The Rotters' Club... What a Carve Up! (1961)

I’ve just finished reading Jonathan Coe’s novel of the same name, published in 1994, and which uses this film both as a major plot point in the way which influences his main character, writer Michael Owen, and also the broad storyline in which a wealthy but faithless family is brought together for the reading of their patriarch’s will only for some haunted home-truths to be savagely delivered in the most gruesome fashion. Coe’s aim is to satirize the landed elite and the conservative classes who gave birth to the Thatcherite glory years in which everything was sold off and greed was not only good but glorious. It is, as so much of his work, fiendishly clever and also very funny as he captures the mood of the times in thorough and entertaining ways.

There’s no deeper motives behind the original film except perhaps of a lampooning both of the usual class cliches of the time – it’s almost Carry on in style – but also the genre of horror films and ghost stories. It’s influenced in this respect by The Ghoul (1933) but also by The Cat and the Canary filmed as a silent by Paul Leni in 1927 and then remade with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard in 1939 – a film which had the same impact on me as the film, and I certainly didn’t spend long hours freeze-framing the saucy bits as Owen does for the scene between Kenneth Connor and Shirley Eaton to leer over the latter undressing.

Discretion is the better part of valour Kenneth my lad!

Owen is taken by his parents to see the film as a child and this moment leaves a lasting impression on his sexuality, a fondness not just for Shirley but also a very Ken Connor-like dithering over opportunities missed. Connor was very much an everyman in his comedy films and here plays a rather nervy proof-reader of horror books which set his teeth on edge but bring in a paltry salary all the same. His mate Sid, on the other hand, is an outgoing and go-getting bookie with a heart of gold. There’s a thesis to be written on the cinematic charm of Mr James but he’s a fine actor who manages to convey genuine emotions and likeability whether in serious drama – The Small Back Room (1948) here or Carry on… I saw him twice on stage in Blackpool playing a variation of Bless This House – Sid as long-suffering husband and father – he was exceptionally good and my Dad, also a pipe smoker – loved him!

Kenneth Connor I know less about, but he came up through the Central School of Speech and Drama and following his wartime service RADA, so he was very well trained and technically able. He joined the Old Vic company for whom notable performances were as Chaplain de Stogumber in Saint Joan and Dobchinsky in The Government Inspector, which starred Alec Guinness. He may have opted to specialise in comedy due to his diminutive stature but he always kept working on the stage even during the Carry on successes. I always rooted for him as a kid and still do now as does Coe’s Michael Owen as he wonders what stopped him from staying with the lovely Shirley in the middle of the night after the killings begin in the isolated darkness of Blackshaw Towers…

“It’s a 5/6 for each of the horror ones and 3/6 for the sexy ones… “

“Why’s it two Bob cheaper?” 

“Well, they reckon I get that much pleasure out of reading them…”

Beyond our Ken?

After some entertaining opening titles revealing the faces of the key players intercut by Donald Pleasence’s creepy lawyer Everett Sloane, making his way to Ken’s flat, we find the latter nervously proof-reading The Fiend of the Second Flat as he sits in his own second floor flat. The camera pulls away and we see Syd fall through the kitchen skylight having been unable to get his friend’s attention via the doorbell… Then two are then surprised by Mr Sloane who invites Ernest up to hear the will of his late-departed Uncle Gabriel who becomes dearer the more Ernest imagines the riches in store.

Quickly adopting the airs and graces of presumptive new wealth and position, Ernest remains conflicted with fear and asks Syd to accompany him up to Yorkshire. After a disturbing exchange between Ernest and a ghostly station manager they hitch a lift from a hearse driver whose driver echoes a line from the classic Brit-horror, “there’s room for one in t’ back…”. They end up having to make their way cross country to the old house as even the driver of the dead won’t risk the final stretch…

Mr Pleasence unsettles all before him...

One at the imposing hall, we meet the first of Ernest’s strange relatives: Dennis Price as the wearied dipsomaniac “one-time gentleman” Guy (Dennis Price), well-oiled and over-sharing with the suggestion that all of the family are more than a little mentally ill. Then there’s Michael Gough having a (James) whale of a time as Fisk the greying old retainer with secrets to hide who guide the men to their rooms, Ernest in the East Wing.

