Disclosure Daze… Toomorrow (1970), BFI Blu-ray out now!

 

I was very taken with Livy [Olivia], I thought she had everything going for her in this fresh bubbly way; she was worried about filming, but she got into it pretty soon.

Director, Val Guest

Within a decade Olivia Newton John would not only be telling John Travolta that he was the one she wanted but singing her way to Xanadu… but in the late 1960s the idea of her starring in a fantasy musical based on a hippy dippy plot was just a twinkle in someone’s eye.

This film wouldn’t last five seconds in the UFC of modern film criticism whether it was staged on the White House lawn or in a carpark in east London and yet… and yet we owe it to ourselves to try harder. Steven Speilberg recently had a go about reinstalling the “wonder” into the business of first contact but this film starts from the point of view that this is a given. The irony is that this was seen as a post-Monkees pre-fab four by, Don Kirshner, one of the men who pulled that disparate group of actually very talented musicians together (and Davey Jones who could dance and act…) and who’s co-creator, Bob Rafelson (plus his screenwriting and acting buddy Jack Nicholson) had released the cinematic suicide note that was the on-the-nose polemical anarchy of Head (1969) which is as knowingly cynical as this film is sweetly optimistic. 

 “… we’re just too much, we’re TOO-morrow!”

Toomorrow sits somewhere between the Cliff Richard movies of the early 60s, those featuring Joe Brown, Marti Wilde and the Dave Clarke Five and the children’s TV of the early 70s… The Tomorrow People, Double Deckers and HR Puff ’n stuff. It doesn’t have the star power of finesse of A Hard Day’s Night or a Help! But it does have Olivia Newton John who by the time it was eventually released was on her way to solo success with early hits such as I Honestly Love You. Give Me Love and Take Me Home. She also has undeniable screen presence here and has more star power than her other three bandmates combined – that not to damn them just a mark of her presence.

 James Bond film producer Harry Saltzman had entered into a three-picture deal with Kirshner and this was the first product of that with a script from David Benedictus which was re-written so much they never told director Val Guest. The latter did his best but, having not got paid, he launched an injunction shortly after the film was premiered and that was pretty much that. It has until this release languished on YouTube in a very low grade copy but, seriously. It’s a delight to see it restored for home media and given the attention it deserved as a period piece, a snapshot of the times and feelings and the cinematic birth of Livy.

It's not a question of being so bad it’s good, there are some genuinely impressive things not least the production quality, special effects and designs that under pin the science fiction aspects so well and a lively cast who you side with no matter how arcane their dialogue and the feeling of zero chemistry as a group. Film as history, history as film – it matters as much for the 1960s as for the silent era and this film, being just 40-odd years after The Jazz Singer is far closer to Jolson than Jackson, or Taylor’s The Era Tour… there’s a modern day Olivia Newton John for you? 

Now for the groovy precis and it’s tinged with the weary cynicism of an alien Alphoid called “John Williams” played by the great Roy Dotrice, who has been watching Earth for three thousand years and frankly got a little bit bored of so little happening. But something has happened and it’s his colleagues on an orbiting space ship who have picked it up, the first signs of something infusing the music of this world that actually makes them feel. Now, if this wasn’t so close to Stephen Spielberg’s empathy point I wouldn’t be so shocked…

Galactic Control, who can only produce soulless electronica only without coherent beat, themes and, soul... are interested in a new sound being produced by Olivia and her pop band "Toomorrow", from sonic vibrations emitted by their special amplifier, a "tonaliser" - a processor attached to a Hammond organ that the Floyd would have killed for! Mind you, they had better songs!

So... the aliens kidnapp the band and aim to get them to restore the lost chord of they space soul music... but will the guys be cool with living in space and never shopping in Granny Takes a Trip every again? What a bummer??

“If this antiseptic crew had really dared to set foot on the stage of the Round House during a pop festival, dressed up like canaries and singing their cute songs of love and tears, they would have been booed, quite deservedly, off it again."

