The Criminal (1960)
Directed by Joseph Losey, UK
with Stanley Baker, Patrick Magee
Joseph Losey’s film has acquired something of a reputation since it‘s release way back when, though it’s hard to see why. Stanley Baker as the eponymous villain is convincing enough but the script and characterisations are very weak. This is particularly evident in the prison scenes which comprise most of the film. Bannion (Baker) has been sent down after a racetrack robbery was bungled, and not just by the criminals.
Patrick Magee on guard
The ‘nick’ turns out to be full of stock characters so beloved of British films, the exception being Patrick Magee’s sinister prison guard. Aside from Magee ( (a Beckett favourite) the other outstanding feature is the photography from Robert Krasker which, ironically, suggests what a great film this could have been.
Tonite Let’s All Make Love In London (1967)
Directed by Peter Whitehead, UK
Yes, tonite, let's all make love in London. A much better idea than making a documentary on the subject, especially one like this. Peter Whitehead’s 1967 film is at least narration-free, though I soon found myself pining for something, anything other than the contributions of Mick Jagger (“in the future we’ll only be working four hours a day”), or Michael Caine, giving a hint of the old reactionary he was soon to become (“short skirts cause a loss of moral fibre”).
Making love in London
On the plus side there’s Julie Christie keeping it delightfully unreal and David Hockney (“what I find really sexy is footballers kicking their legs up in the air”). In between times there’s a shaky home movie going on, purporting to be about the club scene. Strange, then, that the camera, which never lies, spends an inordinate amount of time being pointed at girl’s legs. Pink Floyd’s Interstellar Overdrive provides the aural backdrop while Eric Burdon and the Animals are shown recording When I was Young. But it’s another song of theirs that this film may bring to mind: We Gotta Get Out OuttaThis Place.
Hatchets For The Honeymoon (1971)
Directed by Mario Bava, Italy
With Stephen Forsyth, Dagmar Lassander
John Harrington runs a model agency specialising in bride gowns. He likes model railways and to occasionally dress up as a bride himself. The latter means he’s in killer mode doing what he must do or, as he puts it, ‘continue to wield the cleaver’ until his issues, to put it mildly, are resolved.
The title suggests a similarity to Leonard Kastle’s The Honeymoon Killers but in reality the films are far apart. Kastle’s film is gritty, almost documentary-like and contains the massive presence of the great Shirley Stoler, while Bava opts for a style flamboyant even by giallo standards and has a handsome cast to match.
Hatchet alert!
The spirit of Psycho looms large, though Bava’s lightness of touch offsets the potentially gruesome subject matter - there’s a very funny scene in a kitsch disco (with terrific music) where the cleaver wielder is thrown out for suggesting a threesome involving one of the dancers and his dead wife. It’s true to say that it’s style over substance, but that’s the point.
That Kind Of Girl (1963)
Directed by Gerry O'Hara, UK
with Margaret Rose Keil, David Watson
This unheralded film from Gerry O’ Hara is a strange and sometimes preachy mix of the perils of sex outside marriage. English morals and sense of duty are put to the test when a free-spirited Austrian au pair arrives in a London on the verge of change. On the face it she’s a blonde bombshell so beloved of the era. In truth she's sensitive and intelligent, just a little ahead of her time.
Margaret-Rose Kiel: Not that kind of girl
Made in 1963 when moral rearmament co-existed with CND rallies (replete with marchers in big woolly jumpers), it’s hard to tell if the title is meant ironically. The US release is less equivocal in this regard - the distributors renamed it Teenage Tramp. Either way, it’s an excellent snapshot of the period.
Death Laid An Egg (1969)
Directed by Giulio Questi, Italy
with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Gina Lollobridgida
Poultry is the key theme here. But there are problems down on the chicken farm and so a new marketing manager is brought in to sort things out. His belief is that ’chickens are an integral part of society’ and before you say ‘cluck’ he’s come up with some brand new concepts: playboy poultry, feathery smoking jackets, pollo parties and chicken happenings in the ‘room of truth’.
Jean-Louis Trintignant counts his chickens
But then what to do about the mutations that have suddenly started appearing on the farm and which give a whole new meaning to the term’ headless chicken’? Boss Jean-Louis Trintignant has been too busy with (possibly murderous) S&M sessions at the local hotel to notice. But then someone squawks to the cops and he’s forced to go on the lam. Meanwhile, his wife Gina Lollobridgida and her dizzy blonde secretary hatch a plan of their own.
