The dangerous bicycles… And Soon the Darkness (1970)

Time Out called this film "nasty" and, having seen the premise, I was a little wary of watching it expecting gratuitous violence and sexual unpleasantness but I was pleasantly surprised both with the subtlety of the narrative and the overall restrain of Robert Fuest’s direction. I think this film got labelled as exploitation when it has more in common with an Agatha Christie whodunnit. There is tension for sure and the vulnerability of both the female protagonists is amply displayed as they cycle along in shorts but Fuest is firmly of the school where less specifics gives more in terms of dramatic tension and atmosphere.

He’s very good at introducing an array of “suspects” after the fact when the viewer has seemingly made their mind up who the guilty party might be, one by one, they keep on coming and everyone manages to act just oddly enough to persuade us that they might be the kidnapper or even killer… Christie usually starts with a group of people anyone of which may be “the one” but Fuest reverses this building momentum and suspicion as the film goes.

Michele Dotrice

And Soon the Darkness is a film with a tremendous sense of place and space as two young nurses, Cathy (Michele Dotrice) and Jane (Pamela Franklin) cycle along the endless flat roads of rural France on holiday. Events take place on a single stretch of road between small villages either side of a small wood and as events travel up and down that road we see the same signs, buildings as well as policemen, farm workers, and other passers by who may or may not be involved.

Cathy is the more outgoing of the two and is starting to get bored of the travelling as they follow a route laid out by Jane which never seems to get to the point. Cathy makes eyes at a handsome Frenchman at a café, Paul (Sandor Elès) who from then on appears to be following the girls on his scooter. A few miles down the road he passes them and then they pass him standing outside a cemetery… he goes inside and looks at the grave of a young woman, Jan Hele who died two years earlier.

Pamela Franklin

Further on, girls start to bicker and Cathy persuades Jane to let them take a rest for some sunbathing at the edge of the wood. After while she refuses to push on leaving Jane to make her own way towards their next stop. Jane cycles on leaving Cathy sleeping under the sun listening to her radio and, frankly, looking a little vulnerable. Jane begins to feel anxious as she gets further away even as she cycles past a group of policemen outside a station. She reaches a village to find the rather rude café owner, Madame Lassal (Hana Maria Pravda) speaking only French and telling her to go away with a strange concern in her eyes. Her husband Lassal (Claude Bertrand) is even more brusque…

Meanwhile, back at the sunbathing spot, Jane is getting spooked and as one misplaced item leads to an unexplained snap of twig, she finds the spokes of her bike smashed and as the camera hovers over her back you know what’s coming… but Fuest cleverly shows us nothing.

Sandor Elès

Jane, unnerved, decides cycles back and finds Jane and her bike gone although her camera is lying discarded on the floor. She hears a motor and looks hopefully for a policeman but finds only the mysterious man on the scooter… he gives her a lift back to the previous village, Landron, and whilst Paul goes back to the woods in search of Cathy, Jane meets an English woman (Clare Kelly) who teaches at a local school, who fills her in on the source of local concern, the murder of the young woman in 1968… The teacher takes a remarkable interest in the younger woman and looks on with concern or, more likely longing, as she drops her off at the police station. Another suspect added to the list… along with the strange farm hand (Jean Carmet -Renier) we keep on seeing in the fields not far from the woods, it’s beginning to seem like it could be anyone.

Finding the Police station closed, Jane cycles back to the woods, where Paul says he has found something, he takes her into the dense undergrowth on his bike and she gets increasingly suspicious of his claims to be an inspector on leave from Paris…  especially when he unspools a roll of film from Cathy’s camera that may incriminate him. Jane runs and gets a break when Paul’s scooter won’t start, she heads straight to the Police Station where she finds another strange old man, the Gendarme’s father (John Franklyn) who spooks her out before his son (John Nettleton) arrives back.

Now, depending on your deductive reasoning your guess is as good as anyone’s as to who, precisely, Jane can trust!

Dusty Verdict: And Soon the Darkness is strange and compelling but doesn’t step over the mark as it could do. Written by Brian Clemens and Terry Nation, both of whom worked with Fuest on The Avengers, not to mention inventing the Daleks in Nation’s case and then the pandemic-precient Survivors. There’s also an atmospheric score from Avengers theme composer Laurie Johnson.

The leads perform well, Michele Dotrice is an actor with solid grounding in theatre and as her recent work shows, she can do pretty much anything whether it’s a good time girl on a bike or Frank Spencer’s wife. Here she nails the mood perfectly and is a great foil for the more serious Franklin to act against. As always, the latter actress is superb at nuanced, conflicted emotional signalling!

And for all those potential suspects, Sandor Elès leads the way in giving just enough away to make him, possibly or just maybe the killer… you’ll have to watch it to find out.

