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 Spielberg 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 (I know how many more “coincidences can there be?!) 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 spaceship 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… but whatever goes around comes around in All Toomorrow’s Parties from Close Encounters…, Xanadu to the present day we’re searching for the lost chord that will bring peace on Earth and to all alien cultures.

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! John Williams offers to help the group rehearse and record their ground-breaking sounds and we see them rehearsing in his Victorian pile in which he has transmuted various objects into a Revox 8-Track recorder and a more than makeshift studio.

The aliens kidnap the band and to get them to restore the loving feeling to their otherwise soulless space music try to take them home with them – they’d love to take them home – but whilst the band sympathises with this intergalactic lonely-hearts club, they have plans on their own planet. Everything will come to a head at a new bands night in Chalk Farm at the Roundhouse but will that be enough to restore harmony or will the guys have to be cool with living in space and never shopping in Granny Takes a Trip every again?

You’ll need to watch it to find out!

“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 space-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 - worth the price of admission on its own Playmates!!

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

(2026, 12 mins): extra-terrestrial 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!!

Invaders from Mars (1953), BFI UHD and Blu-ray out 11th May

This is a guest post from Paul Joyce of IThankYou 

Well, this is a blast in more ways than one and if there’s one thing I should stay from the get-go, please do not be mislead by the 73-year-old cover art, this is a sci-fi film with more than a twist or two and it is also a masterful mix of direction and design from William Cameron Menzies. Those of us with the silent film bug – it’s just a film bug really – know his work from early epic sets for blockbusters like Robin Hood (1922) as well as The Thief of Bagdad (1924), which allowed Douglas Fairbanks, to run, jump and climb over almost the entire screen. Menzies helped establish the very language as well as the look of film and was the man with his mind inside the movie camera, meeting the demands of briefs that wee unimaginable to most.

Menzies was the man for whom the phrase "Production designer" was coined specifically for by David O. Selznick when he was working on Gone with the Wind (1939) although this might be apocryphal. Menzies certainly contributed more than mere design and was the director of the burning of Atlanta sequence in that film. Ironically Menzies did not win the Oscar for GWTW – that was Lyle Wheeler, Art Director, although had grabbed the first Academy Awards for Best Art Direction in 1928 (and for two films, The Dove with Norma Talmadge plus The Tempest with John Barrymore). 

Menzies had put HG Wells’ Things to Come (1936) on screen as director and the Yale/Edinburgh alumnus, returned to the genre with Invaders from Mars although this film is more science fantasy than the more scientific projections of Wells and those like Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov who were to follow. The chances of anyone coming from Mars being a million to one, or so they say, it’s not hard to see the film as another expression of American paranoia in the line of so many others. That said, there’s a sense of wonder and childish thrills about the production that makes for a tense and gripping ride.

The film begins with a dark and stormy night and the feverish imagination of young amateur astronomer David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) who witnesses a flying saucer emerging from the storm to land just over a hill in a nearby film. His father George (Leif Erickson) goes to investigate climbing this hill – a studio set that will feature in so much of the film it feels like a throwback to Weimar cinema. George sees nothing but suddenly the sand beneath his feet swirls and swallows him as he drops down to who knows what.

So much happens on this little hill built on the set...

When he doesn’t return David’s mother Mary calls the police who send two officers to investigate, both of whom suffer the same fate. In the morning George returns home but he is a changed man, cold and distant and, as his son observes, carrying a strange wound on his neck. More and more fall through the sand and re-emerge strangely changed - Janine Perreau is especially weird as Kathy Wilson, David’s young neighbour who goes from being a carefree pre-teen to burning her family’s house down.

David goes to the police station for help and Menzies’ depth of field as the youngster looks up at the front desk with an oppressive long corridor behind him, perfectly encapsulates his emerging nightmare. How can he convince people that someone or something is taking over their friends and neighbours. It rings so many bells with the McCarthy era, The Red Menace right up to the woke mind virus that those lost to deranged Trumpism project… and all this three years before Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Menzies' forced perspective adds a dream-like oppressiveness

But there are good people, something about the boy’s clear minded description persuades the desk officer to call in a child psychiatrist Doctor Pat Blake (Helena Carter) to believe him and, when his father and mother – now also “changed” arrive to collect him she refuses saying that she will have to investigate his “condition” further. Thus begins a race against time to confirm his story in time to help save his parents and everyone else. The army mobilises just as fast as many are taken over and Menzies’ limited budget sees various stock footage inserted to add to the set pieces. He certainly doesn’t disappoint when we finally get to go underground and meet the aliens… 

By the end you can exactly see just why the likes of Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese along with so many other directors value Menzies’ film. Given the budget and the time at his disposal he manages to create a fully convincing fantasy from the point of view of the child at the heart of the story. There’s probably an argument for the director being an auteur with this film as so much was under his control in terms of the visuals, that he was able to get the necessary performances from his players – especially the children – marks him as a skilled people player too!