Cameraman Dario Di Palma shoots it with a flair that matches the abstract art adorning the walls of the interiors, while the editing evokes memories of the underground. I’d say switch the sound off but then you’d miss a great avant garde score from Bruno Maderna and some frankly unbelievable dialogue. Sum total: genius.
Trans-Europ Express (1966)
written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet, France
with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Marie-France Pisier
On board the TEE is ‘Elias‘ (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a paranoid drug dealer on his way from Paris to Antwerp. And in another compartment are his creators, film-makers having a script meeting from which Elias emerges. It’s a typical Robbe-Grillet construct, honed from noveau roman experiments. The purpose of which, as he puts it, is to “assist change by throwing out any techniques which try to impose order or a particular interpretation on events”. The result in this case is a parallel universe, on one hand Elias trying to act like a drug dealer would and on the other, proceeding according to the whims of his creators. In effect, it becomes a real-time replay of the writing and editing process,
Trans-Europ Express: all services provided
There are those who might regard this as typical French pretension, full of intellectual conceit (it was banned in England for many years), but it’s playful, witty and very accessible thanks to a droll script and the great Jean-Louis. And then there’s the beautiful Marie-France Pisier with her large inquisitive eyes. She makes an unlikely hooker, but is she? The scriptwriter on the train is played by Robbe-Grillet himself and so establishing that he really is making it up as he goes along. It’s beautifully shot in crisp b&w, perfectly capturing the zeitgeist. It would be another twelve years before Kraftwerk created their musical homage to the great train, but it says something about both forms that it would have made the perfect soundtrack.
Cisco Pike (1972)
Written and directed by Bill Norton, US
with Kris Kristofferson, Karen Black, Gene Hackman, Harry Dean Stanton, Viva
One of the lost 70s movies that seldom turns up in books or on ‘best’ lists, and yet it defines the time (1972) and place (Venice Beach, CA) like no other. Leading the stellar cast is Kris Kristofferson, playing a down-on-his-luck musician - kind of ironically as his soundtrack is every bit as good as his performance. The ever-wonderful Karen Black is his much put-upon girlfriend, though a strong character in her own right. Harry Dean Stanton strums a guitar and shoots up, while Gene Hackman plays a rogue cop, Factory model Viva appears looking somewhat out of place in LA, and the Doug (Sahm) in the Sir Douglas Quintet plays himself, even doing a turn in the studio. Finally, there’s the perfectly named Joy Bang, and that’s pretty much all you need to know.
Cisco Pike: lost in the 70s
Sure, there’s a story going on about a dope deal that inevitably goes tits up, but we’ve all seen that before. This is a character driven movie with a vengeance and while it may be the only film of note from writer/director Bill Norton, it’s a great one. Amazingly, Norton’s still around, directing episodes of The Unit.
Goodbye Gemini (1970)
Directed by Alan Gibson, UK
With Judy Geeson, Martin Potter
Totally mental British film from 1970. Twins arrive in London on an overnight coach wearing matching fluorescent jackets and clutching a teddy-bear (always a sign of evil). They’ve not even unpacked their bags before they murder their new landlady and get invited to an inevitably swinging’ party. Jacki (Judy Geeson) is the female half of the twins and looks lovely even in the aforementioned garment, which is more than can be said for Julian. He’s the possessive twin who swings both ways and whose love for his sister is less than wholesome. They attend a few parties, talk to their teddy and get mixed up with some menacing Earls Court trannies, a liaison that leads to blackmail and murder.
Goodbye Gemini: double trouble
There’s nothing here that can really be called a narrative, it’s more like someone thought a swinging London movie with a psycho tilt would be really groovy. But in fact, the film is based upon Ask Agamemnon by Jenni Hall (no, I’ve never heard of it, either). It’s a strangely compelling tale with an admirable wildness. The cast are game except Michael Redgrave, who has that ‘what am I doing in this rubbish?’ air about him. The general feeling of psychosis is summed up best by The Peddlers funky theme song: (‘when the world comes knocking‘) Tell The World We're Not In.
The Reincarnation Of Peter Proud (1975)
Directed by Lee J Thompson, US
with Michael Sarrazin, Margot Kidder, Jennifer O'Neill
Made at the time (1975) when ‘the kids’ were running Hollywood, this was perceived as Lee J Thompson’s attempt to get with the program. The veteran director had visited many different genre, everything from thrillers (Cape Fear) to war (Guns of Navarone), but this was his first venture into the realm of the supernatural.
