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Writer/Director: Gene Wilder / Producer: Richard A. Roth
Type: Crime Comedy	Running Time: 87 mins
It is 1891 and when an important document is stolen from the personal safe of the Foreign Secretary, Queen Victoria herself requests the involvement of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. The document is of vital importance to Britain's strategic power and various foreign factions are vying to get hold of it - and should it fall into the wrong hands then war will inevitably result. Holmes knows that his high-profile involvement would act like a beacon for enemy agents and so to throw them off the scent he and Watson make a great play of going abroad to investigate the matter while handing over one of his seemingly lesser cases to his little-known younger brother Sigerson. Sigerson Holmes has always been resentful of living in the shadow of his older brother (whom he disparagingly calls "Sheer Luck") and leaps at the chance of proving himself by solving one of his cases. Sigerson has a zany eccentricity and an unerring ability to see through any lies he is being told. He is partnered by an equally oddball ex-policeman called Orville Sacker who used to work in the records department and has a photographic memory for useful facts. The "unimportant" case they have been handed by Sherlock is that of a highly-strung music hall actress called Jenny Hill who is being blackmailed by an actor called Eduardo. He had obtained a foolish love letter she had written and was threatening to show it to her fiancé unless she did as he asked. All she had to do was remove a document from her father's safe in return for the letter. She has no idea what the document was but as a result of its removal her father's career is in tatters and she wants Sigerson to get it back. Sigerson sees through the lies and eventually gets to the truth. Jenny's "father" is actually the Foreign Secretary and she is not his daughter but his mistress and governess to his children. As Sigerson and Sacker investigate they find out that Sherlock Holmes' nemesis Professor Moriarty is also involved and only just manage to escape with their lives after being captured by him. Eduardo has made a deal with the evil Moriarty and intends to hand over the document for a large payment and Moriarty has already secured bids for the document from interested European parties. The handover to Moriarty is to be effected during a performance of Eduardo's opera but Sigerson and Sacker manage to prevent it happening and return the document to their client Jenny. Sherlock Holmes himself never actually left the country but has been observing from the fringes making sure his younger brother was making adequate progress without him ever realising the historic importance of the document he had been tasked to recover.

Writers: Kathleen Tynan, Arthur Hopcraft / Director: Michael Apted / Producers: Jarvis Astaire, Gavrik Losey
Type: Drama	Running Time: 92 mins
Set in 1926. World famous crime novelist Agatha Christie is going through a period of emotional turmoil. Her husband Archibald is having an affair with his secretary Nancy Neele and wants a divorce. But Agatha still loves Archie and cannot accept their marriage is over. In a distressed state she packs her bags and drives away in her car. Next day the car is found crashed into a tree near a lake but there is no sign of Agatha. Police fear she may have committed suicide and begin an extensive search. A distinguished American journalist called Wally Stanton is in the area and wonders if it could be foul play on the husband's part. In fact Agatha is alive and well and has travelled by train to Harrogate where she books into a swanky hotel under an assumed name. She then books an appointment at the nearby Royal Baths seeking treatment for a feigned back problem while she begins to make careful notes as if planning something. One of the treatment rooms contains a chair that subjects its sitter to mild electro-therapy considered useful as a slimming aid. The level of charge is safely regulated by a rheostat. Agatha later reads a book about electrical circuitry to understand how such a device might be bypassed to make the chair a lethal killing device. Meanwhile Wally Stanton has learned from Agatha's secretary that the author is still alive and is making contact via a secret PO Box number in a newspaper's personal ads column. He uses his journalistic contacts to find out her location and books himself into the same hotel under an assumed name. He wants to get to know Agatha and understand her reasons for disappearing so that when he breaks the story he will have something substantial to write about. Playing along with her assumed identity he befriends her as he tries to figure out what she's up to. As the days go by Wally begins to find himself falling for her in a soft romantic way. Nancy Neele arrives in town for some slimming treatment at the Royal Baths. Agatha had known in advance of her appointment and has been preparing for her arrival. She phones Nancy pretending to be from the Baths changing the time of her appointment and then sets about sabotaging the electrical junction box which regulates the voltage to the chair. Meanwhile Wally finally figures out what she's going to do - kill Nancy - he rushes to the Baths to try and prevent it. Nancy enters the treatment room and from behind the chair's modesty screen pretending to be a nurse Agatha asks Nancy if she wouldn't mind turning the current off. Nancy does so not realising that she's actually turning it on - there is a scream and the screen falls away. Agatha has wired herself to the chair and taken the full electrical force from the bypassed rheostat. In her unbalanced emotional state she has decided to kill herself in such a way as to set her husband's lover up for murder! Wally rushes in just after this happens to find that his theory had been almost correct bar one important detail - the intended victim. He shuts the current off and using resuscitation techniques manages to revive Agatha. The news story breaks that Agatha Christie has been found alive and well. The story released to the press is that she lost her memory and has no recollection of the past eleven days' events since her car crash. Wally decides not to publish what he knows.
