It’s 10, Montague Terrace, Brooklyn Heights…
When I walked along the Boardwalk that runs along the edge of Brooklyn Heights affording a spectacular view of lower Manhattan across the Hudson, it felt so familiar. Little did I know then that this wasn’t so much the constant exposure of the city on British screens but that I had spent a fairly intense couple of hours there watching this film in the old ABC Cinema in Lime Street, Liverpool. I remember going into town on my own to watch the latest horror film and would have gone record shopping in Probe Records as well before watching a film which was recommended by friends as in the same mould as The Exorcist and The Omen. The seventies was a golden era for modern horror in which the veneer of American civilisation was rudely compromised by demonic invasions.
On my first trip to New York ten years later, I’d again find the city familiar and, as I walked from my friends’ apartment where we were staying, I thought of Scott Walker’s song as we walked along Montague Terrace and on to the Boardwalk were I was filmed by a passing Japanese TV crew even after telling them I was English and wearing a Liverpool Football Club top. Now, almost 38 years later, I re-watched this film and finally connected the dots and have to say that, if nothing else, Michael Winner’s film is a superb record of Brooklyn Heights in all its brownstone glory as well as that particular view of the Twin Towers both of which I went up on later visits. Time moves on and not everything stays the same.
I saw my father. I stabbed him and he’s already dead… it makes me feel like I should take my life again!
I’m reminded of Harrison Ford’s comment to George Lucas – you can type this shit but you sure as hell can’t say it! – and some aspects are unintentionally jarring…
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