Peter (Michael Sarrazin) isn’t at all proud of the dreams he’s been having. - they feature total strangers and culminate in a murder. For reasons not entirely clear, he surmises that he must be the victim reincarnate. After his dreams fail to register on the dream-o-meter at the local clinic he sets out to resolve the mystery, perhaps discovering his previous self along the way. The trail leads him to a mother and daughter ,who may or may not be his wife (Margot Kidder) and daughter (Jennifer O’Neill). Odd bit of casting this as the actresses were the same age at the time.
Peter Proud: too much to dream last night
Like the comparatively recent Birth it has an outrageous premise but unlike that film it unfolds in a dated (even for the time), leaden way which it ihas ‘Made-For-TV’ all over it, It’s certainly not the ‘electrifying motion picture’ the tagline would have us believe. The material would have been ideal for kids like Brian De Palma who had already made Sisters, or Polanski who had Rosemary’s Baby to his credit. I was hoping that the film itself might be worthy of cinema’s own form of reincarnation: the remake, but really it’s best it stays buried.
The Pleasure Girls (1965)
Directed by Gerry O'Hara, UK
with Francesca Annis, Ian McShane
Gerry O-Hara’s follow-up to the similarly teasing (and unjustified) title That Kind OF Girl. The story then was of an Austrian au pair arriving in London, this time it’s Sally (Fransesca Annis) from East Grinstead, a would-be model moving into a Kensington flat-share with three other girls. Hackney didn’t exist in those days.
The action, if that’s the right term, centres around the girls and their boyfriends amongst whom are Klaus Kinski playing a shady landlord, and Ian McShane as Keith, a photographer who takes a shine to Sally. This is unfortunate as all the characters are totally vacuous and any dramatic tension is limited to Keith’s pitiful attempts to persuade Sally to go ‘all the way’. There’s a bit of gambling, an unwanted pregnancy and the inevitable parties - social realism minus the kitchen sink.
Girls - for your pleasure
At least there’s none of the confused moralising that marred O’Hara’s earlier work, though one of the DVD Extras does contain a tell-tale sign of the times. I checked the clips marked ‘Scenes For Export Only’ and the only difference I was able to discern from the UK release was the addition of a pair of breasts and a profile of a nipple which, of course, only foreigners possessed in 1965.
Take A Girl Like You (1970)
Directed by Jonathan Miller
with Hayley Mills, Oliver Reed
Take a girl like Hayley Mills, Britain’s professional virgin for the best part of her career. And so who better to play the part of Jenny Bunn, the new girl in town and one yet to have her cherry popped. Barely has she got out of the taxi before she’s accosted by local lothario Patrick (Oliver Reed), slavering at the chops at the prospect of fresh meat. He’s as slimy as slime can be but you wonder if the (male) writers see him this way, or whether they regard him as a kindred spirit. The narrative proceeds along a familiar will-she, won’t-she path, with less than hilarious consequences.
Take a girl like Hayley Mills
You don’t really expect director Dr Jonathan Miller and writers Kingsley Amis and George Melly to come up with a feminist tract, but you’d think they would be capable of producing dialogue better than the terrible twaddle they peddle here; e.g. “don’t blow your cool over Patrick, dinner will be groovy”. To add to the grief, there’s the usual line-up of British ‘character actors’ hamming it up like mad and turning the proceedings into a kind of Carry On Chastity - without the laughs The source novel by Amis was written in the 50s but the film, made in 1970, updates this only stylistically. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone involved that this would make it seem even more anachronistic than it was when the story was first published.
All The Right Noises (1971)
Directed by Gerry O’Hara, UK
with Tom Bell, Olivia Hussey, Judy Carne
Made in 1971, the last segment of Gerry O’Hara’s social drama trilogy deals with the affair of Len (Tom Bell), a happily married man and Val (Olivia Hussey), a 15-year old schoolgirl. Whereas O’Hara’s first film That Kind of Girl displayed a considerable moral zeal this goes to the other extreme. Len is deceitful on all fronts and even introduces his young friend to the marital bed while his wife (Judy Carne) is away. His indifference to morality is almost sociopathic. Normally characters behaving in this manner would be hung drawn and quartered further down the narrative line, but not here.
This non-judgemental aspect of the film is refreshing, though it does mean an almost total lack of drama. Everybody’s happy, where’s the story? Some compensation can be had in the keenly observed period detail and the excellent cast, but Scenes From a Marriage this isn’t.