Comment: Although Agatha Christie's name was world famous she was publicity shy so her likeness was not familiar to the public hence her ability to go around unrecognised even though everyone knew about the story of her going missing.

Writer: Johnny Speight / Director: Bob Kellett / Producer: Ned Sherrin, Terry Glinwood
Type: Sitcom Spin-off	Running Time: 87 mins
This review assumes a familiarity with the characters from the TV show. (As seen at the end of the first film) Alf Garnett is now living on the top floor of a highrise block of flats with his wife Else, daughter Rita, and layabout son-in-law Mike. Alf continues to voice his outspoken views but none of his family take him very seriously anymore. There is not really much of an actual story, but these are some of the things that happen :- The country is suffering from regular power cuts which always seem to occur at inopportune moments. Alf's neighbour is an easy-going bank manager called Mr Frewin with whom he commutes to work. Mr Frewin forbids his timid wife to do the shopping or any housework no matter how much she pleads and he insists on doing everything himself. Mrs Frewin considers it a treat to go to the supermarket and envies Else whose husband Alf lets her do everything. Mike is carrying on with a young bird and Rita finds out and becomes miffed. In retaliation she goes to a nightclub and allows herself to be picked up by the black singer Kenny Lynch. Kenny is rich and successful and allows Rita the use of his chauffeured Rolls Royce. Alf cannot believe that his own daughter is carrying on with a black man. Rita's connections even get her a seat in the director's box at Alf's favourite football club West Ham United where she mixes with celebrities. Rita and Mike make up. Alf accidentally takes some drugs that Mike hid in the fridge and has a wild trip in which he imagines that Else is Julie Ege and that he is the sailing chum of his favourite politician Edward Heath; and he even becomes matey with black people down at the pub. The film ends in slapstick with Alf covered in fire extinguisher foam when a bed fire caused by his pipe has to be put out.