We cut to Guy arguing with his sister Janet (Valerie Taylor) and their father Edward (George Woodbridge) and then Ernest meets Cousin Malcolm (Michael Gwynn) playing the organ who decides that he must be “quite mad” as the rest of them. Then Emily Broughton (Esma Cannon) enters exhibiting further aspects of the family disease talking about knitting scarfs for the soldiers at the front… in the Great War…

Shirley Eaton

Queue Shirley as Nurse Linda Dixon a breath of reassuring beauty and normalcy amongst the weirdness of the situation and the family. Every sits around the table as Mr Sloane reads out the news that his client is bequeathing “nothing” … Guy laughs and Janet talks of challenging a will re-written the day before he died. 

Why did he bring us all this way just to tell us he’s left us Sweet Fanny Adams…

That’s simple, he was like the rest of us, quite mad… 

After the generator breaks Ernest, Syd and Fisk go to investigate and on their way back discover Edward dead in the garden. The news is relayed to the rest of the group with the realisation that the murderer could only have been one of those in the house. No way out and with Fisk predicting more murder to follow it’s going to be a very long night…

His nerves getting the better of him, Ernest wanders into Linda’s room for the scene featured in Jonathan Coe’s book, Ernest determined to be the gentlemen but really intimidated by Linda’s presence. He allows his chivalry gets the better of him and he escapes into the hall where he battles an empty suit of armer to a draw.

Ernest: I suppose you must be scared what with all the things going on here tonight?

Linda: Oh, not really.

Ernest [nervously): Oh, well I am!

Sid, Michael and Kenneth

There won’t be much sleep tonight though as Ernest isn’t the only restless spirit, persuading the more grounded Syd to share his bed and annoying the latter as first a cat and then noises off disturb their sleep. Soon there will be blood and organ music and deception as the Broughton’s start to meet their ends one by one, straight on till morning…

As with the earlier films, the two Cats and Canaries especially, the film, directed by Pat Jackson from a script by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton, manages to mix jump shocks with comic moments in ways that work in ways Scooby Doo and the Mystery Gang would appreciate. There’s actual horror and no one is safe, it’s hard to tell who’s good and who is bad and things are never quite as they seem.

Ultimately, whilst it resembles a Carry on film, it’s more cohesive and genre faithful than Carry on Screaming and feels more like a play on screen with more sophistication and cinematic intent than you’d find with the rest of the crew. The last remaining mystery is why this film is only available on old DVD, surely a restoration and Blu-ray release are deserved with more background on the storied cast and the genre of films that make you laugh and make you cry!

The book is freely available from all good bookshops and at Amazon... highly recommended to all fans of the genres involved, politics and Shirley!

Back to the future… Escape from New York (1981)

 

Oh yes, the cruel future we forecast for ourselves was way more entertaining back in 1981 than it’s turning out to be and the older this film gets, the more youthful and relevant it appears. As we piled off the bus, probably bunking off school, to see this in Liverpool’s old ABC in Lime Street, it was all of a piece with Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run and Soylent Green, dark and violent entertainments providing a warning of worlds we just assumed we’d never see. John Carpenter thought differently and made his futuristic 1997 as grimy and real as he could, just a president away from societal breakdown.

And, in these times of trouble it takes a very special man to navigate the brutal streets, gangs and faithless government and such a men is Snake Plissken played by a pumped-up Kurt Russell with a swagger and edge that few could rival before or since. This is a dystopian High Noon or before that Hells Hinges (1916, William S Hart, look him up…) in which a single individual is all that stands between humanity’s disaster and the smallest shard of hope.

Written and directed by John Carpenter who also provides a score – composed with Alan Howarth – with stygian synthesised sweeps that help establish an oppressive and alienated feel to a world in which almost no one can be trusted least of all authority although the alternatives are just as bad. Snake is possibly the only man we can rely on, although even then we’re not sure. He’s an anti-hero and like it or lump it, our only way in or out of Carpenter’s intended message.