Martian angles accentuate the minimal design

For this first pressing only there is an excellent illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by Dr Deborah Allison and Barry Forshaw, a short piece from Monthly Film Bulletin, November 1954, notes on the special features and film credits 

The film has been restored in 4K from the original camera negative and master positives and looks so crisp and clear and this is the case for both the UHD and Blu-ray presentations. 

There are also many exciting special science fiction features!!

The interview with the grown-up lead in Jimmy Hunt Saves the Planet (2022, 11 mins) is especially interesting as he recalls how being in the fantasy of the film itself was such a formative experience for a 13-year-old.

• Newly recorded audio commentary by Kim Newman (of course!) and Barry Forshaw
• European ending (1953, 3 mins) and European observatory sequence (1953, 9 mins) – clearly the Europeans could handle the hard stuff better than American audiences… This is the ending I prefer! 
• Not Just a Dream: Designing Hope in Invaders from Mars (2026, 16 mins): filmmaker Nic Wassell explores how legendary production designer and director William Cameron Menzies infuses the paranoia of atomic age science fiction with hope for the future
• William Cameron Menzies: Architect of Dreams (2022, 16 mins): Menzies’ biographer James Curtis interviews the director’s granddaughter Pamela Lauesen
• Terror From Above (2022, 22 mins): filmmakers John Landis and Joe Dante, editor Mark Goldblatt, visual effects artist Robert Skotak and preservationist Scott MacQueen discuss the film  
• Restoring the Invasion (2022, 7 mins): before and after clips of the restoration
• TCM Festival Introduction (2022, 7 mins): by John Sayles
• Ernest Dickerson on Invaders from Mars (2022, 5 mins): the award-winning cinematographer introduces a new trailer
• Original 1953 trailer plus 2022 trailer
• Extensive image gallery including posters, press book pages and publicity materials, plus previously unseen images from the BFI National Archive

Invaders from Mars is out on 11^th May and you can – and must – pre-order from the BFI and other reputable retailers.

It’s a highly influential film and it has not looked this good in over 70 years!

Mister, you've just gotta believe me...

 

Object Z (1965), BFI Blu-ray and DVD (Dual Format Edition), out now!

 

“Object Z is unique among children’s programmes. It does not feature children, teenagers, puppets, pop groups, animals. It was in fact originally written for adults…”

Kenneth Eastaugh, Daily Mirror 11th  November 1965

 

This is an excellent release from the BFI of a series I wasn't even aware of and was clearly an attempt to match the BBC's Dr Who or even Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass, using a global threat posed by invading aliens as a means of showing the divided world of the time. Like all good sci-fi, it holds a mirror up to the science-present as much as possible perhaps too boldly as the above quote reveals with some contemporary reviewers concerned at the frightening concept and the message it sent about humanity’s petty doom spiral… It’s rather sadly as relevant today as 60 years ago.

As a small child of the sixties I was convinced that the War was still being fought, not in Europe but somewhere in Africa so ever present where the scenes of conflict on programmes like All Our Yesterdays that replayed the last big event over and over. The reality is, of course, that some war was always taking place and so it has continued until our present state in which more war is far from “unforeseeable”. Writer Christopher McMaster wanted to make a global point about the threat to our long-term viability and that he was able to do so via a “children’s show” says much for the prevailing sensibilities of a country in which most people lived through the Second World War, Korea and the Cuban missile crisis when the Cold War almost thawed.

Unseen since its first transmission on ITV in 1965, and now newly remastered, Object Z is available on home media for the first time and it feels like the discovery of a time capsule... from a time when we trusted scientists and experts more than we do now. I remember this optimism as it fuelled not only TV science fiction, Dr Who but also the Gerry Anderson series, cinema with 2001 and others. At the same time there were an increasing number of dystopian creations, The Prisoner, 2001 again (beware of AI), then Charlton Heston’s one-man industry of post-apocalyptic disappointment: Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, The Omega Man and so on. The culture was wary about the speed of change but, heck we still went to the Moon didn’t we? The darker edge of Quatermass was revived on television with the growing environmental-futurist concerns of Doomwatch (very on the nose), The Changes, The Tomorrow People and back to Dr Who.