The film has recently been getting play on the magnificent Talking Pictures and is also available on Blu-ray and DVD, well worth catching.

Russian around… Not Now, Comrade (1976)

OK, I watched this because Carol Hawkins is in it; is that so wrong? There are many British films from the seventies that fall under the “guilty pleasure” category as “sex comedies” a term that is usually a contra-indication in terms of both elements and content. Not Now, Comrade, to my surprise, proved to be a well-constructed farce, with a strong cast camping it up in style and plenty of humour. Granted Carol does give us plenty of “show” but it’s for comic effect and not (just) titillation if that’s an acceptable defence in 2019?

Written by Ray Cooney – who directed with Harold Snoad - it’s perhaps one of the more successful translations of his classic farces onto film and, largely based on one set, it does have the feel of a stage performance especially with the camera following the actors as they move from one understanding to the next. Cooney was hugely successful in the West End at the time and had 17 plays performed there including Run for Your Wife which ran for nine years. He made a number of film versions but not all were critically well-regarded…

Not Now, Comrade is not great art but it’s fun and allows so many character actors to indulge their comic chops even if their only wearing briefs and nipple tassels in Carol’s case.

Now, if you’re sitting comfortably, let’s sort out the plot… We start off at the Royal Albert Hall where a Russian ballet troop is meeting the press. Rudi Petrovyan (Lewis Fiander) is the star dancer and looks nervously at two KGB agents making sure he behaves. An attractive blonde burlesque dancer, Barbara Wilcox (Carol Hawkins) leaves her club and climbs into an open-top Triumph sportscar stripping off down to her work clothes as she speeds off to Kensington.

Beautiful Babs – that’s her name too! – parks up in Kensington Gore and runs over to perform a startling distraction in front of the ballet troop thereby allowing Rudi to make a break for it. He is supposed to climb into the boot of her car but, in the confusion, he gets into the boot of a Rolls Royce driven by a naval Commander Rimmington (Leslie Phillips, yay!!). Off sails Rimmington with Barbara in hot pursuit followed by the two Russian agents as the scene is set in Cooney style.

"Oh, I say... ding, dong." etc

The Commander parks up outside his country house and, as Barbra looks on, goes in to meet his daughter, Nancy played by the excellent Michele Dotrice. Watching Dotrice and Philips work you appreciate the skill involved in this particularly British genre; the trick is to keep a straight face but to be as earnest as possible, it’s real life just switched up a tad… and with fewer clothes, albeit not as few as you’d expect.

There follows many enjoyable near misses as Barbra tries to hide Rudi from Rimmington who is sent fishing only to return early by which time Nancy is in on the game and has enlisted her finance Gerry Buss (Ian Lavender). Among all these doings is the world-worn-down gardener Hoskins (Roy Kinnear) who’s confused already without the unnecessary complications of his “betters”.

Carol Hawkins and Lewis Fiander

Cooney plays Mr. Laver, a man from the ministry sent with a message for the Commander only to find Bob impersonating the father-in-law to be (who hasn’t met him). In all the commotion a Constable arrives played by Windsor Davies who, somewhat inevitably, ends up meeting with a cheeky guest, Bobby, played by his TV partner Don Estelle.

The top-quality cast is rounded off by the ageless June Whitfield as Janet Rimmington. Together they make the most out of a situation that in lesser hands could spin humourlessly out of control. But they know exactly how to play Conney’s lines and situations and Not Now Comrade surprises with genuinely funny moments and oodles of charm. It’s classy not rude.

Michelle Dotrice and Ian Lavender

Dusty Verdict: Funny and not sleazy, apart from that one chilly tasselled dance from the lovely Carol, this is well worth whiling away a rainy afternoon watching. See some of the cream of British stage actors working on film and be grateful.

The film is available on DVD and is also shown from time to time on Talking Pictures TV.

Ray Cooney, Ian Lavender and Carol Hawkins

 

 

 

Folk mystic… The Blood on Satan's Claw (1970)

This is part of a short-lived British “movement” connoisseur Mark Gatis terms as folk horror, but whereas the most obvious other example, The Wicker Man, is entirely earthbound The Blood on Satan's Claw does look to the supernatural. At least it appears to… after all what the audience sees is only what we think the characters see…

Mostly autumn

It has a superb soundtrack from Marc Wilkinson, which sets the tone and whose influence lives on in the music of Ghost Box electronic combos such as The Advisory Circle, The Focus Group and Belbury Poly – who feature excerpts of dialogue and music on The Owl’s Map LP.

Directed by Piers Haggard who also contributed additional material to writer Robert Wynne-Simmons’s script, the film is based in Eighteenth Century England and superbly catches the moment before autumn turns to winter in the gently rolling hills of Oxfordshire (Bix Botton and Black Park were appropriate locations).