Permissive (1970)
Directed by Lindsay Shonteff, UK
With Maggie Stride, Gilbert Wynne
In the development stage the title for this truly dispiriting film was Suzy Superscrew. Better had it been kept for at least it gives you an idea of where the action is heading. Suzy is a duffle-coated runaway, arriving in London to join the groupie scene. Unable to score with the band her groupie friend introduces her to she hooks up with Pogo, an itinerant musician and mad preacher. “Where do you live?’ she enquires of him. “Under the stars, the world is my scene, man“, he responds. Unfortunately the world isn’t listening as he gets mown down by a car shortly afterwards. It’s a pity the vehicle involved wasn’t a Ford Transit van, which would have added a certain poignancy, The subsequent narrative is reduced to what band member or groupie Suzy will wake up with next.
The film, shot in a quasi documentary style and was partly intended as a promotional vehicle for heavy rock band Forever More, which accounts for their music being way up in the mix and sometimes drowning out the dialogue. This same logic explains footage of the band performing being inserted whenever the director runs out of ideas, which is often. On the plus side the relentlessly downbeat tone does provides a telling snapshot of the fag-end of the sixties and a particular sub-culture, while at the same time maintaining a grim synergy: hairy men and ugly women having bad sex together in cheap hotels to a Forever More soundtrack. Just desserts are sometimes delicious.
La Vallee (1971)
Directed by Barbet Schroeder, France
With Bulle Ogier
Barbet Schroeder is in danger of becoming a legend in his own lifetime. From this rather beautiful hippie opus, to Single White Female and more recently, an episode of Mad Men, this is a man with no respect for boundaries. The main character in this 1971 film is Vivian (Bulle Ogier), a collector of rare feathers which she sells in a posh boutique. While on holiday in New Guinea she joins a hippie expedition, hoping to add more fluff to her collection. She’s the wife of a diplomat, bourgeois, liberal and a ’sport’ as she puts it. The primary aim of the trek is to locate a (possibly mythical) paradisiacal valley way over yonder, kind of like Richard’s pursuit of the perfect beach in the Alex Garland novel, but with a more metaphysical bent.
It’s the journey not the arrival that grabs and cameraman Nestor Almendros, whose credits include Malick’s Days of Heaven, really comes to the fore as his images compensate for any narrative slack. Eventually the group encounter the isolated but photogenic Magupa tribe, just about to start an incredible festival - cue more stunning images. That’s about as dramatic as it gets - there’s no manufactured events, just the group interacting with the natives and each other. For Vivian the journey becomes a voyage of self-discovery aided by some local hallucinogenics, though her newly-found freedom is tested both physically and philosophically by her lover as they approach their destination. By this time dialogue is sparse as the film slips into National Geographic mode. But it’s Ogier who really keeps things together here, offering a riveting portrayal of a woman in transition. There’s some discourse on the relative merits of the contrasting civilisations, and questions which throw doubt on the hippies belief in the superiority of the ‘natural’ way of life. Pink Floyd contribute the soundtrack (Obscured by Clouds) but its barely audible aside from the closing credits.
ALF alert: This film involves cruelty to pigs.
Paranoiac (1963)
Directed by Freddie Francis, UK
with Oliver Reed, Janette Scott
Early (1963) Hammer production that marked the directorial debut of Freddie Francis. What a surprise this turned out to, up there with the studio’s finest and not a monster in sight , except Oliver Reed. He plays an alcoholic psychopath who tries to scare his neurotic sister (Janette Scott) out of her inheritance, screws the French maid and plays organ for his late brother who may or may not have committed suicide. Not wanting to miss out on the fun, his aunt wears a weird mask at the musical sessions, pretending to be the dead brother. But then the formerly deceased brother shows up (but is it he?) and things start to go really nuts.
It gets to the point where you feel anything could happen and is suspenseful on that score alone. To add lustre it’s all beautifully shot in b&w cinemascope by Arthur Grant, with lighting that’s a match for any of the noir classics. Hitchcock in general and Psycho in particular are the main influences here but Francis and Grant make something they can call their own. The cast, too, are all excellent but Reed, with a seriously menacing performance, is a standout. Despite all the mayhem and mad plot points, this is a tremendously accomplished film. Where has it been all these years?
Here We Round The Mulberry Bush
Directed by Clive Donner
with Barry Evans, Judy Geeson
One of the few films that's maybe best known for its theme song (by Traffic), and five minutes in you begin to see why. This is a never-coming-of-age comedy with a cringe-worthy script, from Hunter Davies based on his own novel. Barry Evans plays the most annoying teenager, like evah, though he might have been better had his voice broken. The narrative consists of his attempts to chat up girls and, amazingly, he pulls the lovely Judy Geeson but even when his big moment comes, he’s bleats around the bush by jabbering about her dog.