Writers: Ken Taylor, James R. Webb / Director: Clive Donner / Producer: Bernard Smith
Type: Historical Drama	Running Time: 116 mins
Set in the 9th century in the nation that will become England but which currently consists of a number of small kingdoms which have come under attack from Danish invaders. It is the year 871 and 22-year-old Prince Alfred of Wessex has grown weary of battle and decided to become a priest even though he is considered a great strategist. His elder brother Ethelred is king after their two oldest brothers died in battle. Ethelred is sickly and unsuited to the task of leading men and so when the Danes invade Wessex the noblemen turn to Alfred to lead them. Alfred reluctantly abandons his plans to enter the priesthood and returns to command the army to defend the king. Alfred devises a clever strategy that leads the overconfident Danes into an ambush and their survivors have to retreat back to their stronghold in the land they conquered in East Anglia. Their leader Guthrum vows to have his revenge. In the events that follow, Ethelred succumbs to illness and dies and Alfred becomes king; he marries Aelhswith the daughter of the king of nearby Mercia and signs a treaty with them to fight together against the Danes. When Mercia is conquered by the Danes Alfred decides he must seek to make peace with Guthrum and sign a pact. He pays a bounty to Guthrum on the agreement that neither side will attack the other. Fortunes decline for Alfred and his kingdom, he behaves like a tyrant towards his noblemen inventing laws on a whim and then punishing them harshly for transgressing those laws - he loses the nobles' support and with it the men they command. So when the Danes break their agreement and attack Alfred's kingdom, the forces of Wessex are ill-prepared and easily defeated. The Danes take over the running of his kingdom and cleverly tax the noblemen less than the poor to lessen the chance of an organised rebellion. Several years pass in which Alfred goes on the run and joins an outlaw gang. Alfred slowly starts to organise a new force to repel the Danes. He studies battle formation tactics he read about in the monastery's library that had proved successful in the past for small armies facing stronger opposition. He puts out word for his former noblemen to join with him once more to repel the Danes. But most of them have seen their standard of living rise under Danish rule and need persuading. So Alfred tells them of his plans to unite England under one rule with a book of laws that every man will be equally and fairly subject to and that not even the king can break on a whim. His words convince them and they join his side. Alfred's men are heavily outnumbered and far less well equipped but the tactics that Alfred has learned overcome the odds and the Danes are defeated and Guthrum captured. Alfred is reunited with his wife and his now four-year-old son. (And as the end-caption tells us) Alfred goes on to realise his dream of a united England and becomes known with the epitome "... The Great".

Writer: Brian Hayles / Director: Kevin Connor / Producer: John Dark
Type: Fantasy / Adventure	Running Time: 94 mins
Set in the Arabian city of Jadur in mystical times past. The three principal characters in this adventure are the evil magician Caliph Alquazar who lives in the palace; Majeed, a poor young Arab boy who arrives in the city looking for water; and Prince Hasan of Baghdad who comes to the city hoping to meet the beautiful Princess Zuleira who lives in the palace. Majeed and the Prince briefly meet up and exchange kindnesses before going their separate ways. Alquazar is Princess Zuleira's stepfather who has become corrupted by evil and made the once benevolently ruled city a harsh place to live. Alquazar has a secret chamber in which he keeps a magic mirror which enables him to remotely view any location. Alquazar's aspiration is to possess the fabled Rose of Ilil, a talisman so powerful it will enable him to rule the world - but because of his evil he cannot fetch it for himself, it must be delivered to him by someone noble of purpose. The mirror alerts him that the very person has arrived in the city and shows him an image of Prince Hasan in the company of a young Arab boy. Alquazar sends his guards to capture the Prince - not an easy task because the Prince is a valiant fighter, but eventually he is apprehended. Alquazar says he will permit Hasan to marry Zuleira if he first goes on a quest to bring back the Rose of Ilil. Hasan agrees and Alquazar sends him away on a magic carpet. Along the way Hasan is unexpectedly joined by Majeed who is transported to the carpet by his guardian angel genie Vahishta as a way of evading some city ruffians. The carpet delivers them to the island of Ilil where there are a number of dangers to overcome as they encounter various protectors of the Rose. Eventually they find the magical Rose but it turns out to be young Majeed who was the noble one that the mirror was showing as able to pluck the glowing crystalline Rose. The travellers return to Jadur but it soon becomes clear that evil Alquazar is not intending to honour his bargain and is planning to kill them once the Rose is handed over. Majeed works out what to do to defeat the wizard and throws the Rose of Ilil into Alquazar's magic mirror which sucks the evil one inside and reverses all his evil spells. The kingdom is restored to its previous happy glory and the deposed former ruler is released from the dungeons to reign again. Prince Hasan and Princess Zuleira are married.

