has been shamefully neglected by filmmakers.' Court, he writes, is a 'fine, striking actress at all times' who 'screams and cringes properly' during the movie. He calls The Man Who Could Cheat Death one of her 'finest British thrillers.' Beck also notes that Lee 'unexpectedly reversed his monster-villain image' in the film.
Val Guest co-wrote and directed the startling psychodrama The Full Treatment (released in the US under the hysterically over-the-top title Stop Me Before I Kill!) in 1960, just before he started work on From The North favourite The Day The Earth Caught Fire. It is the story of a famous racing driver, Alan Colby (Ronald Lewis) and his wife Denise (Diane Cilento), who on their wedding day are involved in a serious traffic accident. Although they both recover physically from their injuries, Alan struggles with mood swings and becomes increasingly violent. Nearly a year later, the couple are reattempting their honeymoon in the Côte d'Azur, but Colby is afraid that his sexual desires seem to be manifesting in a wish to kill his wife. During their trip, they encounter Doctor Prade (Claude Dauphin), a French psychiatrist who takes a rather sinister interest in the couple; an interest which unsettles Alan. As well it might. However, with his violent urges growing stronger and a push from his wife, Alan agrees to undergo treatment with Prade. A treatment which turns out to be more than Alan and Denise ever expected. The New York Times wrote, rather patronisingly, 'the British have concocted a snug, tautly-strung little thriller ... Guest's package is a small one, but trim and adroitly tied. The contents are worth waiting for.'
Released in October 1960, the movie was rather butchered for its US release, its near two hour running time cut to ninety three minutes. Thankfully, the version which usually plays on TV these days, is the longer UK cut (albeit, often under the US title).
The Shadow Of The Cat was directed by John Gilling and starred André Morell and From The North favourite Barbara Shelley. The movie's fine, moody black-and-white cinematography was by Hammer regular Arthur Grant. It was released in May 1961 on a double-bill with The Curse Of The Werewolf. A normally placid household pussy turns into a ferocious feline from Hell seeking vengeance against the treacherous trio who murdered its mistress. One of the killers was the woman's husband, Walter (Morell); the other two were her servants. The murdered woman (Catherine Lacey) was wealthy and the avaricious three killed her to obtain her fortune. As you do. Unfortunately, the crime was witnessed by the cat, Tabitha. Who is, seemingly, not the forgiving sort. Later Walter tries to convince his niece, Beth (Shelley) that the cat and his late wife's will should both be destroyed and there are several unsuccessful attempts to capture and kill Tabitha. Soon after, the cat quite literally scares Walter to death. Tabitha then leads Beth and her lover (Conrad Phillips) to her aunt's corpse.
In the end, Beth inherits the fortune. The house is sold and Tabitha watches from the courtyard as a new family - husband, wife, daughter and grandfather - move in. The grandfather complains that he will probably die of boredom living there, whilst the husband and wife talk of convincing the old man to change his will. The movie also features William Lucas, Freda Jackson, Vanda Godsell and Alan Wheatley in an excellent cast. It's a wonderfully daft movie with some terrific performances, particularly from Bunkie who plays Tabitha. And, the body count is astronomical.
Taste Of Fear, directed by Seth Holt, also featured Ronald Lewis. It was released in the United States as Scream Of Fear. Penny Appleby (Susan Strasberg) is a wheelchair-bound girl set to visit her father in France for the first time in ten years. When she arrives, she learns that he is 'away on business.' Allegedly. She is left with her stepmother, Jane (Ann Todd) and Doctor Gerrard (Christopher Lee), a 'friend' of Penny's father. Penny is suspicious of her stepmother's odd behavior and is convinced that something is amiss. Well, of course it is, this is a Hammer movie after all. While searching around the house, Penny discovers her father's body, only for it to vanish before anyone else can see it. So, she enlists the help of the family chauffeur, Robert (Lewis), to help solve the mystery and unmask the killer. Jimmy Sangster stated that he originally wrote the film for producer Sidney Box. According to Sangster, Box then became ill, leading his work to be taken over by his brother-in-law Peter Rogers, who was busy working on the Carry On series. Sangster bought the film back from Rogers and sold it to Michael Carreras at Hammer. Taste Of Fear was distributed in the UK in June 1961 with an eighty two minute running time.
The film was a major success in both Britain and the US and was also very popular in Europe, being one of Hammer's most profitable productions at that time which led to a cycle of similar psychological suspense films. Christopher Lee later stated that it was 'the best film that I was in that Hammer ever made [...] It had the best director, the best cast and the best story.' Ann Todd. on the other hand, said that she believed 'it was a terrible film. I didn't like my part and I found Susan Strasberg impossible to work with-all that "Method" stuff.' An article in Blacklist later argued that the film still had the capacity to surprise. 'We're often told it's hard to shock audiences these days because they've seen so much and society is so tolerant, but every society has things which aren't normally seen - and one of them is still a fifty two year old woman with wrinkles making out with a handsome thirty three year old man on screen.'