Object Z is an outlier in this respect with a group of astronomers discovering a huge object heading in the Earth’s direction from deep space with impact almost certain and the best-case scenarios still offering little hope for civilised society. The media plays a major role in communicating the truth, reflecting the Fleet Street heroes of The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) – surely a major influence - with television producer Peter Barry (Trevor Bannister) and his assistant Diana Winters (Celia Bannerman) holding the narrative focus in the race to find answers.

Meanwhile, society begins to fray as panic spreads and extremist political opportunists attempt to take advantage of chaos led by the Oswald Mosely type figure of Keeler (played menacingly by Arthur White, so close to the real deal). The scientists and politicians must work together and internationally too in an attempt to save the World and the tension ramps up after an initial missile fails to even dent the object or alter its course in any way.

Celia Bannerman on left, Trevor Bannister on right

Some of the World might just survive in hastily assembled bunkers but there’s no doubt that the impact is coming… is this an allegory or a forecast? The last episode has two shocks with the latter making you wish that season two existed… food for thought and a fascinating document.

“The recording was done as-live with no cuts, vision mixing took place in real time with filmed inserts played in live; and included a 125-second pause for the scheduled ad break. Only a genuine emergency would have stopped the recording and line fluffs certainly did not count…”

Jon Dear in the booklet essay.

It’s fascinating to see how the budgeting and production constraints impact the finished project with Jon Dear’s booklet essay being especially informative inn this respect along with the excellent commentaries. The episodes were filmed in order with three days’ rehearsals between Wednesday and Friday before recording on a Monday and broadcast on Tuesday, fairly common practice at the time and something which now adds a freshness and immediacy with outweighs the cardboard sets and cheap special effects.

Back to the cast and Trevor Bannister is the one holding everything together with a believability and force of conviction that regular viewers of Are You Being Served? might be surprised by. He’s so good and represents both viewer and his industry in terms of his reaction to the unfolding reality and the horrors of what to come. He keeps on doing his job and trying to find out the truth for his viewers… it’s a journalistic sensibility that may sadly be of its time… Hopefully not.

The super science special features are revelatory especially the illustrated booklet featuring new essays by Jon Dear, Dick Fiddy, Dr Elinor Groom and William Fowler, and credits. This is available with the first pressing only so please get in quick!

Also worth noting:

•             Newly remastered in 2K and presented in High Definition and Standard Definition

•             Audio commentary on Episode 1 by Jon Dear

•             Audio commentary on Episode 2 by Dick Fiddy

•             Audio commentary on Episode 3 by William Fowler and Vic Pratt

•             Audio commentary on Episode 4 by Dr Elinor Groom

•             Audio commentary on Episode 5 by Kevin Lyons

•             Audio commentary on Episode 6 by Celia Bannerman and Toby Hadoke

•             In Search of Sierra Nine (1963/2025, 7 mins): edited highlights from the sole remaining episode of the Rediffusion science fiction drama Sierra Nine accompany this investigation of a mostly missing television series

•             Object Z Episode 1 shooting script

•             Image gallery: rarities and curiosities relating to Object Z and its missing sequel series, Object Z Returns

 

You can find Object Z in the BFI shop and also from all good online retailers, do not hesitate, you never know when something unexpected may appear in the stars...

Trevor Bannister looking confident in a publicity shot

Beatnik kicks… The Party's Over (1965)

"… unpleasant, tasteless and rather offensive…"

 John Trevelyan, British Board of Film Censors, March 1963

It would take Guy Hamilton’s film two years to gain release after the BBFC found it just too much on first viewing and the version that made it to the big screen had several scenes recut and a voice-over introduction from Oliver Reed explaining that it was “This film is the story of some young people who chose to become - well, for want of a better word - 'beatniks'.  It's not an attack on beatniks; the film has been made to show the loneliness, and the unhappiness, and the eventual tragedy that can come from a life lived without love for anyone or anything.  Living only for kicks is not enough.” And cue the great Annie Ross singing, Time Waits for No Man music by John Barry and lyrics from Mike Pratt who is also one of the players in the film (and Floyd, Gilmour, Mason bassist, Guy Pratt’s father).

This message comes as the beatnik/hipster crowd make their way over Chelsea Bridge back north of the river after a wild party in Knightsbridge. They walk in the silence of their emerging four AM hangovers, some happy, some sad and at least two in thrall to a beautiful American woman walking at the front. There are various versions of this film and the BFI’s Flipside dual pack features both the shorter director’s cut – around 90 minutes - and the longer 94 version which cuts out some of the more shocking moments and inserts more “learnings” for the more nihilistic of the main characters.