Writer: Dail Ambler / Director: Edmond T. Gréville / Producer: George Willoughby
Type: Drama	Running Time: 88 mins / 78 mins
Jennifer Linden is a 16-year old art student whose widowed father Paul has re-married to a much younger woman called Nichole. Nichole is from France and is nearer to Jennifer's age than she is to Paul's. Jennifer resents Nichole and refuses to like her despite Nichole's patient attempts to get to know her new stepdaughter. Jennifer's father is a rich architect who provides her with anything she wants. But Jennifer has a wildcat rebellious streak and prefers to seek excitement with her beatnik friends in coffee bars listening to the latest jazzy pop tunes and engaging in wild dares. Across the road from the coffee bar is a strip club called Les Girls and some of the dancers use the coffee bar. One day when Jennifer stands Nichole up on what is supposed to be a bridge-building lunch date, Nichole comes to the coffee bar to look for Jennifer and one of the stripper's recognises Nichole. Jennifer finds this revelation wonderfully intriguing and decides to delve into the shady past of her father's new wife in the hope of finding something juicy with which to embarrass her. Jennifer visits the strip club and talks to the stripper in question called Greta and discovers that Nichole had once been a stripper in Paris and possibly a whole lot more besides of an even more questionable nature. Greta is the girlfriend of sleazy club manager Kenny King and he takes a liking to Jennifer's young fresh face and says she can come back anytime despite her being underage. At home Jennifer proceeds to make life difficult for Nichole by dropping little hints about what she knows until eventually she blurts out everything after a furious row and then runs from the house. Nichole is left to explain to Paul how it was all true - an unhappy home life had caused her to run away and she had fallen into a life of striptease and prostitution and was only saved from all that when she met and fell in love with him. She is concerned that she can see the same thing happening with Jennifer. They head for town to try and find her. Jennifer has taken up Kenny King's offer to visit the club again. Alone in his office with him, Kenny turns on his sleazily seductive charm and offers her a weekend away with him in Paris as he touches her up. All of a sudden Kenny has been stabbed with a letter opener and is dead on the floor - it seems as if Jennifer suddenly snapped and killed him. The police are called although a screaming and hysterical Jennifer swears she didn't do it - and then from the shadows of the office Greta emerges - it was her doing - she was jealous that Kenny was willing to dump her for a new girl without a moments thought. Jennifer is taken home crying and being comforted by her father and Nichole with all thoughts of her rebellious misadventure gone.

Writer: Peter Welbeck / Director: Jess Franco / Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 89 mins
Set in the 1950s(?). The evil Chinese criminal Fu Manchu and his daughter Lin Tang have taken up stronghold in the ancient mountain-ensconced temples of a lost city deep in the Venezuelan jungle. Here Fu Manchu has rediscovered an old Inca secret whereby a woman may be immunised from the poison of a black cobra and then bitten by the creature to make her own kiss deadly to men. The kiss renders the man instantly blind and then slowly kills him within six weeks with no known antidote. Fu Manchu has captured ten beautiful young women and initiated them with the plague and sent them out into the world to target his greatest enemies - including the most persistent of these - Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard. In London, Nayland Smith is caught unawares when a beautiful vulnerable-seeming woman named Celeste calls at his residence and gently kisses him. The poison takes immediate effect and he is blinded - the woman rushes away and is killed by a car. Smith realises he has fallen victim to an affliction he has heard rumours of in Inca legend - he has recently learnt that his nemesis Fu Manchu has turned up in South America and had sent out a young explorer called Carl Janson to locate him - and had only moments before received a cable from Carl saying he has found out where the criminal is operating from. Now he is blind and plagued to die Smith knows his only chance of finding a cure is to travel to San Cristobel with help from his friend Doctor Petrie and hope to discover a remedy. Fu Manchu becomes aware of Smith's arrival in the jungle and despite him being blinded and weak still fears him - so he forces a local bandit called Sancho Lopez to help stop Smith getting to him. Lopez is accompanied by an initiant called Carmen, whose task is to infect Lopez once Smith is captured. Smith meets up with Carl and he, together with Petrie and a young female doctor called Ursula Wagner, set out to locate Fu Manchu's hidden stronghold. Smith's blindness means he must be left behind. Eventually after a series of incidents Carl becomes the prisoner of Fu Manchu while Petrie and Ursula escape with Carmen whom they know is an inoculated plague carrier after she infects Lopez. Petrie takes Carmen back to Smith and uses the girl's blood to supply his friend with an antibody cure for the plague. Fu Manchu is almost ready for Phase II of his operation which is to send orders to his operatives in London to release a cloud of plague vapour into the capital and kill everyone - this will be his message to the world that they must bow down and obey him as their master. But just before the appointed time a now recovered Smith storms in and releases Carl and as they escape they detonate the criminal mastermind's weapon's arsenal creating a massive explosion that destroys the temple and puts paid to all Fu Manchu's well-laid plans. The fate of Fu Manchu and his daughter are undetermined but it seems fairly certain that the world shall hear from them again before too long.