Kerwin Matthews found himself in the middle of a decidedly strange mother/daughter threesome in the Jimmy Sangster-written Maniac, directed by Michael Carreras. The film was shot in black-and-white in the Camargue district of Southern France and at the MGM Studios in Borehamwood. The story tells of vacationing American artist Jeff Farrell (Matthews) who becomes romantically involved with an older woman, Eve Beynat (Nadia Gray) while, at the same time, harboring a rather unhealthy attraction to her teenage stepdaughter, Annette (Liliane Brousse). Annette's father, Georges (Donald Houston), is banged up in an asylum right good and proper for using a blowtorch to kill a man who had raped Annette four years ago. Jeff agrees to assist Eve in springing Georges from The Loony Bin. Of course, Eve herself has a somewhat different agenda. Inspector Etienne (George Pastell) sets a plot to help trap the killer. The climactic scenes are set at Les Baux-de-Provence in the huge stone galleries dug into the rock of the Val d'Enfer on the road to Maillane.
Turner Classic Movies wrote: 'Maniac has excellent production values but labors [sic] under the weight of yet another gimmicky and obvious script by Jimmy Sangster. The acting is fine, especially that of Kerwin Mathews and Liliane Brousse.' In the New York Times, Bosley Crowther added 'Maniac has one thing and has it in spades - a plot of extraordinary cunning. [It] takes on a twitching suspense that simmers, sizzles and explodes in a neat backflip,' though he concluded 'Michael Carrera's direction is uneven and the characters are a generally flabby lot. Maniac remains a striking blueprint, with satanic tentacles, for a much better picture.'
Paranoiac, the directional debut of Freddie Francis, is also something of a forgotten gem. It is a sinister little tale which spins a gruesome web of unhappy families. It is three weeks before the Ashby siblings Simon (Oliver Reed), a brutish alcoholic and Eleanor (Janette Scott), a nervous wreck, are to come into their late parents' (not insignificant) inheritance. While Simon secretly schemes to have his sister certified insane and locked away, Eleanor keeps seeing the lurking figure of their long-dead brother Tony (Alex Davion) around the estate. Who or what is this apparition and does he threaten to reveal skeletons in the family closet? Simon's claims cause Eleanor to wonder about her sanity, and in a moment of weakness she attempts suicide. Tony rescues her and tells her that he never died but simply went into hiding. He returns to the family's mansion, but soon he and Eleanor become the subject of a number of violent attacks by a masked lunatic before Eleanor learns a surprising secret about Tony.
A massively entertaining treat in the best English Gothic tradition, Paranoiac features a superbly dangerous performance from a young Ollie Reed, Arthur Grant's stunning black & white Cinemascope photography, an ingenious script by Sangster and gripping direction by Francis.
The fourth of Hammer's psychological thrillers, Nightmare, was one of Freddie Francis' most imaginative films, making the most of a rather patchy Jimmy Sangster script. Janet (Jenny Linden), a girl at finishing school who six years earlier saw her mother stab her father to death, is plagued by recurring nightmares. Her mother, following the tragedy, was committed to an asylum for the criminally bewildered. Janet's teacher Miss Lewis (Brenda Bruce), takes Janet home for the holidays. In the absence of Henry Baxter (David Knight), Janet's guardian, they are met by John (George A Cooper), the chauffeur and Grace Maddox (Moira Redmond), an attractive nurse/companion hired by Henry. Janet's nightmares continue: a white-shrouded woman roams the corridors, inviting Janet to burst into her parents' room, where she finds the same woman on the bed with a knife in her chest. When Henry returns, he finds Janet under heavy sedation; her doctors recommend psychiatric care but he refuses and Janet tries to commit suicide.
Knight is the suspect hero and Linden the tormented young heroine haunted by a fear of hereditary insanity. Normally the Hammer psychological, 'mini-Hitchcock' movies have a disconcertingly contemporary tone, but here the apparatus (who is trying to drive the girl out of her mind?) is truly Gothic: the old country house, the absent guardian, the white phantom, et cetera. Nightmare is a proper, twenty four carat Hammer masterpiece. From the chilling beginning to the surprising conclusion, the film sets the bar for British suspense thrillers; it is sharp, haunting, paranoid and absolutely timeless.