A Devil's eye-view

Following a marvellous opening montage of crows and thorns, we find a man Ralph Gower (Barry Andrews) struggling to pull his plough up a steep muddy field. He calls out to a young woman, Cathy Vespers (Wendy Padbury) who waves back, before he sees something odd turned up in the clay. It is a jewel encrusted skull with an eye still in its socket, the only remnant flesh remaining.

In shock he runs off to report the incident to the local Judge Patrick Wymark who seems far less than impressed and all the more so when on returning to the site nothing is found.

Simon and that wig

A young noble man, Peter Edmonton (Simon Williams looking strangely out of place in a wig) arrives with a peasant girl he intends to make his wife,  Rosalind Barton (Tamara Ustinov), who gets short shrift from Mistress Banham (Avice Landon) who owns the property where they will stay. She sends Rosalind to sleep in the “guest room” away from her fiancé for the final night apart… but something horrible happens in the room and by morning Rosalind has lost her mind.

The haunting has begun and after the local doctor (Howard Goorney) can do nothing an horrific incident occurs when Peter sleeps in the same room and hacks his hand off believing it to be the hairy, clawed hand of a devil…

Tamara Ustinov

Standards of proof for devilry must have been somewhat higher than in the time of say The Witchfinder General (set a century or so before) but the Judge is convinced enough to study the doctor’s books… wherein are revealed some familiar takes of hair, claw and devilish apparition. Somethings a foot and, oddly, the Judge decides he must return to the city to study more and to wait the fulsome expression of this sorcery!

Idle hands make light work and there’s more evidence soon enough as the village children turn away from their Sunday school teachings towards more twisted, adult pursuits. They are led by the increasingly un-angelic Angel Blake (Linda Hayden) who was innocently out in the fields when the skull was first found.

Wendy, Linda and Roberta

Strange symptoms appear in the form of demonic crops of hair across the bodies of the villagers, Angel’s eyebrows grow the dark bush of Beelzebub whilst Mark Vespers (Robin Davies) develops a painful patch on his lower back… as if the village is re-growing the body of the unearthed demon piece by piece.

The children play blind man’s bluff with Mark Vespers before he is ritually slain by Angel in an abandoned church yard.

Miss Blake; not angelic in the slightest...

Things escalate as Angel arrives to provide temptation for Reverend Fallowfield (Anthony Ainley) and Sunday school teacher – stripping off in one of the film’s “famous” moments a vision of Blake the priest never expected but one he is just about able to resist.

Angel accuses the cleric of assaulting her after Mark’s funeral and he is arrested by the gullible Squire Middleton (the great James Hayter – such a feature of period TV and film!). But it’s not long before more ill-doings reveal his innocence,

This sort of thing never happened in the Tardis!

Mark’s sister Cathy is the next victim as she is chased by boys in the woods to an abandoned church were all manner of saucy sorcery is afoot as the youngster chant themselves into an ecstasy of satanic arousal before poor Wendy is assaulted and killed.

Betty?!

One of the group, Margaret (Michele Dotrice) is later almost drowned as a witch by a group of farm labourers only to be saved by stout-hearted Ralph Gower who takes her back to the Vesper’s grieving mother. The doctor removes the devil skin from her leg but she’s still caught in the grip of this uncanny power.

Judge dread

Cue the return of the Judge who promises un-told measures to rid the village of the scourge of re-constituting demonic influence. He has an armoured coach, vicious dogs and bald men with fierce stares… if there’s an allegoric element in the film we’re seeing it now.

Yours truly angry mob...

Dusty verdict: The plot is played out so well that what sounds risible on paper is genuinely affecting on screen with acute camera angles, great performances and that music underscoring a persistent unease. This is an unsettling film that builds at pace with violence leading itself onwards to the final conflagration.

You can probably read it on a number of levels but brooding skies and the haunted landscapes of late autumnal Oxfordshire make for an outstanding “mood view” that captures a feeling: the seasons turn and Man is faced with his usual choices. Sometimes, the mask slips and we descend.

Country idyll...

The film is readily available from Amazon or Movie Mail – support the latter, who pay their taxes!

Zoe... sorry, Wendy

I should also mention “the Tardis in the room” for any Whovians reading… not only does Wendy Padbury feature  – a companion to Patrick Troughton’s Doctor – but also Anthony Ainley who played The Master against Peter Davidson and Roberta Tovey who featured as Doctor Peter Cushing’s granddaughter in both his Who films. Oh and Simon Williams was also a UNIT captain in the Sylvester McCoy classic Remembrance of the Daleks… famous for being the first time a Dalek used the stairs!