Plenty of filling… The Sandwich Man (1966), Network Blu-ray out now

 

This is something of a city symphony from the fourth Goon and full of gentle charm to match the multiple locations across the capital, some of which have hardly changed, with others long since gone leaving no trace of “Swinging” London left. As a story the narrative is very thin and essentially just an excuse to see those sights as well as to allow dozens of guest stars to performing skits of varying levels of humour. The commentary from Producer/Cinematographer Peter Newbrook confirms that the entire picture was shot on location and that whilst they hit all their main targets, subterfuge was required to film certain scenes in the West End, given the unhelpful attitude of the authorities. This is a great advert for the vibrancy of the dirty old town and is a quirky near-classic!

Written by Michael Bentine together with Robert Hartford-Davis who also directs, great credit should also go to Newbrook’s cinematography and Peter Taylor’s editing. If it were nothing else, The Sandwich Man would stand as eloquent testimony to the time and place but it’s the guest stars that make it and only someone with Bentine’s address book could have pulled this off: Norman Wisdom, Diana Dors, Harry H. Corbett, Dora Bryan, Bernard Cribbins and Terry-Thomas… even Brian Cant pops up in a cameo. Delays also pushed them into the late summer/early autumn and the weather then became an issue. So, light comedy it may be, but we shouldn’t doubt the determination to get it made and it’s hard to keep sunny smiling when the cool wind come off the Thames…

It begins and ends with a street and some pigeons as the camera swoops down from the foggy East End sun to a row of colourful Victorian cottages. Out of the first comes Da Sikhars, two Indian jazz musicians played by Leon Thau (Ram) and Hugh Futcher (Gogi) in now-jarring brown-face – what was it about the Goons and playing Indians? Thau worked with Bentine in It’s a Square World before producing and directing Michael Bentine's Potty Time complete with legendary ant circus!

Dora and Michael

Next door along sees Roger Delgado emerge as Abdul, the carpet seller, followed by Burt Kwouk who defies racial stereotyping by jumping into an Italian ice cream van… just as cringeworthy today but in the context of 1966 all of a piece with a warm comment on the emerging diversity.

Next door to Burt is Horace Quilby (Bentine) pigeon fancier and sandwich man employed, for those of you from the 21^st Century, to walk the streets of central London advertising services on cardboard signs slung over his shoulders, in this case Finklebaum & O’Casey Gents Bespoke Overcoats & West End Suits. His neighbour is played by the legendary Dora O’Brien, who takes a break from beating her carpet to inquire about his racing pigeon, Esmerelda, who is involved in a major race from Bordeaux to London. There’s a frisson between the two… the promise of more just as Horace’s feathered friend might bring him greater success in the sporting world of Columba livia domestica. 

Horace is a man of small pleasures, always looking on the bright side and enjoying people watching during his endless days of mobile advertising. He greats his neighbours and talks to a stunning young woman, Sue (Suzy Kendall, one of the faces of the era, star of Up the Junction and, in the seventies, many a Giallo film) who is having a falling out with her luxury car salesman boyfriend, Steven (David Buck). Steven arrives in one of many lovely period cars and there’s a great reaction shot from the bus queue as they look from side to side as the couple argue.

Super Suzy Kendall

Sue and Steven form the main thread with a running argument throughout the film exacerbated by the former’s job as a model being photographed by Bernard Cribbins who is, as always, a joy with more than a few improvised lines as he, literally, falls dahn an ‘ole in the grahnd being dug by David Lodge and his men. Da Sikhars also spend most of the film, erm, seeking to get to an Indian jazz festival and, Horace sees it all.

But the biggest hits come from the incredible list of stars. At the time they didn’t come much bigger than Norman Wisdom who plays a boxing vicar at a boys’ club near St Pauls. He has an “oirish” accent and does all his own stunts some of which are quite remarkable for a 51-year old. He’s positively Chaplinesque as indeed is Charlie’s son from his marriage to Oona, Michael J Chaplin, who plays a pavement artist during the Cribbins-Kendall-working men sequence. As with all of Chaplin’s kids, the most famous face in the world gives them a familiarity. Striking that we’re further away from this film than it was from The Great Dictator, Modern Times and even his classic period with Keystone, Mutual and Essanay.

Elsewhere we’re gifted with Terry Thomas as a scout leader trying to give Da Sikhars a lift before falling foul of a traffic policeman played by Ian Hendry, who shows his range as the comedically-tense copper on a bad day which culminates in his packing it all in when two cars collide (near Tolworth Tower on the A3, not central London) and the drivers are men in costume, a Kangaroo – who possibly jumped a red light – and a Polar Bear. Many of these sketches were drawn from Bentine’s It’s a Square World, they can be hit and miss but everyone contains those guest stars.

Norman nurses his bruises...

There’s a lovely sequence in Billingsgate Fish Market with Diana Dors debating the relative values of Doctor Kildare with Anna Quayle, and the camera keeps cutting to fish getting gutted, by Frank Findlay no less, as the women discuss TV operations… it’s well observed. We also get Abdul haggling with Sydney Tafler over exchanging one of his carpets for 30 pounds… of fish.

Sometimes the stars are in extended skits, Harry H. Corbett as a Stage-Door Keeper amidst a West-End chorus line rehearsal – lots of legs in that one – then Stanley Holloway as Park Gardener engaged in a running battle with Alfie Bass’ model yachtsman. Other times you blink and you miss them, and I was pleased with myself for spotting a young Georgina Hale as the motorcycle pillion rider who loses the bottom half of her leathers in Soho.

Still they keep on coming, Wilfrid Hyde-White as a rather confused Lord Uffingham, confusing pigeon owner Horace with a horse owner at the Hilton, Warren Mitchell as Gypsy Sid, reading tea leaves in a café and John Le Mesurier as the Senior Sandwich Man, Zebadiah, the almost mystical head of this peculiar group of workers.

Terry Thomas, what an absolutely spiffing idea!

There’s too many to mention and you’ll just have to make like Horace when he hits the tope of the stairs between Pall Mall and the Mall and stretches out his arms in appreciation of the Sun’s strengthening rays. I worked two summer seasons at a Butlins in North Wales and one of the comics there used to travel the whole north west coast and beyond. I asked him how he put up with so much travelling and he said just by enjoying the journey, people watching and making the most of each day.

I reckon Michael Bentine, and so many of his co-stars, knew that feeling all too well and there’s a Zen-like quality to this film. All will be well, just keep o keeping on and hope for the best… it’s the best you can hope for.

A quick tip of the hat to composer Mike Vickers whose music plays such a part in the film’s coherence and mood. The Sandwich man was well liked by those who saw it according to Peter Newbrook but it wasn’t the commercial success they hoped. Maybe the style was already slightly behind the times for the younger audience but this excellent transfer from Network brings to life again those locations and those ace faces.

The film comes with a host of special features:

·         Brand-new interviews with composer Mike Vickers, production accountant Maureen Newman, actor Hugh Futcher and draughtsman Alan Cassie

·         Archive interview with Michael Medwin

·         Archive commentary with producer/cinematographer Peter Newbrook

·         Theatrical Trailers

·         Soho Bites podcast with image gallery

·         Limited edition booklet written by Melanie Williams

It’s out now and you can order direct from Network – another hugely enjoyable winner and at a very reasonable price too!

 

 

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!