Fanatic was based on a novel (confusingly, called Nightmare) by Anne Blaisdell and adapted to the screen by Richard Matheson. Directed by Silvio Narizzano, it was released as Die! Die! My Darling! in the United States. The film charts Patricia (Stefanie Powers), a young American woman's descent into a nightmare of captivity, psychological torment and physical abuse orchestrated by an elderly religious fanatic. Patricia has just arrived in London to marry her new fiancé but first decides to pay a brief visit to Mrs Trefoile (Tallulah Bankhead, in her final movie), the mother of her deceased former boyfriend whom she had never met. At first Patricia is welcomed into Mrs Trefoile's home and urged to spend the night. Which she does. But, when she reveals her plans to marry, her hostess turns malicious. Patricia is imprisoned in the house as Mrs Trefoile (who talks to her dead son whenever she is not quoting the Bible) prepares to 'purify' Patricia's soul.
Aiding Trefoile in keeping Patricia a prisoner are her housemaid Anna (Yootha Joyce), her butler Harry (Peter Vaughan) and Joseph (Donald Sutherland), a mentally-challenged handyman. Hammer's first attempt at the so-called 'psycho-biddy' genre, Fanatic isn't on a par with the company's previous four psychological thrillers (Taste Of Fear, Maniac, Paranoiac and Nightmare) but its extraordinary cast has helped to make it a genuine cult movie in subsequent years.
The futuristic classic The Damned, directed by Joseph Losey was, perhaps, the finest of these Hammer not-or-not-quite-horrors. Losey had moved to Britain after being blacklisted by Hollywood. A script was originally written by Ben Barzman which was reasonably faithful to the original novel (The Children Of Light). Losey then had this rewritten by Evan Jones prior to filming. Simon Wells (Macdonald Carey), an American tourist, is on a boating holiday off the South coast of England. Clearly in the midst of a mid-life crisis, he has recently divorced and left his career as an insurance executive behind him to go off sailing. In Weymouth, he meets twenty-year-old Joan (Shirley Anne Field), who lures him into a brutal mugging at the hands of her brother, King (Oliver Reed in one of his finest roles) and his motorcycle gang of leather boy tearaways, including the vicious Sid (Kenneth Cope). The next day Joan joins Simon on his boat and defies her overprotective brother who attempts to keep her from going. Simon is willing to forgive and forget the whole 'I got seven grades beaten out of me thanks to you' thing; Joan implies that the beating was inevitable after Simon attempted to pick up Joan in a bar. She describes the abuse she suffers from King whenever men show any interest in her. Simon urges her to run away with him but she insists upon returning to shore.
Their time on the water has, of course, been observed by a member of King's gang. Meanwhile within the caves on the nearby coast live nine children, all aged eleven, whose skin is cold to the touch. They appear healthy, well-dressed and intelligent but know little of the outside world. Their home is under continuous camera surveillance and they are educated via closed circuit TV by Bernard (Alexander Knox), who deflects questions about their purpose and their isolation with promises that they will learn the answers someday. The children are regularly visited by men in radiation protection suits. Losey originally wanted the sculptor Freya Neilson (Viveca Lindfors) to be killed by one of the helicopters but the studio insisted that Bernard kill her. The studio also wished to tone down the incestuous implications in the relationship between King and Joan. The sculptures were all by British artist Elisabeth Frink who not only loaned these to the production but also was on location for their shooting and coached Lindfors on the sculptor's method. The film was shot at Bray and on location around Weymouth, the Isle of Portland and nearby Chesil Beach. It went over budget by twenty five grand and, although it easily made its money back, Hammer were reluctant to use Losey again. And, so potentially, lost out on his next project, the BAFTA-winning The Servant.
The Damned - and yes, the legend in true the movie is where the band got their name from - was reviewed by the British censors in December 1961 and given an X certificate without any cuts. However, it wasn't released in the UK until May 1963, when it was shown at the London Pavilion as the second half of a double-bill with Maniac. In spite of the very discreet release, it was noticed by a film critic from The Times, who gave it a very positive review, stating that Losey 'is one of the most intelligent, ambitious and constantly exciting film-makers now working in this country, if not indeed in the world - The Damned is very much a film to be seen, for at its best it hits with a certainty of aim which is as exciting as it is devastating, and hits perhaps in a place where it is important we should be hurt.'