Writer: Gerald L.C. Copley / Director: James Hill / Producers: Sam Jaffe, Paul Radin
Type: Drama	Running Time: 91 mins
Wildlife enthusiasts Joy and George Adamson live in Kenya where George is employed as a senior game warden with the job of dealing with any predators that become a threat to human communities. When he is sent to kill a lion that has become a man-eater he is forced to also kill the lioness when she attacks to defend her cubs. George brings the three helpless lion cubs home to his ranch so that Joy can rear them. The smallest of these Joy names Elsa and she enjoys seeing how the young cubs grow and play together. Joy becomes very attached to Elsa and develops a special bond with her. Eventually however the cubs become too big for the Adamsons to cope with and because they are now tame they cannot be reintroduced to the wild and so an arrangement is made to send them to a zoo in Holland. Joy is extremely upset to be losing Elsa and so eventually George relents and lets her keep the young lioness as a family pet - sending just the other two away. Over the months that follow the adolescent Elsa becomes Joy's ever-present companion and a stable-fixture of the Adamson household. Elsa is not kept locked up and has freedom to roam but always chooses to remain with the Adamsons. Elsa soon becomes fully mature and although she has no killing instinct she enjoys playfully chasing prey-animals. But the other animals don't know she is just playing and Elsa causes an elephant stampede which devastates a nearby village. Joy realises that they cannot keep Elsa forever but she is too tame to release back into the wild. She has not learnt how to hunt and kill prey and would soon die if left to fend for herself. However Joy cannot stand the thought of Elsa going to a zoo - she was born free so she should be allowed to live free. She persuades George to help try to teach Elsa how to live in the wild. The Adamsons have three months to try before they must return to England for a compulsory yearlong re-acclimatisation break as part of their work contract. Joy and George take Elsa to another reserve hundreds of miles away and start leaving her overnight, but she simply waits for them to return; they try to pair her with a lone lion without success because she does not know the social conventions of her own kind. After several months of failure to make any notable headway they decide that as a make or break measure they must leave her alone for a week. But when they return they find Elsa weak with starvation having eaten nothing and they have to concede that what they are doing is cruel and Elsa will never learn to be self-sufficient. After Elsa has recovered they decide to give it one last try at a different reserve and finally Elsa seems to understand what is required when she kills and eats a warthog. And after this first success she repeats it. The Adamsons at last feel Elsa is ready and they can leave her with a fair degree of confidence that she knows enough to survive. The Adamsons go away for their yearlong break and when they return they come back to the same spot and spend a week looking for Elsa. They have no luck and fear the worst until the final day before they must return to their jobs when the lioness finds them and comes to their camp with three cubs in tow demonstrating how she has integrated with her own species. Elsa remembers Joy and George and the special bond they had and allows them to pet her. Joy is overjoyed to see her again and know that she has managed to survive and thrive. Elsa returns to her mate with her cubs and remains in the wild. The story ends there but as Joy's voiceover tells us they continued to see her over the years and she remained their special friend.

