Hey, hey it’s the monkey… Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966)

At the time people used to say that David Warner’s Hamlet was the best of his generation and yet no one ever mentions his superlative performance as a guerrilla in Morgan, A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966). This is another one I would have seen with the family in our seventies sitting room: and probably one that took a little explaining from my patient parents.

Morgan follows a familiar theme for films of this period; mental illness versus idiot savant; the natural outsider who won’t give up his wonder at the World and nature just for the benefit of being accepted – just a little – in polite society. Morgan is a bit of a child and his love and natural affinity with wife Leonie (Vanessa Redgrave) is not enough for her to want to end their marriage and go off with their art-dealer pal Charles Napier (Robert Stephens). Leonie still loves Morgan and, indeed, they keep slipping and making love…. But she has had enough of his unpredictability and his unwillingness to grow up. Morgan is a talented artist but he’s never focused on success; just expression.

Vanessa and friend

All this is frustrating for Leonie’s mother, Mrs Henderson (Nan Munro) who cannot abide the man she views as having wasted her daughter’s time, in comparison, Morgan’s mother (Irene Handl) is on top of the situation. Mrs Delt is a firm believer in fate as well as the Marxist Dialectic and frequently quotes from Das Kapital with analysis that is still more than pertinent today, comrades. She also quotes Morgan’s birth father, who was a party member and committed to social and political change. There’s a lovely sequence when she and Morgan go to lay flowers on Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate, and Morgan gives her a piggy-back - there's a lot of love in the film.

Based on David Mercer’s BBC television play A Suitable Case for Treatment (1962), starring Ian Hendry, this Morgan has a more whimsical approach and is a very swinging take on the writer’s examination of social alienation and mental health. Morgan Delt was not meant to fit in or rather he refuses to; we see the world often through his eyes and he is easily distracted. He has a voracious appetite for natural history and often sees people in terms of the animals they represent: a group of builders on scaffold are monkeys, lawyers are giraffes, he and his wife are Zebras and an attractive woman on the tube makes him feel like a peacock.

David Warner and Irene Handl

It’s very Reggie Perrin (or rather the other way around) and his fantasy associations also encompass the movies with excerpts from a Johnny Weismuller Tarzan film – “he Tarzan, Leonie Jane” – and then King Kong when, dressed in a guerrilla costume, he climbs up to invade Leonie and Charles’ wedding reception. The films inspire and legitimise his seemingly futile attempts to reclaim his love.

The reaction to Morgan’s extremes – he refuses to leave after being divorced and lives in his wife’s car outside even though he can’t drive are not quite as you’d expect: people are mostly kind. The local bobby (Bernard Bresslaw) is more than lenient, whilst even Charles has an affection for Morgan, not just because of his talent as a painter but he understands that he’s not as threatening as he wishes he was – he calmly diffuses Morgan’s entry into his gallery armed with a revolver. Leonie understands her husband/ex-husband but here she wants a more socially-acceptable future, although there’s enough ambiguity to make us wonder.

Leonie's almost as much of a free spirit as Morgan... almost.

There are some lovely scenes of Morgan in his bed on the railway lines leading to the still functioning Battersea Power Station (now, sadly, a backdrop to some dull and very expensive apartment blocks) as Cossacks on horseback, led by Leonie, chase him down, in a later scene she is one of a group of revolutionaries shooting him dead. There’s constant referencing of Marxism but the film doesn’t really define Morgan’s attachment to the cause, even his mother calls him a class traitor. Perhaps, like everything else, it’s a fantasy for him… another socially-deviant obsession that in the words of his psychiatrist, make him a suitable case for treatment.

Dusty Verdict: Directed well by Karel Reisz, Morgan is period-psych but endures due to the rapport between Redgrave and Warner, they’re a very watchable combination and they riff very effectively off each other’s nuanced improvisations. Stephens is, of course not to be outdone although his role doesn’t allow the same freedom. The whole cast is superb though including Arthur Mullard as Wally, Mrs Delt’s boyfriend – a jobbing wrestler, nicknamed The Gorilla.