 The Monthly Film Bulletin

Whatever the circumstances it is genuinely a thrill to see the Roundhouse as it was in the late 60s even if it’s not Syd’s Floyd, Soft Machine or The Pretty Things playing there. It’s more corporate these days… ticket offices and toilets… safer too! But the above reviewer is right in suggesting the disconnect between the location of counter-cultural grooves and this bubble gum pop. ONJ is a proper musician but she never stood in with Hendrix, the Incredible String Band or Steve Howe’s Tomorrow on that stage.

Groovy spage-age features!!

·         Restored in 4K from the original camera negative and presented in High Definition

·         Audio commentary by pop music historian Andrew Sandoval

·         Tomorrow Night in London (1969, 5 mins): London swings – but gently – in this patchouli-permeated promo film for the world’s coolest capital

·         The Nose Has It! (1942, 8 mins): silly little Arthur Askey mucks about with hankies in this wartime winner from Val Guest

·         The Guardian Interview: Val Guest (1998, 62 mins): Guest revisits his career in this onstage retrospective interview

·         The British Entertainment History Project: Val Guest (1988, 10 mins): candid reflections upon Toomorrow’s troubled genesis, accompanied by rare promotional images from the BFI National Archive

·         If I Could Turn You On (1969, 13 mins): US troupe Living Theatre rouse London hipsters at The Roundhouse with a provocative interactive performance

·         Chimp-Mates: Alice Goes Pop! (1975, 17 mins): Public Funk Chimpanzee No. 1 Alice picks up her sticks and kicks out the jams for a Children’s Film Foundation extravaganza

·         Toomorrow: Musical Humanism Through the Stars (2026, 12 mins): extraterrestrial encounters of the groovy kind via this video essay by Celeste de la Cabra

·         **FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by Matthew Hild, on Val Guest by the BFI’s Dr Josephine Botting and an essay by Jay Rathbone on manufactured pop groups, plus notes on the special features and film credits

Order direct from the BFI now man!!

Ant musing… Empire of the Ants (1977), Eureka Blu-ray out 22nd June

 

Don't tread on an ant He's done nothing to you
There might come a time when he's treading on you…

Adam Ant, Antmusic (1980)

This film has a lowly 5% on Rotten Tomatoes and whilst I had no idea that the ratings could go so low, I don’t think that’s in anyway a fair reflection of its merits. Empire of the Ants is the third and last film released in American International Pictures's H.G. Wells film series, after The Food of the Gods (1976) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) the first two of which were directed by the remarkable Bert I. Gordon. Gordon also co-wrote an managed the whole process in the manner of a true auteur as Kim Newman says in his career overview in the extras. “Mr B.I.G.” as he was known and naturally initialled, was a master of every part of film making from editing, cinematography to the special effects upon which so many relied.

His work in the science fiction/horror exploitation genre went back to the early 1950s and his last credit was in 2015’s Secrets of a Psychopath, made when he was 93 and still full of the passion and energy that would see him beyond his 100^th birthday. It’s fine for some to lump him in with Ed Wood and other low budget dreamers but he was clearly a master of his craft and, on the evidence of this film you can see that despite the limitations of budget. As Chris Cooke says in his introduction, Gordon proved that size does indeed matter and his track record is indeed a large one when it comes to thrillers involving relative dimensions directing such hits as The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), it’s follow-up, War of the Colossal Beast (1958), Village of the Giants (1965) and King Dinosaur (1954) not to mention the other Wells film featuring gigantic rats and hens.

Joan Collins in sales mode for Dreamland Shores

His mastery of double exposure often looks better on the cinema screen as its only preparing film for the small screen that has made the elements of the technique more visible with, as here, the odd ant crawling apparently on thin air although the remastering here is as impeccable as Gordon himself when preparing filmic elements for projection in the pre-digital age. Here the mix of photo-enlarged real ants and larger scale rubber replicants, works well if you suspend disbelief and go with the flow – for those of us born before CGI this is not so hard. As with so many eco-horrors of the seventies “disaster movie” craze, physical props had to be used and the actors had to do their best to make their threat real in the deadliest moments of which there are quite a few.