Swinging Stevenage
It might sound sweet and indicative of the period but there’s a cynical, slightly exploitive vibe about it. Normally in ’swinging 60s’ films London provides a picturesque backdrop but this is set in not-so swinging Stevenage, with the local supermarket standing in for the Kings Road. In truth, it never tries to be cool but then it doesn’t try to be much else, either.
The Great Silence (1968)
Directed by Sergio Corbucci, Italy
with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski
Corbucci’s brutal western recreates the Snow Hill, Utah, massacre of 1898, and pulls no punches in doing so. Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as not only the man with no name (complete with cheroot), but the man with no voice. Jean-Louis looks quite at home on the range which is more than can be said for his nemesis and bounty hunter Klaus Kinski who wears a fur coat so huge, he looks like he stepped out of his friend’s documentary about bears.
Jean-Louis: home on the range
The subtitled dialogue is pretty terrible and the Italian cast with their cissy haircuts don’t exactly exude authenticity as cowpokes. Combine all this with a lack of respect for the ‘code of the west’, epitomised in an ending which is beyond bleak, and you begin to see why western purists hate the spaghetti offshoots so much. It’s not so much their revisionism as their destruction of a nation’s imagined history. Visually, it’s a stunning piece of work, from trademark close-ups to atypical snowy landscapes it’s a visual treat while Ennio Morricone’s score comprising classical and ambient electronics, is superb and worthy of a separate listen. Overall, though, I‘d say ‘spaghetti’ is something of misnomer here, this is more like raw meat.
These Are The Dammed
Directed by Joseph Losey, UK
with Oliver Reed, Shirley Anne Field
The action takes place in Weymouth, home to a biker gang who act tough by strutting around in black leather jackets and….whistling. The leader of the gang (Oliver Reed) has a thing for his sister played by Bolton girl Shirley Anne Field who, in turn, gets picked up by an American yachtsman. There’s also a parallel story involving an eccentric sculptress and a mysterious military base where a group of schoolchildren are held captive in underground bunker not that dissimilar to the one Stanley Kubrick used in Dr Strangelove one year later. The two narratives soon merge to form a totally incoherent whole.
Without giving too much away, the children are being prepared for the nuclear war that is ‘inevitable’. Huge computer tapes whirr away in the caves and the yougster’s every move is monitored, so quelle surprise when the quarrelling trio from the first scenario invade their hideout. But the kids harbour a terrible secret, one that involves a dead rabbit, the black death and their perennially freezing temperatures.
Joseph Losey does a decent job directing this nonsense and Hammer regular Arthur Grant makes everything look the business. The big let-down is the script, especially the incidental dialogue. Although superficially similar the story has nothing to with the John Wyndham novels, but is based on Children of the Light by H L Lawrence. Rumour has it that Losey completely rewrote the script (unaccredited) in his determination to make a ’moral’ statement. If true that seems kind of superfluous for the concept as seen here is so plainly mad that it becomes weirdly compelling, you’re constantly wondering just how much more barking it’s going to get (answer: loads). A moral maze it ain’t.
Less compelling is Shirley Anne Field, who is still treading the boards. She’ll look back in horror at her performance which is hard to distinguish from the wooden sculptures that adorn the set. As usual, Oliver Reed steals the show even though the character he’s playing is a clearly ridiculous figure. Curiously, this is the uncut version. The original US cut snipped out some of the social comment (Losey‘s contribution?) and in doing lent some of their own paranoia to the proceedings.
Dreadfully pretentious George Clooney vehicle, directed by Anton Corbijn. Apparently they've been looking at arty thrillers from the 70s and decided they would have a go, too. Clooney always seems miscast when he's in anything but a romcom and that's the case here. He's joined by what look like a couple of Vogue models playing, as they do, contract killers. It's attempt to be cool is embarrassing especially when compared to the kind of films (Bertolucci's The Conformist and Melville's Le Samurai spring to mind) that it seeks to emulate.
Tetsuya Nakashima's follow-up to the terrific Memories of Matsuko is in the same class as that film and offers another example of creative storytelling. A young child is found dead and the killers are soon revealed. The story rests on their fate which is determined by the child's mother, who is also the schoolteacher of the killers. This is no routine violent revenge movie, though. It's cleverly structured, beautifully shot and, like 'Matsuko', packs an emotional punch barely softened by some very dark humour. 
Posts