Visiting Karl

Morgan’s available on DVD and would make for a great addition to the BFI Flipside series… there’s a lot going on and it would be good to learn mote of the background and politics of the original play, which, along with so much from the 60s BBC is missing, presumed wiped.

Frying tonight! Crucible of Terror (1971)

This feature was recently listed among the Daily Telegraph’s “twenty worst” British films yet, whilst it has some distinctly deranged elements, it’s also competently made and a lot of fun. Firstly, the cast are clearly enjoying themselves and a recent Twitter exchange from Judy Jarvis (nee Matheson) confirms this and secondly there’s some good direction even if the narrative is sometimes slow moving. What, perhaps, aroused the notoriously-unbalanced Telegraph’s disdain was no doubt the performance artistry of Radio One DJ Mike Raven, and a finale in which all hell breaks lose as the plot of another film seems to be rapidly squeezed into the dying embers of this one.

Now Mr Raven is no Christopher Lee but I bet he had a cooler record collection… he does OK in this film and is propped up by a skilled cast around him including James Bolam, Ronald Lacey and Mary Maude, as well as the aforementioned Judy who brightens every film I’ve seen her in.

The film begins with a gruesome scene in which an unconscious woman is covered in plaster before hot molten metal is pored over her to make a statue. The scene shifts to a trendy art gallery owned – just about – by Jack Davies (Bolam) in which said “sculpture” is one of several items being sold off by the artist’s son Michael (Lacey). His father Victor is a recluse, living in the family home out in Cornwall and is unaware of his grabby son’s theft of these items.

Yes, I grew it myself... James Bolam

But Michael’s a loser in love and commerce and needs the money as does Jack, whose gallery is struggling. He is reliant from flirtatious favours from the wives of wealthy benefactors such as Joanna Brent (Melissa Stribling), married to the much older merchant banker George Brent (Kenneth Keeling) who is intensely-compelled by the shiny, sexy statue… it’s the only thing in the gallery he wants but it’s already been sold.

Jack pushes Michael to get some more of his father’s works and they travel down to the remote Cornish valley where the tumble-down family “pile” remains. Jack takes his girl, Millie (Mary Maude) on Michael’s advice as he knows his father has a fondness for young women, including his own wife, Jane (Beth Alberge).

The house is near an abandoned tin mine where the furnace is still operable… yes, we see where this is going, or do we?

Happy families

 Living with the immaculately bearded Victor (Raven) is his loyal pal Bill (the excellent John Arnatt carrying so much gentlemanly menace) and his estranged – with the emphasis on “strange” - wife Dorothy (Betty Alberge) who seems to have quite lost her mind, dressed as a young girl, cuddling dollies, her mind broken by some awful trauma we can only  begin to imagine.

Completing this unhappy family is Marcia (Judy Jarvis née Matheson, who clearly relishes the chance to play a proper bad ‘un!), a tough model who has stuck with her artist as the rest of his muses presumably melted away under the pressure of his single-minded artistic vision…

OK, it’s all a bit weird but Jack and Millie settle in as he sets his sights on a deal with Victor whilst Michael tries to wind up Daddy but only succeeds in rowing with Jane who seems to have a more balanced relationship with her father-in-law who, really, is very keen on running his charcoal along the lines of her physique.

The artist at work: Mike Raven painting Judy Jarvis

Victor will only deal in cash and so Jack has to head off to London leaving Millie to be entertained by Marcia who soon proves to be more than a little interested in her potential rival whilst fending off Michael’s crude approaches with a superb display of pebble throwing… good editing perhaps, but Judy knows how to throw and looks like she means it!

Meanwhile strange things are happening to Millie who keeps on having odd dreams… there’s a feeling that there’s more to this than meets the eye...

Dusty Verdict: The build-up of tension is handled well and even though we think we know who the real baddy is there’s a rather spectacular twist that would put many of Giallo to shame. I enjoyed the atmospherics and the location and there are some excellent actors to admire who manage to elevate the script with nuance and by conveying more than the words perhaps intended: everyone is clearly enjoying themselves.

Them that throws stones shouldn't live in glass houses...