In terms of the source material, HG Wells short story from 1907 was more about the threat of organised ants of regular size and in the opening section we see ants organising their culture using pheromones and a collective intelligence that is remarkable for any of the 15,000 different species on Earth. Wells just went with that but Gordan has a nuclear spillage following illegal dumping, irradiating the creatures and making them grow to giant size. This was a familiar trope as Newman points out with the same thing happening to Colossal Beast in 1958 and from there to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s The Incredible Hulk in the Marvel comic starting in 1962.

Having established the threat it’s time to turn to the real monsters of the piece; the people and especially ruthless real estate developer Marilyn Fryser (a marvellously bossy Joan Collins) who is busy lining up a group of punters for a trip to view the potential of her new integrated community at Dreamland Shores, miles from anywhere, on polluted land and with only the pretence of the groundwork having been done. There's a hilarious sign point to the "Future Gold Course", "Future Marina"and "Future Pool Area" and essentially this is a money grabbing exercise for which Marilyn's head of sales, Charlie (Edward Power) admits only a third of the day trippers will invest in, the rest are just there for the free ride. Sadly for them, today there's a huge price to pay...

The group on the boat to nowhere are the usual mix for this period of cowardly sexist husband with a wandering eye, Robert Pine (Larry Graham) and his long-suffering wife Christine (Brooke Palance) who has to face the indignity of his staring at the winsome singleton Coreen (Pamela Shoop) although she doesn’t see his attempt to sexually assault her shortly into the day – she knees him where it hurts much to the cheers of my watching crowd.

There’s a guy on the down, divorced and drinking Joe Morrison (John David Carson) who we hope can be redeemed as well as the disappointed middle-aged Margaret (Jacqueline Scott) who starts to warm up the weathered and worn down boat owner Dan Stokely (Robert Lansing) who takes Marilyn’s money even though he dislikes her and the whole phoney project. There are two pairs of older couples too, one a pair of professional freeloaders and the others too curious for their own good although it’s hardly their fault when they become the first to be killed by the giant ants.

As with all such creature features, there’s an initial period in which the party doesn’t understand the danger the audience knows full well they are in but soon the ants are everywhere and it’s a race into the everglades to find escape after the clever insects have removed the boat, their only means of escape. As the group runs through the dense woods, Gordon capture the action really well and even throws in some horrible jump scares as man proves no match for mandible as heroes arise, cowards are found out and everyday worries are put into sharp relief by the life and death struggle.

The narrative builds as the survivors realise they are being herded and that there’s more to these ants than meets the mind, with the opening segment, voiced by Marvin Miller, explains the remarkable capacity of ant communities to act collectively and intelligently… That was Wells warning, that we might be outsmarted by a seemingly humble but organised creature and it was also a call for humanity to think harder.

That much is implicit in Gordon’s film but very much secondary to the entertaining personal journeys and the fight to live!

 

Pamela Shoop, John David Carson and Jacqueline Scott

Special effects, giant ants and, of course, there are some massive Special Features: 

Limited Edition of 2,000 copies featuring O-card slipcase with original poster artwork and booklet featuring new writing on Empire of the Ants and ecological horror by genre film expert Liam Hathaway

1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray

New introduction to Empire of the Ants by Chris Cooke, filmmaker and co-director of Mayhem Film Festival

The B.I.G. Picture – interview with film historian Kim Newman focused on the life and career of cult filmmaker Bert I. Gordon

Audio commentary by writer, director and producer Bert I. Gordon himself!

Audio commentary by film historian David Del Valle with film historian and filmmaker Michael Varrati

 

It’s the very definition of pulp and B.I.G. should be far from notorious for his skills in making such an enjoyable piece of nonsense on a budget and on location! You can pre-order direct from the Eureka website and watch out for those six-legged insects at this time of year, they’ll do anything for sugar…

This is a guest post from Paul Joyce of IThankYou 

 

Joan Collins has said that the reason she made films based on her sister's books was to avoid having to make any more films getting muddy in disaster movies... She's great value here, it's a very decent cast!