Directed by Guy Hamilton from a script by Marc Behm (Help!, Charade etc) the film has a mostly young cast presenting us with post-jazz/pre-hippy culture with the clear influence of drugs and drink on their behaviours. These are the first of a new questioning generation and from 1963 a lot of what they say correlates with the clunky anti-authoritarianism of Peter Fonda and The Wild Angels…

The big difference here is that these cats are mostly British middle class, or even posher, especially the intelligent but annoyingly challenging Moise (Oliver Reed) a character who must have given his nanny worries from an early age and who is rebelling against all expectation because he can afford to. Yet still, there are real risks in his posturing and there’s no doubt that he not only always wants the one he can’t have but here it really is driving him mad.

The Queen Bee of their social group is an American heiress, the ethereal Melina (the stunning Louise Sorel, who I believe is still working?) who see right through him possibly because in some ways they’re alike; both rebelling against their privilege and unable to commit to anyone or anything in the endless, trust-funded waiting room of their mid-Twenties – the same age as most of the cast during filming in 1963, Louise Sorel being one of the youngest at 22.

Louise Sorel and Oliver Reed

Their partying and general noise doesn’t always ring true but the film opens really well with some painted feet leaving foot marks on the ceiling of a nice apartment in South Kensington as the camera tracks across the amin characters via drinks being passed, cigarettes being lit or, then stolen to light a slim cigar as we see the first instance of Moise attitude to his friends and, in this case, lovers robbing the steadfast Libby (Ann Lynn, who is one of the best performers in this film), only to throw her cigarette away after he’s lit the cheroot.

Amongst the others, an American artist called Geronimo played by Mike Pratt with a wayward accent, the demure Nina (Katherine Woodville), an older German called Tutzi (Maurice Browning), the tactile and inseparable, possibly affectionate, Countess (Mildred Mayne) and Fran (Annette Robertson), and the young Ada (Alison Seebohm). The there’s Philip (Jonathan Burn) who is besotted with Melina and, as with even Moise, this is unrequited.

Into this picture arrives Carson (Clifford David), the successful young American businessman who is promised to Melina, he even works for her father Ben (Eddie Albert*) and so it feels more than slightly arranged. Melina might well agree as she decides to avoid meeting him and enlists the gang to misdirect and mislead him despite the best efforts of their landlord, Hector (Roddy Maude-Roxby) to help the handsome American.

This all feels a bit cruel rather than funny but luckily Carson is up to it and he has his own reservations about his intended enough to not be that surprised by her behaviour and, indeed, to be impressed by the most sensible of her English friends Nina.

Things take a turn after another wild party at which finally Nina tries to take Carson to meet Melina but when they get there, she’s left and no one will say where. The next day, after a night consummating their relationship, Nina tries to get Carson to go with her to Stowe-on-the-Wold… she also tries to tell him something about the party and Melina.

Then Father Ben arrives and the stakes are raised as different versions of the party emerge and the fate of Melina becomes less certain…

Dusty Video Rating: The Party’s Over is coy over the key issue in the story even with the restored Director’s version on the BFI’s DVD and Blu-ray set. Without giving the secret away, the fuller version does still provide some upsetting footing all of which explains the characters motivations for what happens next – especially Philip.

Oliver Reed is outstanding in portraying the entitled aggressor, whose role in life is to be the fly in the soup of the pompous “straights” and he has the range to show a more vulnerable side to his character and one capable of learning in the final analysis. A lot of the other actors are given precious little to do but Eddie Albert delivers as does Ann Lynn and Katherine Woodville who, along with Clifford David, play two of the most sympathetic characters.

Of course there's also the score from John Barry which always lifts any film and which here allows him to replicate the modern jazz of the cellar clubs and the torch song that starts the film and features at another climactic scene. He also borrows the bass line - slightly altered - from 007!

As cautionary tales go it’s harder hitting/more uncomfortable than most and gives some great location shots of London in the raw, or at least Chelsea and Kensington in the early 60s!

 

*As Fate would have it, Katherine Woodville ended up marrying Eddie Albert’s son Edward in 1979 and the two were together until his death in 2006.

Day for Night... The Appointment (1981), BFI Blu-ray, Flipside 44 Out Now!

 

As you will know, BFI Flipside is dedicated to rediscovering works from the margins of British film culture and to enable a re-evaluation of the otherwise over-looked or the under-valued. A quick look at IMDB shows this film with a middling aggregate score but this newly remastered edition – derived from the best available Standard Definition source materials – gives us all a chance to watch it in the best possible quality.