Writer: Heywood Gould / Director: Franklin J. Schaffner / Producers: Martin Richards, Stanley O'Toole
Type: Thriller	Running Time: 118 mins
Set in the present day (1978). An eager young investigator called Barry Kohler is in Paraguay following up on a story about a gathering of known ex-war Nazis and by means of a radio bug he plants in their meeting place he overhears part of a bizarre-sounding plot which will involve the killing of ninety-four seemingly unconnected 65-year-old men in various locations around the world. Barry recognises the main speaker as Dr Joseph Mengele, infamous for his wartime medical experiments. Barry's bug is discovered and the Nazi's send an agent to dispose of him - but before he is killed Barry manages to get a phone call in to Ezra Lieberman in Vienna and tell him the details he overheard. Lieberman is a well-known Nazi-hunter who has dedicated his life to bringing ex-Nazis to justice. At first he does not take Barry's information too seriously because he is always receiving reports of sightings that turn out to be misinformed. But when he starts hearing a spate of reports of deaths of several men in their 65th year being suddenly killed he starts to take an interest. He visits two of the bereaved families involved in different counties and is astonished to find that they both have teenage sons that are so identical-looking they could be twins - and then the same with a third family. He discovers all the sons involved were adopted by the families when they were babies. Lieberman interviews the woman who organised the adoptions in the USA and finds out that she was sent the babies from Brazil with instructions to only place them with families that met with strict criteria concerning the exact age of the husband and wife. Lieberman finds out the name of another family (called Wheelock) with whom she placed a baby and whose father has not yet been killed - Lieberman heads off to warn them. But Lieberman is too late - the father has just been killed by Dr Mengele who is laying in wait for Lieberman whom he knows is in pursuit. Mengele intends to kill Lieberman but first he proudly boasts the details of his masterplan:- after the war Mengele had continued with his experimentations into genetics and perfected a means of creating clones of a human being using a sample of the person's blood and skin. Just over fourteen years ago he fertilised ninety-four eggs from the same single sample and implanted them into ninety-four different women to gestate. When the babies were born he took them and sent them all over the world to be adopted by families that met with a particular socio-economic background similar to the one that the subject had grown up in. The subject in question was Adolf Hitler who, before he died, had allowed Mengele to take the necessary samples so that one day he might be reborn into an age more appreciative of his views. Hitler's father had died aged 65 hence the need to kill the fathers when they reached that age. Then the Hitler-clone son of the Wheelock household named Bobby comes home and discovers his dead father - he sets the family's pet Dobermans on Mengele in revenge. Mengele tries to stop the attack by telling the boy who he really is and his noble heritage - the living duplicate of the greatest man in history. But Bobby is so incensed that he gives the dogs the kill order and Mengele dies. (Afterwards Bobby realises that he secretly revelled in wielding that power of life and death). Lieberman manages to retrieve a list of the names and locations of all the Hitler-clones from Mengele's body but burns it deciding that he does not want to start killing children.