New York City sometime soon

In 1988 the crime rate in the US rises by 400% and the powers that be decide that the only way to cap this lawlessness is to set up the island of Manhattan as the highest security prison imaginable. They build a wall around it and a security monitoring station of Liberty Island… see what they did there? – and it’s impregnable which is a shame for the millions of inmates but especially so when the President’s plane is hijacked and destroyed whilst his escape pod lands right in the middle of downtown.

The President (Donald Pleasence) has a briefcase handcuffed to his hand which contains a tape to be played at a peace summit to hopefully stop America’s ongoing conflict with China and Russia… the stakes could not be higher and yet when Police Commissioner Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) sends in squad, the President has been captured and they are told he will be killed if they don’t leave immediately.

As luck would have it, former special forces Lieutenant, S.D. "Snake" Plissken (Kurt) is being processed before being sent to Manhattan after trying to liberate funds from the Federal Reserve. Hauk makes him an offer he can’t refuse – a full pardon plus an injection that will detonate within 24 hours – and sends him in via a glider the one-eyed veteran has to land on top of one of the Twin Towers… The film is ripe with such moments of contemporary poignance. The shots of a darkened New York are still very effective and some of the matte paintings were done by James Cameron, who was working as a special-effects artist at the time.

Lee Van Cleef

In goes Snake and after finding the missing Presidential Pod, encounters a friendly "Cabbie" (Ernest Borgnine) who recognises him and offers to help. Ignoring this advice Plissken plods on only to find that New York is a tough old town and if you can make it there you can make it anywhere… Talking of show tunes, Cabbie loves them and as he rescues Snake from a riot, he plays some good old tunes as he take shim to meet former compadre Harold "Brain" Hellman (Harry Dean Stanton) and his partner Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau, who was the highlight of many a teenage cinematic afternoon).

They know who has the President, it’s The Duke (Isaac Hayes who is definitely not walking on by here) who rules much of the locale and drives a Cadillac with candelabras on as you do. Duke’s plan is to use his prisoner to negotiate a mass escape across the 69^th Street Bridge which isn’t going to end well for anyone and Snake certainly doesn’t have the time. He persuades the three to help him assuring them of clemency if they succeed.

They set off for Duke’s headquarters at Grand Central Station where Snake gets shot in the leg and captured whilst Brain and Maggie make off with the President. Carpenter used St Louis’ Central Station as the location for Duke’s base and it’s a very convincing double as Snake is made to fight the giant Slag (professional wrestler Ox Baker) in a boxing ring surrounded by Duke’s hoards; it’s not looking good for our limping anti-hero. There’s many twists and turns to come though and who’s going to bet against Plissken, especially when you know there’s a sequel!

Adrienne Barbeau and Harry Dean Stanton

Dusty Verdict: Escape from New York holds up well after all these years and that’s down to Carpenter’s ability to build and maintain tension as well as create such tangible atmospherics. The filming was mostly during the nighttime and the director said that he didn’t see daylight for two and a half months. This made the most of the St Louis locations as well as creating that suffocating oppressed “Manhattan”.

Kurt Russell is of course magnificent and relishing the chance to break away from the more conventional roles that he had built his initial success upon. He’s in peak physical condition here and mostly in character throughout the shoot as the man who lives just for the moment, and certainly this can be read as one of Carpenter’s main messages along with don’t trust the Government… he was inspired by the events of Watergate.

Which pretty much brings us full circle to where we are almost at now… 

Isaac Hayes, Harry and Adrienne

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old new labour… No Love for Johnnie (1961)

The more things change the more politics stays (roughly) the same. This examination of the politics of ambition versus conviction, still strikes many a chord today after the fall of the centrist Labour movement and its still surprising replacement by the more overtly left-wing leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and the Momentum movement. Who knows where this will lead us but there are still plenty of men like Peter Finch’s MP Johnnie Byrne in all parties.

No Love for Johnnie was based on a novel by Wilfred Fienburgh who was not only a Labour MP from 1951 until his death in 1958 but was also described as “rather louche” by Anthony Howard and, according to Denis Healey, a man whose “good looks and big brown eyes often led him astray…” It’s hard not to conclude that his books contained at least some autobiographical references.