Blood Of The Vampire, another film shown on Talking Pictures this week in an early Monday morning slot was not a Hammer production, although many horror fans (particularly in the US) believed that it was when the movie came out in 1958. Due, mainly, to its similar look to both The Curse Of Frankenstein and Dracula plus Jimmy Sangster's writing credit. In fact, it was made by Robert S Baker and Monty Berman for Tempean Films and was distributed in the UK by Eros Films and in the USA by Universal. Posters for Blood Of The Vampire - starring From The North favourite Barbara Shelley - indicated that it was considered an adults-only film in France and the UK, carrying an X Certificate from the BBFC. This was indicative of the activities of Eros which had, by then, deliberately 'embarked on a new X-certificate path'. Tempean 'embraced' not only films designed to get an X cert, but also 'Eros's policy of offering co-feature programmes which could be marketed not only in Britain, but also on the American drive-in circuits'. So, just the sort of movie to crop up a five-past-eight in the morning on TPTV, then. Paul Meehan in his book The Vampire In Science Fiction Films & Literature (2014) describes the film as being 'packed with the blood, gore and sadism of Jimmy Sangster's script' and notes that 'grafting an element of science fiction onto the traditional notion of vampirism doesn't work ... The film's pseudoscience, such as do-it-yourself Nineteenth Century heart-transplant surgery and suspended animation, strains credulity while reaching for a scientific rationale for vampire resurrection.' In summarizing contemporary reviews of Blood Of The Vampire, Bill Warren wrote in Keep Watching The Skies! American Science Fiction Movies Of The Fifties (2010) that 'the film was popular and still has its adherents, Blood Of The Vampire was not greeted by much enthusiasm by film critics, although most thought it somewhat above average.' For example, Jack Moffitt of The Hollywood Reporter, whom Warren describes as 'hard-to-please', wrote in his review that the film 'rates more serious audience attention than most of the contemporary rash of domestic horror films. Direction by Henry Cass is brisk enough to keep yawning from being contagious to the audience.' In Warren's view, 'It's a shade better than some of its class, but the lumpy direction, muddled plot and slow pace make it look much worse now than it did when it was new ... This is horror by the book, circa 1958 and it's pretty drab.' This blogger, on the other hand, thought it was great.
Also cropping up in the TPTV schedules and, as a consequence, finding its way onto The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House tellybox this week was a rare showing of David MacDonald's 1948 Brit-noir, Good-Time Girl a once very controversial movie which has, in the last couple of decades, developed something of a cult following. It has a claim to being the first 'socially aware' drama made in Britain on the subject of teenage crime and its causes. The film opens with Miss Thorpe (Flora Robson), chairwoman of the Juvenile Court, giving advice to troubled teenager Lyla Lawrence (a sixteen year old Diana Dors in only her fourth film). Thorpe tells Lyla that her journey-in-life has had a similar beginning to that of a girl called Gwen Rawlings (Jean Kent) who was up a'fore the same court some years ago. The chairwoman then recounts Gwen's story in a - lengthy - series of flashbacks.
When Sydney Box was appointed as head of production at Gainsborough Pictures in 1946, he resolved to steer the studio away from the glossy, sensationalised melodramas with which it had made its name in the mid-1940s (Fanny By Gaslight, The Wicked Lady, Caravan et al), preferring more realistic dramas exploring contemporary social issues. Good-Time Girl - along with Easy Money - was among the first of these into production. But the finished film bore as much resemblance to its melodramatic predecessors as to what Box (who was also co-screenwriter with his sister, Muriel and Ted Willis) was presumably aiming for. Its attempt at realism were further undermined by a wary BBFC demanding the editing of some of the more violent scenes and getting very jittery over the script. The film's heart was certainly in the right place. It took scrupulous care to present near enough all of its authority figures - the juvenile court magistrate, the approved school staff, various police officers - as being not only sympathetic to the plight of their charges but, also, aware of how these young offenders actions are often shaped as much by their environment as by their own unfortunate decisions. This was a theme that would be developed further in Montgomery Tully's Boys In Brown, a similar Gainsborough-produced study of male juvenile prisoners the following year. But these thoughtful elements were somewhat cattled by a narrative that stacks the odds so overwhelmingly against Gwen Rawlings that it's hard to envisage a better outcome even if she had played the game strictly by society's rules. She ends up in the approved school in the first place because the court refused to believe in two genuine acts of kindness (Gwen helping Jimmy and Red, in turn, helping her) and it's arguably this crucial misjudgement (which Miss Thorpe never acknowledges, despite her role as the story's narrator) that sets Gwen along the road to perdition far more decisively than her troubled family background or her choice of lifestyle. Both her family and the state - perpetual recidivists, both - have failed her as much as she has been, willingly, seduced by the darker side of the street.