Writer: Peter Welbeck / Director: Don Sharp / Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 90 mins
Set in the 1920s(?). The relentless criminal mastermind Fu Manchu has once again devised a world-conquering plan. Over the course of the last eighteen months he has been kidnapping, from all over the world, wives and daughters of prominent scientists and forcing the men to cooperate with the construction and development of a fiendish device to facilitate his current megalomaniacal endeavour. Fu Manchu has worked out a way to transmit vast quantities of energy from the power generator in his secret base to special receivers that can be hidden anywhere in the world which will then explode with awesome destructive power. With a further kidnapping Fu Manchu has just secured the expertise of a scientist skilled in the manufacture of miniature radio receivers in order to reduce the size of the explosive receptor units. Scotland Yard's Assistant Commissioner Nayland Smith investigates the attempted kidnapping and soon links it into the series of worldwide abductions of the women of prominent scientists. Smith suspects Fu Manchu's involvement and this is confirmed when Fu Manchu announces a demonstration of his power. This is exemplified by the instant vaporisation of a passenger liner upon which his agents have secreted one of the new miniature receiver units. If such a blast occurred within a city the effects would be utterly devastating. A colleague of Smith's discovers the date upon which Fu Manchu is planning to make his next move and Smith realises that the date in question coincides with a world peace conference in London when all of the world's major leaders will be gathered. Smith pinpoints the location of Fu Manchu's base in the foothills of the Atlas mountains in North West Africa and heads there with some of his men to try and rescue the prisoners. Meanwhile Smith's erstwhile colleague Dr Petrie organises an attempt using BBC equipment to block the frequency of Fu Manchu's power transmission when it starts to comes through to the hidden power receptor unit hidden somewhere in London. Nayland Smith manages to get inside Fu Manchu's mountain base and help the captured women to escape. Fu Manchu begins his transmission and finds his signal is being blocked and so orders the generator's safety lock released to try and punch through the interference - but this causes the generator to overload and go into meltdown. Fu Manchu and his daughter Lin Tang realise the game is up and they run to an escape pod. Smith and the rescued women look back and see the mountain explode as the base is completely destroyed. Is Fu Manchu dead or will the world hear from him again?
COMMENT: The "Brides" part of the title is not at all suggestive of the story because Fu Manchu is kidnapping the women to ensure the cooperation of their menfolk but he is not attempting to marry them. The "Brides" title would actually have been slightly more apt for the fourth film:- The Blood of Fu Manchu.

Writer: Paul Wheeler / Director: Geoffrey Reeve / Producers: Geoffrey Reeve, Richard Morris-Adams
Type: Thriller	Running Time: approx 89 mins
Set in the present day. Bowman is an ex-army American who is in France on a sabbatical. In exchange for a good pay-cheque and ticket back home he has agreed to take on some clandestine work for an enigmatic European called Duc de Croyter. The job sounds straightforward enough - he is to collect a certain man being smuggled into the country, keep him safe for a few days and then escort him to the States. De Croyter is secretive about the man's identity but tells Bowman that the individual is being brought into France by some caravanning gypsies who are gathering for a huge Romany festival in Vaccarès on the nearby estate of one of de Croyter's friends Henri Czerda. Bowman is travelling with a British woman called Lila whom he picked up hitchhiking her way to Vaccarès. She is a freelance photographer who is hoping to get some good pictures of the event. At the festival Bowman meets up with his charge who turns out to be an Hungarian scientist called Zuger. The scientist has developed a formula that will greatly increase the efficiency of solar energy converters enabling the production of cheap energy. Zuger wants to share it freely with the world hence his need to get to the USA. But there are others who want to possess that knowledge for themselves and exploit it which soon becomes clear when a hired mercenary called Ferenc makes several attempts to capture him. Only Bowman's skills prevent that happening. Ferenc tries different tactics and kidnaps Lila and then demands an exchange. Bowman pretends to go along with it armed with a plan to free Lila without giving up Zuger. However Zuger panics fearing Bowman is double-crossing him and the scientist ends up being caught by Ferenc with Lila still captive. Bowman has to mount a one-man rescue operation in which he successfully frees both of them. The day of departure arrives and Bowman and Zuger head for the airport but their car comes under attack from a helicopter as Ferenc makes another attempt to get the scientist. Eventually Bowman stops the car and Ferenc sees Zuger make a run for it. The mercenary chases and captures the scientist discovering too late that he has been tricked and it is Bowman dressed in Zuger's clothing - they fight and Bowman manages to kill Ferenc. Only then does Bowman discover the moneyman behind the abduction attempts was De Croyter's supposed friend Henri Czerda and Bowman has to survive more peril before the plot is finally resolved with the death of Czerda. Bowman is at last able to complete the final part of his assignment and escort Zuger to the States accompanied by Lila who decides to go with him after becoming close during the preceding events.