 

It's not just armchair critics who have been ambivalent to the film as it was not only deprived of a full TV release at the time of release it also failed to provide a platform for its director, Lindsey C. Vickers, to make more films. This, as he says now, is very hard to accept let alone credit as The Appointment is a very classy debut with strong performances and a film that builds and sustains a considerable amount of tension and unease. It is also a film that has a clear agenda outside of its genre in that it addresses the relationship between the members of the family involved.

 

In the excellent commentary conducted by Flipside supremo Vic Pratt with the writer/director, Vickers points out that it is the breakdown of the father/daughter connection that is really the issue and this is something well expressed in the drama, something clearly close to his heart.

 

Edward Woodward is clearly your man for this gig, he is so good at expressing forceful masculine certainty with stabs of realisation gradually eating away at his confidence. He’s an alpha male with heart here but a complacent one, caught up in the importance of his routines and discipline. He infantilises his talented daughter Joanne (Samantha Weysom) and finds it hard to relate to her maturing personality, possibly because she’s asking him for more commitment than his schedule – for him and her – allows.

 

Seeing and understanding all of this is mother and wife Dianna played by the wonderful Jane Merrow who Vickers was able to cast during one of her visits to the UK form the US where she was based for a long time. Merrow is another class act – one of the faces of the era – who can emote with such skill and is able to connect the audience with a grounded view of this supernatural drama.

 

The film starts with an enigmatic taster as, some years earlier, two schoolgirls carrying violins walk home from school and when one takes a spooky short cut, the tension mounts until she is violently pulled from the path by unseen force. Vickers plays this down as a commercially required overture but its importance becomes clearer as events play out.

 

We switch to three years later by which time the short cut has been fenced off and the drama is all about more seemingly prosaic matters. Vickers shows real skill in not revealing any clear “evidence” of supernatural issues, playing on our default engagement with the narrative of normality, gradually dropping hints and accelerating the unease like a practiced genre specialist.

 

So it is that Father Ian being called away on urgent business opens a whole uncanny can of worms as it means that he’ll miss Joanne’s big violin performance. He has his reasons but she can’t see it and clearly this means more to her… tempers are frayed but Ian can’t back down.

 

The family goes to bed and counting down the hours to his early start and the long drive through Snowdonia to his meeting, Ian experiences strange and vivid dreams. He’s not alone as Jane shares the same dreams… there’s the drive, a group of vicious dogs and increasing foreboding. It’s a long night and Vickers succeeds in even makes the viewer uncertain of the actuality.

 

The longest night is followed by just another day… or is it?

 

The art of this kind of film is in suspending disbelief but also persuading us the reality is going to take over at some point. Does that relief of normality come? It’s definitely one for you to find out, no spoilers although I will say that there’s one stunning visual event which I won’t reveal but it’s the kind of idea you could easily see forming the heart of the whole story: an horrific and memorable moment that stays with you.

 

But that’s the case for the whole film, a salutary take of the potential for familial estrangement, the consequences of which can be equally devastating with or without dark forces.

 

The film comes with a generous bundle of extras including: 

·         Newly recorded audio commentary by director Lindsey Vickers

·         Vickers on Vickers (2021, 41 mins): the director looks back on his life and career

·         Another Outing (2021, 16 mins): Jane Merrow recalls co-starring in The Appointment

·         Appointments Shared (2022, 7 mins): Lindsey and Jan Vickers remember the making of the ‘haunted film’

·         Framing The Appointment (2022, 19 mins): Lindsey Vickers recalls making the film

·         Remembering The Appointment (2022, 10 mins): assistant director Gregory Dark shares his recollections of the film

·         The Lake (1978, 33 mins): Lindsey Vickers’ eerie short finds young lovers choosing to picnic at a spot haunted by echoes of a violent event

·         Newly recorded audio commentary on The Lake by Lindsey Vickers

·         Splashing Around (2020, 18 mins): actor Julie Peasgood on making The Lake

·         Galleries featuring annotated scripts, storyboards, images and production materials

 

The Lake is also a creepy mini classic which I saw screened at the BFI a couple of years back. More excellent atmospherics and eerie build up from Vickers and, whilst he had a successful career elsewhere in film, it is a real shame he wasn’t able to make more features.

 

It’s a limited edition presented on Blu-ray in Standard Definition (Limited to 4,000 copies) and the first pressing only comes with an excellent Illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by Vic Pratt and contributions from William Fowler, Jon Dear and Lindsey Vickers.

 

So, order as soon as you can, direct from BFI and you won't be disappointed although you may well be shaken and intrigued… it’s an intense ride!