Jean Kent - a terrific actress - was twenty six when she made the film, ten years older than the role she was playing and, despite her best efforts, she is never quite convincing as a naïve teenager (it doesn't help that, in the court scenes, she wears a hat at makes her look a dead-ringer for Minnie Mouse). Kent copes as well as she can with the material she's given, her constantly shifting accent suggesting Gwen's deep-seated need to fit in with whoever her companions are at any given time (broad Cockney in the nightclubs, more refined when with the sophisticated Red and her mother, a Transatlantic twang when she becomes the moll to a pair of US Army deserters on the rob). As the rebellious Roberta (the closest thing Gwen has to a friend in the approved school), Jill Balcon reveals the roots of her son Daniel Day-Lewis' much-lauded versatility: the same year, she would also appear in the costume drama Nicholas Nickleby. Meanwhile, Dors is really good in her few scenes as the troubled Lyla - it was to be the first of many similar roles in British social 'message' films (see this blog's study of Yield To The Night, for example). The cast, overall, is excellent with the likes of Dennis Price (as the doomed Red), Herbert Lom, Griffith Jones (superb as the violent Danny), Jack Raine, Michael Hordern and Harry Ross (as the camp Fruity Lee) taking on the character roles and, amongst a plethora of young female talent as the women in Gwen's milieu, early roles for the likes of Vera Frances, June Byford, Mollie Palmer, Zena Marshall and Jane Hylton. George Carney and Beatrice Varley are good as Gwen's 'we done our best for her, yer honour' parents and the film's progressive leanings are demonstrated by the casting of the acclaimed Nigerian character actor, Orlando Martins, in a highly sympathetic role as Gwen's friend, the club doorman Kolly.
Stitched-up for a crime wot she never done (honest, guv) and sent to an approved school where all of the other girls are beastly to her, Gwen runs away and soon falls back into her old habit of hanging around with the wrong people again and again. Her crimes include a drunken hit-and-run which results in the death of a policeman. After the loathsome Danny beats Gwen senseless and leaves her for dead on a train, she is helped by two American soldiers (Bonar Colleano and Peter Glenville) who have gone AWOL. The trio decide, on a whim, to become petty criminals. After becoming too well known in London due to their coshing and thieving ways, they decide to head to Manchester for a fresh crime spree. As they flag down a car to steal, Gwen recognises that the driver of the car is one of the few people who ever believed in her, Red. Her companions, of course, simply shoot Red. Dead. All three are eventually caught by The Fuzz and Gwen is sentenced to fifteen years Richard The Third in The Slammer. Hearing this horror story, a chastened Lyla decides that being a bad girl might not be all it's cracked up to be, thanks Miss Thorpe and goes home.
Based on an Arthur La Bern novel (Night Darkens The Street), the film was originally banned by the BBFC, not only for its violence but also for its dialogue (much of which seems trite and clichéd by Twenty First Century standards but was considered strong stuff in the immediate post-war period). Contemporary trade papers described the film a 'notable box office attraction' in British cinemas after it premiered in April 1948 although, ultimately, it wasn't quite the hit that suggests, taking a couple of years to make the majority of its budget back. Cautionary tales of good-girls-gone-bad weren't, exactly, a new phenomena even then but cautionary tales which at least attempted to contextualise the reasons why caution was a road not taken were rare, in both Hollywood and Britain. Good-Time Girl tried its best and, for that, it deserved to be considered an artistic success even if it wasn't a commercial one.
All of which move-related malarkey brings us, kicking and screaming, to our current on-going From The North featurette, Memorably Daft Lines from Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Seventeen: Hardy Kruger: 'They rejected our surrender offer. What are your orders, Herr General?' Maximillian Schell: 'Flatten Arnhem!' A Bridge Too Far. Should, of course, be called A Bridge Too Long. And, in its (pretty successful) effort to be historically accurate, it's a bit meandering in places. But the best bits of it remain what Bank Holiday Monday afternoons were made for. And the cast .. don't blink or you might miss six.
There's a good story that the comedian Al Murray tells about how his dad (who was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Paras) always hated this movie, not because it wasn't any good but because in one scene, they used the wrong type of tank. It was 'a post-war Leopard tank masquerading as a Tiger,' this blogger's fiend Nick (who knows about these things) informed Keith Telly Topping. 'It's not bad in itself, but the reality is that the Paras never actually encountered any Tigers until much later in the day. Instead it was all self-propelled guns and old training tanks, like this appropriated French one (which got knocked out pretty easily).' He knows his armoured weaponry, that lad.
Memorably Daft Lines from Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Eighteen: Richard Burton: 'He's dead, I'm crippled, you're lost. Do you suppose it's always like that? I mean war.' The Longest Day. One of this blogger's favourite movies of all time. He remembers reading some knobcheese on the IMDB comments page describing it as 'American propaganda.' Is it shite? It's one of the few World War II films that not only gives the Allied viewpoint but, also, the German and, almost uniquely, the French as well. Yes, John Wayne is a bit too ... well, John Wayne for this blogger's liking in it but it's got more great bits in its three hours than twenty movies can manage. Keith Telly Topping think it's great.