Johnnie Byrne is a charismatic MP on the rise… a new breed of politician who gives good copy and seems to represent the future of a party that could sense election victory as the Tories ran out of ground. Johnnie is a man who places his own interests ahead of his constituents, party and even friends and lovers. Johnnie is left of centre and is married to Alice (Rosalie Crutchley) a former member of the Communist Party, a situation that has held back his rise in the party.

Rosalie Crutchley

After a Labour victory, Johnnie must face the disappointment of being overlooked for a cabinet post and then coming home to find Alice has had enough and wants to leave him. The film is balanced between his desire to be loved by the party and its electorate as well as his need to replace Alice’s loving stability. Johnnie needs to decide what he wants the most and stumbles about for much of the film.

A young neighbour, Mary (Billie Whitelaw), who has obviously held a candle steps in to help and soon she is comforting Johnnie as he drowns his sorrows. The phone rings and Johnnie choses to answer it rather than focus on the girl in hand, gifting Mary the realisation that this guy will always jump at the political chance.

Billie Whitelaw

Despite this, Mary invites Johnnie along to a party hosted by the immaculate Sheila (the brilliant Fenella Fielding – still wowing us in her 90s!) where he meets an attractive young model, Pauline (played by the delicious Mary Peach). The following day he tracks Pauline to a photographer’s studio run by a chap named Flagg (the singular Dennis Price – what a cast this film has!) and pretends he has bumped into her by accident…

Meanwhile, Johnnie is being lined up as a stalking horse by a group of left-leaning MPs concerned at their new PM’s direction. These include Donald Pleasence as Roger Renfrew, Peter Sallis and Mervyn Johns as Charlie Young with the Prime Minister being played by Geoffrey Keen. They arrange for Johnnie to raise an awkward question about overseas aid at Question Time and as the in-fighting progresses, wise old-head Fred Andrews (Stanley Holloway on fine form; what a range he had), reminds Johnnie of his parents’ principles and their role in keeping the party together.

Mary Peach

The day arrives, and Johnnie is nowhere to be found… as the House of Commons prepares itself for the showdown he is in bed with Pauline finally consummating their relationship at precisely the time when he should have been standing up for his party’s values. But even as he seduces Pauline he begins the process of losing her as he overburdens the 20-year old with his 42-year old desire to settle down.

Back in Parliament he’s spurned by his co-conspirators and Renfrew exacts revenge by fixing for his constituency party to call him up north for a vote of no confidence. For the first time we see him squirm and lose confidence as the real passion of his comrades reveals his smooth talk as hollow and he just about survives the vote.

Meanwhile Pauline has gone missing and there are pitiful scenes with Mary who refuses to be his fall-back… he’s nothing without a woman it seems.

Spoilers: But, if a week is a long time in politics, these few days offer Johnnie a way back as a now grateful PM offers him a chance of promotion after the tragic resignation of a junior minister. Free of his wife with her troublesome past he’s now a player with a future, only Alice returns and he’s going to have to choose…

Dusty verdict: No Love for Johnnie may have its period charms but it’s a timeless play on politics, power and passion. Ralph Thomas directs a wordy script well and uses a quite splendid cast well.

Johnnie’s women are superb, especially Billie Whitelaw who can match Finch’s intensity. Mary Peach is well cast as Johnnie’s beautiful but unsuitable young love and against Finch’s worldly-wise and conflicted character she appears every inch the unformed girl who could not possibly commit to loving such a shadowed soul.

Finch won a BAFTA for the role and its easy to see why. He’s on screen for virtually the whole film and manages to make you care for this ultimately feckless chancer: he truly is Johnnie.

It’s now available on DVD from those Amazon people and makes for gripping viewing in these strange times…

Oliver Reed pops up at the party as Fenella and Peter negotiate

Blows against the empire…? THX 1138 (1971)

It’s hard to view George Lucas other than through the prism of the cinematic universe he created and ruled for forty years, and clearly George thinks the same which is why he recut both the Star Wars trilogy but also this film in 2004. I remember the film as claustrophobic and with an empty feel that the addition of computer generated special effects compromises: the dystopia of 1971 did not include such details.

