Hey, rock 'n roll… Three for All (1975)

 

Pop moved so fast in the 1970s, it was blink and you missed it for top trends and so many became so much Disc and Music Echo chip paper once the consensus had moved on. From T-rex, Slade and Sweet to tailenders like the Rollers in a little over 2-3 years, Glam Rock was a sparkling flash in the pop-pan but it is long overdue a more widespread re-evaluation as one of the great British musical movements. People like Jon Robb have argued that it was nothing less than the precursor of punk, a bridge between post-Beatles depression, blues and progressive rock to punk, some of the main players having already been in rootsy rock formations.

 

Cinematically the moment was pretty much missed, with even Slade in Flame (1975), coming just after the parade had passed and perhaps the less said about Never to Young (1975) the better although it features some good Mud action and the Glitter Band (without you-know-who). The same could also be said of Three for All which is a slightly jarring cultural relic, still full of energy and harder-edged Glam from Billy Beethoven (oh yes) led by future Rainbow front man Graham Bonnet who also wrote the songs. It’s a mix of Y viva Espana, the huge trend of Spanish holiday making, and the Billy B’s attempts to make it as a Cowboys and Indian glam rock band which would have been released just after the mascara and glitter had been replaced by tartan. Pop in general had just run out of steam by 1975, waiting for something, anything to happen… cue 1976, The Ramones, Sex Pistols and punk’s first single, New Rose by The Damned with dozens of bands punching through without the major record company marketing seen in this film.

Boys in the band: Robert, Graham, Paul and Christopher

 

Three for All has an anarchy of its own though and is produced by the team that brought us Eskimo Nell, with writer Michael Armstrong (who also cameos) and director Martin Campbell marshalling the chaos for this free-running farce which features a dozen high-profile cameos as well as a strong central cast. Campbell has had a highly successful career but it’s a long way from Torremolinos to the Planet Oa, home of the Green Lantern Corps but he’s made the journey having directed the early DC film after many hits on big and small screen, particularly with the ground-breaking Edge of Darkness, simply one of the finest television series of the Eighties and beyond.

 

Here the brief is simpler as we encounter three young women who are wandering through London traffic as the credits roll, on their way home to greet their boyfriends and to plan their holidays. There’s the vivacious Diane (Adrienne Posta), impulsive and ambitious with ideas slightly beyond her grasp, Pet (Cheryl Hall) more down to earth but still given to flights of fancy and Shelley (Lesley North), the quiet and possibly the most reliable one.

 

Their beaus form the majority of Billy Beethoven, Pet’s Tom (Robert Lindsay, who was married to Hall) is the drummer, Shelley’s Gary (Paul Nicholas) is on backing vocals and bass, whilst Diane’s Kook (Graham Bonnet, also dating his cinematic girlfriend at the time) is the vocalist. The odd man out is Ricky the guitarist (Christopher Neil) but three’s company, four’s a crowd. The band are managed by the long-sufferable "Jet" Bone (Richard Beckinsale) who has singularly failed to get the boys to the next level and they’re just about out of goodwill.

 

Hey Rock 'n Roll! Showaddywaddy

We do get to see them supporting Showaddywaddy, glam second-wavers who still look and sound a lot of fun performing The Party off their debut. The Billys(?) badly need an image as strong as the lads from Leicester and they also need a break which, as luck would have it, is just arriving as Jet has entered them into a competition run by marketer, Eddie Boyes (played with relentless energy by George Baker) who, with his assistant Harry (Simon Williams keeping some order), contact Jet to make their offer for the winners: an all expenses tour of Spain to promote it as a holiday destination – as if that was necessary in the golden era of the package tour. The only stipulations being that they dress up as glitter cowboys and Indian and leave their girls behind.

 

The girls are distraught and tearfully wave off their lads at the airport along with Ricky’s mum, played with effortless sauce and consequence by national treasure Diana Dors who fair makes Eddie’s eyes boggle as she sorts her hair, revealing just how well she fills the band’s t-shirt.

 

Back home the girls, led by Diane, decide to take matters into their own hands and book tickets to follow the lads to Spain. Kicking work into touch they set off on a coach where Diane meets an odd psychiatrist Dr Sparks (Jonathan Adams  ) who has written some very odd books and they first experience the lovably English of Ben and Rhoda (Arthur Mullard and Sheila Bernette). At the airport there’s a smashing short cameo from Hattie Jacques as a security officer along with Liz Fraser and David Kossoff as a mysterious couple… You wonder if Campbell and Armstrong just asked everyone to improvise?

 

The eternal Richard Beckinsale and George Baker

Arriving at their hotel in sunny Spain, “Torre” already lined up like a thin city of tower blocks against the Mediterranean, they catch the eye of an older gentlemen, Mr Gibbons (the genius, John Le Mesurier) viewing them with apparent suspicion. He demurs in the way that only John Le Mesurier can demure… such a class act.

 

OK, needless to say all does not go to plan – is there a plan? – as the band starts generating success on their relentless gigs across Spain and the girls just can’t keep out of mischief even when it’s not of their own making… Shelley has her purse stolen and is chased by a mob through the streets to be intercepted by a Spanish Policeman called Carlo (Ian Lavender) with Diane’s dodgy Spanglish making matters far worse until Uncle Arthur, Mr Gibbons stages the first of many interventions.

 

It's a riot of seventies silliness but the actors play their hearts out and there’s plenty of time for more high-impact cameos from Roy Kinnear as Hounslow Joe, Dandy Nichols, Anna Quayle and even Edward Woodward as an unlikely Road sweeper… maybe he was under-cover from another film?

 

Uncle Arthur... sorry, John Le Mesurier

Dusty Verdict: I can’t help myself with these films, there’s so much context and connection with the period and directors, writers and performers on professional journeys stopping off for this moment of commercial opportunity. I was thirteen when the film came out so maybe it’s on the cusp between my appreciation of glam-rock and the charts too? By this stage I was getting into Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, far more serious than The Slade and Sweet… maybe I was the one moving too fast?

 

It also memorialises the Spanish holiday experience for the millions of Brits who hit the sunny sands in the seventies. I didn’t make it down there until the late 80s and by then there were plenty of pubs offering traditional fare like fish and chips and bangers and mash, with plenty of Hounslow Joes watching Eastenders on satellite TV too. A hotter home from home.

 

Looking at the dodgy copy on YouTube and other streaming sources, Three for All is an enjoyable time capsule, it’s not available on official DVD – there’s a two-fer with That’s Your Funeral on Amazon for £73! – but I’m pretty sure there’s enough of us out there to support a proper digital transfer.

 

You can also buy the original soundtrack LP on Discogs for a song… Graham Bonnet’s compositions may pull in a few Rainbow fans. Probably the worst cover of any album ever but it's fun!!

 

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!