According to the 2001 documentary Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood, Burton and Roddy McDowall were so bored having not been used for several weeks while filming Cleopatra in Rome that they phoned Daryl Zanuck begging to do 'anything' on The Longest Day in which pretty much every name actor in Hollywood was involved in some way. They flew themselves to the location and each did a day's filming for their cameos for free, according to the documentary. That was also the way that Burton told the story but I've always found that a bit unlikely. Many of the smaller cameos in the movies were done very quickly (Rod Steiger's on-screen for all of forty five seconds, for instance). Zanuck did, after all, have at least four directors working on it simultaneously (and some sources claim he shot some of the interior scenes himself). With Dick Burton, though, he is in at least two major scenes (that lengthy sequence in the pub with Donald Houston where they're discussing Ginger having 'bought it over the briny' et cetera and the one at the end with Richard Beymer). So, personally, this blogger doubts all of that could've been done in just one day. Two is far more likely - probably several weeks (perhaps even months) apart.
Memorably Daft Lines from Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Nineteen: Peter Falk: 'If we get caught, can they shoot us for wearing a German tank?' Castle Keep. Good old Columbo gets all the great lines in this vastly under-rated Sydney Pollock diamond. Most memorably 'we've come to the wrong war!' Burt Lancaster's excellent in it too. It didn't do great business when it came out but it's one that is in serious need of re-evaluation.
Memorably Daft Lines from Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Twenty: Donald Sutherland: 'Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?' Gavin MacLeod: 'Crap!' Kelly's Heroes. Even if one didn't know this was a Troy Kennedy Martin script, you could probably have guessed it from the dialogue. As this blogger's fiend Allan noted: 'it has a daft concept; that troops fight much better if there is monetary gain. Like M*A*S*H this movie isn't about the war it claims to be set in but reflects the attitudes of the 1960s and Viet'nam.' Which, actually, is true about just about all of the World War II movies made during the late Sixties and early Seventies, whether by intention or accident. Probably a bit of both.
Memorably Daft Lines from Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Twenty One: Brian Keith: 'Ah, Willi. Looks like we're both in the shitehouse now!' The McKenzie Break. The Great Escape told from the Kriegsmarine point of view, essentially. Brian Keith and Helmut Griem play a brilliantly sly and dangerous game of cat and mouse. The plot of the film loosely reflects real-life events at a POW camp in Ontario; in particular, the interception of German attempts to communicate in code with the captured U-boat ace Otto Kretschmer and the 'trial' of Captain Rahmlow and his second-in-command, Bernhard Berndt from U-570, which was surrendered in September 1941 and recommissioned as HMS Graph. Kretschmer was also the subject of Operation Kiebitz, an attempt to liberate several U-boat commanders from Bowmanville by submarine, which was foiled by the Royal Canadian Navy.
Memorably Daft Lines from Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Twenty Two: Roy Kinnear: 'You married?' John Lennon: 'No, I play the harmonica.' How I Won The War. Once described as 'pretentious tomfoolery' by some up-his-own-arse critic of no importance. But, he's dead now so, you know, who won that was? The pretentious bit, yes, this blogger thinks that has some validity - Dick Lester making a flawed but fascinating anti-war movie using some very odd techniques (the black and white sequences of the character's deaths, for example and, particularly, the cynically amusing ending). But, 'tomfoolery'? Hell, no. How I Won The War is an angry film disguised as a black comedy and that's, also, its salvation.
The film uses a variety of styles such as vignettes, straight-to-camera and docu-drama to tell the tale of the fictional troop and their misadventures. The screenplay takes a comic and absurdist attitude towards the conflict through the Western Desert in 1942 to the crossing of the last intact bridge on the Rhine at Remagen in 1945. In writing the script, Charles Wood borrowed themes and dialogue from his previous surreal and bitterly dark (and banned) play Dingo. Fascism amongst the British is discussed when Gripweed (Lennon's character) is revealed to be a former follower of Oswald Mosley, though Colonel Grapple (Michael Hordern in superb eye-rolling form) sees nothing for Gripweed to be embarrassed about, stressing that 'Fascism is something you grow out of.' Mind you, Gripweed notes, 'I'm Working Class.' Grapple replies: 'I had a grandfather who was a miner. Until he sold it!'