With or without the superfluous explosions and mechanisms added to this antiseptic world, this film still packs a darker punch even than the Force used by Sith lords. It’s George’s first album and a full-scale remake of his 1967 University of Southern California's film school graduation film, produced by Francis Ford Coppola who clearly knew talent when he saw it.

Late sixties dystopian visions have a nostalgia all their own – the future isn’t what is used to be – but in other ways perhaps fifty years hasn’t changed our prospects that much. THX 1138’s vision of a 25^th Century in which mankind is controlled by a metallic intelligence and medicated into compliance within an ordered society is a chilling one. We never see the actual rulers of this society only the robotic police force that keeps order on a physical level and the priests controlling the spiritual elements – the opiate of the masses is administered in confession booths featuring a projected image of a medieval Jesus and a calming robotic voice that probes the faithful for information as they confess…

But these machines still need people and even reproduction has been taken out of our hands as people are grown in laboratories and traditional methods are not only outlawed but desire is suppressed by prescribed chemicals. Men still make machines though and THX 1138 (Robert Duvall) is one of those working on the dangerous assembly line producing the robo-cops who keep order.

Retro-fitted assembly line?

Every so often accidents happen and his team is congratulated on only losing 195 lives over the last period, far less than a neighbouring group. It’s not so much about safety as productivity.

Others work at the city’s CCTV control centre including THX’s roommate LUH 3417 played by Maggie McOmie who, in a cast of shaven heads, looks especially stark with her red suede head and bright orange eyebrows, her skin conveying the vulnerability of humans in this synthetic, sharp-edged environment.

Donald being pleasant?

SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasence as quietly unsettling as always) also works in surveillance and as with LUH, has a mind that sees through the chemical constraints of their routines. In LUH’s case, she wants to free THX from his drug-induced submission and to make a real connection with a man she actually, despite all conditioning, loves. She substitutes placebos for his daily medication and before too long he is feeling something different for her too… one thing leads to another and in place of holographic porn he is soon far more concerned with his real woman.

SEN meanwhile has been playing the system and hacking into the city computers to get himself assigned as a replacement roommate for THX. Quite what his motivation is we can only guess but it’s not a move THX welcomes and he reports SEN for the breach even as his own transgressions are under investigation: namely illicit reproductive activity with LUH.

Maggie McOmie

THX is tried and sent to a prison resembling an antiseptic Todd Browning’s Freaks; the inmates all being marooned in beds amidst a seeming eternity of disorientating bright lights. SEN is here as well with more grand schemes of escape, when the time is right… THX can’t be doing with strangeness and prevarication and eventually heads off into the light with an increasingly timid SEN in tow. They encounter an escaped holograph named SRT (Don Pedro Colley) and soon find the crowded “real world” of the city; citizens being forced through corridors like blood through clotted veins.

From this point on it’s a race to avoid the robot coppers and to find their way out, if they have the courage and belief…

Robert Duvall

Dusty Verdict: THX 1138 is all a far cry from Star Wars swashbuckling but even this film begins with some footage from Buster Crabbe in Buck Rodgers, an influence on the later film and used here to show how the future of the Thirties has been replaced with darker possibilities. More time has passed between THX and the present day and the film looks far more likely than Flash Gordon and his ilk.

All credit for Lucas in what is essentially a stripped-down prison escape movie with sci-fi trimmings: THX must find himself through the truth of his and humanity’s existence and that’s a pretty timeless fable that’s little in need of CGI upgrading.

Robert Duvall, soon to feature in his producer’s Godfather, gives a superb performance, managing to convey vulnerability at the same time as the natural machismo of a hero. Our Donald Pleasence plays a more straightforward character, a schemer without THX’s ability to ultimately rise to the occasion: not everyone really wants to escape. Maggie McOmie’s LUH is the one who really sees what freedom could entail, almost a lone feminine voice in this film.

THX is, of course, readily available in its 2004 form on BluRay and DVD, it’s worth catching the original version if you can find it for purists and those who liked their vintage seventies future-scapes to be of their time.