You have to be in the right mood but I’ve seen many more than 20 worse British films than this one! So, don’t listen to the Telegraph (which is always the best policy) and whilst it’s not great art it is certainly one to relish on a rainy day.

Also, James Bolam in a daft ‘tache; what’s not to like!?

Ow's that Mr Lacey?!

 

 

Old wild eyes is back… Every Home Should Have One (1970)

As a kid I loved Marty Feldman, I remember finding him very funny on his TV shows which ran from the late sixties to the early seventies before his move to Hollywood and Mel Brooks’ films such as Young Frankenstein and Silent Movie. He was an ace gag-man having written for Kenneth Horne with Barry Took, been chief writer on the Frost Report – he wrote the Class sketch with Cleese, Corbet and Barker – and contributing to numerous shows with the cream of Cambridge Fringe.

I was prepared to be underwhelmed by this film – it has “period sex-comedy” written all over it but, whilst it’s no masterpiece it is a very professional job with a script co-written with Dennis Norden as well as Took, Jim Clark directing and Ned Sherrin producing. There’s a super cast including guest appearances from Alan Bennett, Frances de la Tour and Penelope Keith as a leather-trousered, German uber-nanny!

It’s energetic and packed with a lot of action/jokes which still raise a smile and, no doubt, my seven-year old self would have been in stiches had I been allowed to watch it. What’s most striking is Marty’s natural ease as a performer and there’s a genuine rapport with the ace Judy Cornwell, playing his wife, even if he’s not the greatest actor.

Penny for 'em Marty?

This is probably the greatest film made about porridge advertising with Feldman playing Teddy Brown, an ad executive tasked with providing a winning campaign for McLaughlin’s Oats, a dour Scottish breakfast serial from an even dourer be-kilted client (Jack Watson). McLaughlin is not impressed with the proposals from Teddy’s agency led by his manager Nat Kaplan (American Shelley Berman) and big boss Chandler (Moray Watson) and in desperation everyone looks to Teddy to inject the sex into cereal.

Teddy’s idea features young couples getting close in the kitchen over heated oats but, McLaughlin still unimpressed, they decide to launch a national competition to cast the perfect sexy lass as the “face” of the campaign.

Teddy inadvertently got his idea for the ad from his wife who mentioned Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Liz Brown (Judy) is long-suffering and the couple have a nanny to help manage their precocious son who, rather unsettlingly has an interest in these women far beyond his years.

Disgusting! Marty and Julie in nature

Liz is also a member of a Mary Whitehouse-esque Christian group which aims to protect the nation’s morality from, amongst other things, the kind of advertising her husband is now getting involved with. They’re all clearly hypocrites none more so than Vicar Geoffrey Mellish (Dinsdale Landen charging bravely way over the top) who nurses a most un-religious longing for Liz.

Feldman spoke out for the defendants in the Oz trial and was clearly on the side of free speech… and expression, there’s a fair bit of nudity in this film but he’s an equal opportunities flasher, showing his own arse as well as Julie Ege’s...

Julie’s parts come into play when, as daft as it sounds, Liz hires a new au pair through the seemingly upstanding bureau run by Mrs. Monty Levin (Patience Collier) only to find the leggy bombshell Inga Giltenburg (Julie E) quickly distracting her husband and her son. There’s soon all manner of sexy disagreements all intended no doubt to highlight hypocrisy but also to titillate which is the point at which they fall down: given a bit of freedom, it seems to be we can’t help ourselves becoming either a little prudish or a little pervy.

Perhaps the greatest film about porridge advertising?

Then again, what’s not to like about Patrick Cargill playing the flawed establishment perv Wallace Trufitt or Penelope Keith as Lotte von Gelbstein who, hired as a replacement for the far too sexy Inga, has designs more on the Mrs than the Mr. Oo, and very much, Er!

Dusty verdict: The pace is relentless and the heart is warm, there are some laughs and some winces but it’s an enjoyable and highly skilled bit of nonsense: the late sixties sense of humour frozen in nitrate and evidence of Marty’s enduring ability and charm.