'As each soldier dies in the film it was shot in black and white,' Lester explained to the Gruniad many years later. 'But it was tinted a different colour based on Arnhem, Dieppe, Dunkirk, El Alemain and when someone died in it he was replaced just as a platoon is always up to full strength and the actors were dressed in that uniform but dyed that colour with a stocking mask also of that colour over their faces. We were used to this and were shooting the [bridge] sequence when the people we'd borrowed the tanks from came to watch and they said, "What's that - are they supposed to be British soldiers?" Luckily my producer [Dennis O'Dell] was quick-witted and said, "Oh don't worry, that's a camera test for Technicolor!' Shot in 1966, the movie is often described as a specific protest against the increasing US military presence in Sout East Asia. Although the anti-Viet'nam film genre didn't get really begin until later in the decade, this premise is not unfounded as Michael Crawford's character makes a direct reference to on-going conflict in the closing scene ('What you doing next?' 'I hear there's this Viet'nam thing coming'). A flawed movie, then, but with some genuinely astonishing moments and a great cast.
Memorably Daft Lines from Blockbuster War, Espionage & Mad Computer Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Twenty Three: Paul Frees: 'How many nights a week do you require sex?' Eric Braeden: 'Every night.' Paul Frees: 'Not want. Require.' Eric Braeden: ' ... Four times!' Colossus: The Forbin Project. The best futurist-mad-computer-espionage movie ever.
It's odd how memory can cheat. This blogger always used to say that when he was growing up there were two films that seemed to be on TV about every six months - The Satan Bug and this one. Checking on BBC Genome and The Television & Radio Database, however, it turns out that whilst The Satan Bug was, indeed, shown six times on the BBC between 1972 and 1984 (still not as many as Keith Telly Topping remembered, but a fair number). Colossus, on the other hand, was only shown three times during the same period, in March 1978, February 1983 and December 1984 (because, nothing says Christmas like a mad computer trying to take over the world). This blogger would have put money - a lot of it - on it being far more than that.
Memorably Daft Lines from Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Twenty Four: Joachim Hansen: 'Farce! Where are the bombers? Our reinforcements? This is the most important place in Germany and what do we have to fight with? Old men, riff-raff, the sweepings from the road.' Robert Vaughn: 'And you, Baumann? Will you fight as hard as you talk?' The Bridge At Remagen.
The fact that this movie even got completed, considering the catalogue of disasters that hit it during production was a miracle in and of itself. Illnesses, bad weather, the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia causing the cast and crew to have to flee for the border leaving behind all of their equipment and necessitating an expensive remount in Germany. It has, reportedly, been accused of being 'too realistic' (whatever that means) and 'not realistic enough' and it lost a lot of money on release ('I suppose,' the producer said, 'that it probably wasn't a good idea to release a film about heroism in war in the middle of Viet'nam!') It's still a cracker.
Memorably Daft Lines from Blockbuster War & Espionage Movies of the 1960s and 70s: Number Twenty Five: Cliff Robertson: 'Two die, two get married. Kind of evens things up.' George Chakiris: 'I thought you were against marriage.' Cliff Robertson: 'I'm also against death! But it happens anyway.' 633 Squadron. Not, admittedly, the best Memorably Daft Blockbuster War And/Or Espionage Movie of the 1960s but, with definitely the best theme music.
A recent posting by one of this blogger's beast fiends on Facebook on the subject of this blogger finding dolls faces pure-dead scary reminded this blogger of an image which utterly scarred the youngling Keith Telly Topping's childhood. This blogger has already recalled in previous From The North updates that the favourite authors of this blogger's dad were Alistair Maclean, Ian Fleming and Louis L'Amour. However, this blogger's mum was also a vociferous reader, being a particular fan of The Sexton Blake Library, John Creasey's The Toff novels and Dorothy L Sayers (something she passed on to her son who still reckons Gaudy Night is one of the four or five best novels of the Twentieth Century). However, her default choice for a good night in with a book was, always, Agatha Christie. Again, good taste, y'see. And it was the cover of a paperback edition of Ms Christie's 1968 Tommy and Tuppence novel By The Pricking Of My Thumbs that used to give this blogger the brown trousers treatment to such an extent that he regularly refused to go into his mother and father's bedroom, for any reason, unless the book was either not on her bedside table or was, but facing downwards.
See what this blogger means?
Parlophone Records have announced the forthcoming release of David Bowie Divine Symmetry, a four-CD, one blu-ray box set and digital equivalent. The collection celebrates the twelve months running up to the release of the greatest record Bowie (or, anybody else for that matter) ever made, Hunky Dory in December 1971 via home demos, BBC radio sessions and live and studio recordings. Divine Symmetry contains forty eight previously unreleased recordings from the period and new alternative mixes of Hunky Dory itself by original co-producer Ken Scott. Two books accompany the set, a one hundred page hardback featuring exclusive memorabilia and photos alongside a sixty-page replica composite of Bowie's notebooks from the era featuring handwritten lyrics, costume drawings, recording notes and set lists. The sleeve notes have been written for the release by Bowie expert Tris Penna, along with contributions from Ken Scott, lifelong Bowie friends Geoff MacCormack and George Underwood, singer Dana Gillespie, guitarist Mark Pritchett, Friars Aylesbury promoter David Stopps, publisher Bob Grace and photographer Louanne Richards. 1971 was a pivotal year for Bowie. He signed a deal with RCA, he met Andy Warhol, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop whilst in New York, became a father and wrote the song 'Kooks' as a show of paternal pride, played live for the first time in June with Mick Ronson, Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder, the band that would later become The Spiders From Mars and, of course, recorded Hunky Dory (and, much of The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust too). 'Kooks', recorded by Bowie and Mick Ronson for the BBC's Sounds Of The 70s presented by Whispering Bob Harris is available now for download and streaming single. It was recorded at Kensington House, Shepherds Bush, for Radio 1 on 21 September 1971 and broadcast on 4 October. The set also includes the complete June 1971 Radio 1 In Concert performance by David Bowie & Fiends, presented by John Peel. And, the biggie, a first ever release for Bowie's live show at Friars Club, Aylesbury on 25 September which had long done the rounds on bootleg. The set will be released on 25 November.
And so, with the terrible inevitability of the terribly inevitable, we come to the part of From The North dedicated to this blogger's on-going medical doings. For those dear blog readers who haven't been following this on-going fiasco which appears to have been on-going longer than someone saying 'Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapiki-maungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitnatahu', it goes like this: Keith Telly Topping spent some weeks around Christmas and New Year feeling rotten; experienced five days in hospital; was discharged; received B12 injections; then more injections; somewhat recovered his missing appetite; got a diagnosis; had a consultant's meeting; continued to suffer fatigue and insomnia; endured a second endoscopy; had another consultation; got (unrelated) toothache; had an extraction; which took ages to heal; had another consultation; spent a week where nothing remotely health-related occurred; was given further - painful - B-12 injections; had an echocardiogram; received more blood extractions; did another hospital visit; saw the insomnia and torpor continue; returned to the hospital for more blood-letting; had a rearranged appointment to get a sick note from his doctor; suffered probably his worst period yet of the fatigue. Until the following week. Oh, the fatigue. The depressing fatigue. The never-ending fatigue. Then, this blogger returned to hospital for a go on the Blood-Letting Machine and was back at the doctor's for another sickie.
On Wednesday of this week, dear blog reader, Keith Telly Topping returned to the hospital for a further assessment update, this time with the totally delightful Nurse Jennifer. It was one of those fifty minute discussions which started off on the subjects of anaemia and back pain and ended up with the pair of us swapping recipes of the perfect mushroom omelette and talking about how good the first two episodes of Inside Man were. If you're wondering, we both thought it was great. Given that it took this blogger two buses and a Metro to get there in the first place and a bus and a Metro to get back to The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House, though, that is, most definitely this blogger done for the week!
Would you like to see the single most slappably Middle Class thing ever printed in the Gruniad Morning Star, dear blog reader? Consider, then, a letter written by one Sarah Geeson-Brown of Charlbury, Oxfordshire, headlined An Aga helps you cook, heat and do the ironing - all on off-peak electricity. That's an aga, dear blog reader - average cost, about ten grand. Well, let's all et one immediately in that case. That will certain cut down on the heating bills this winter. 'Can any other type of electric stove provide such lasting good cheer and warmth and cost just one hundred pounds a month to run?' asks Sarah Geeson-Brown of Charlbury, Oxfordshire (sadly neglecting to add to her financial calculations the cost of buying the fekker in the first place).
'Besides, the cat would leave home if we ripped out the Aga,' she concludes. And, that would be a tragedy. Won't somebody think of the pussy?
Still on the subject of the cost of living crisis, dear blog reader, 'milk and cake prices rise, but fruit gets cheaper,' suggests the BBC News website. The war in Ukraine has pushed up food prices around the world. However, bright side, long spells of sunshine helped bring down the price of fruit such as strawberries and blueberries. So there you go, dear blog reader, don't spread butter or marg on your breakfast toast, spread blueberries instead. Now that's really Middle Class. One imagines the Gruniad Morning Star will approve. Brown bread, obviously.
The Brighton Argus is the sole nomination for the latest From The North Headline Of The Week award, for Teenager's Shock After Seeing Mince Pies In Hassocks Sainsbury's. Shocked and stunned, one suspects. Because, obviously, there's no actual news to report on the South coast.
And finally, dear blog reader, here is from The North's Thought For The Day.