Writer: Peter Welbeck / Director: Jess Franco / Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 88 mins
Set in the 1950s(?). The megalomaniacal Chinese criminal Fu Manchu has launched his latest plan for world domination with a demonstration of his power that results in the sinking of a passenger liner in the tropical Caribbean sea when it hits an iceberg. Fu Manchu has abducted a chemist called Professor Heracles who has developed a method of super-cooling water using a crystallised essence. The crystals are made using an opium derivative and so Fu Manchu and his daughter Lin Tang have taken over a castle near Istanbul in Turkey on the Anatolian plateau which is the stronghold of the largest opium source in the world. Fu Manchu announces his demands of obedience to the world lest he punitively freeze vast oceans and the British Home Office call in Scotland Yard detective Nayland Smith and his erstwhile colleague Doctor Petrie who have successfully foiled Fu Manchu in the past. Smith and Petrie head off to Istanbul. Meanwhile Professor Heracles, upon whom Fu Manchu is dependant for the crystals, is seriously ill with a heart condition. So the criminal mastermind has a London heart specialist called Curt Kessler and his assistant Ingrid abducted and forces them to perform a heart transplant operation with a healthy man that Fu Manchu has hypnotised for that purpose. Kessler has no choice but to agree because Ingrid's life is threatened and the operation is successful. Afterwards the two of them are held prisoners with an uncertain future. Nayland Smith infiltrates the castle just as Fu Manchu has begun a countdown to freeze the Bosporus. He rescues Heracles and Kessler and Ingrid manage to get free. Fu Manchu's efforts to recapture them go wrong and his well-laid plans unravel as the massive power outlay requirements of his equipment cause an explosion which destroys the castle. The fate of Fu Manchu and Lin Tang are undetermined but it seems certain that the world shall hear from them again.

Writer: Keith Waterhouse / Director: Jack Gold / Producers: Norton Knatchbull, Ted Childs
Type: Spy Drama	Running Time: 104 mins
Charlie Muffin is an operative working for British intelligence who along with two junior colleagues called Snare and Harrison has just broken a soviet spy chain operating in Britain. This has resulted in the arrest of a top soviet mole called Alexi Berenkov who is handed a forty-year jail sentence for his traitorous activities. The soviet high command are disheartened by this development and decide they need to arrange a prisoner exchange to secure the release of their loyal agent. Unfortunately they don't currently hold anyone of sufficient importance to facilitate such an arrangement. The director of British security services, Sir Henry Cuthbertson, dislikes Charlie and in the recent operation seemed ready to treat him as an expendable pawn he would sooner be rid of. Only Charlie's own initiative saved him from falling into a deadly trap waiting to be sprung. Charlie's scruffy and independent nature don't adhere to his chief's view of a subordinate's function whereas Snare and Harrison are more his sort - men who obey orders but don't think too much about them. When Charlie makes what Sir Henry views as a glaring mistake he immediately puts him on enforced leave and downgrades him and even when Charlie patiently explains that his apparent "mistake" was a careful strategy which has paid dividends with vital new intelligence, Sir Henry is too stubborn to backtrack on his decision. A top KGB general called Valery Kalenin starts dropping hints that he would like to defect to the west. Sir Henry sends Snare and Harrison to make contact with Kalenin at public events but both men fail their missions and are captured or killed by soviet agents. Sir Henry is forced to recall Charlie to active duty and accept help from the American CIA who want to get involved in the defection of such an important man. Charlie insists on planning the operation himself and not make the same mistakes that his two predecessors did. Charlie makes a successful clandestine contact with Kalenin and reports back that the KGB man does want to defect but also requires half-a-million dollars in cash as an inducement. The money is quickly organised and Charlie arranges with Kalenin a route out of the East with a stopover at a CIA safe house in Prague. Sir Henry and the CIA's London liaison chief Ruttgers insist on being present to oversee matters and wait in the safe house whilst Charlie fetches Kalenin and gives him the money. The plan then involves a CIA man bringing Kalenin to the secret CIA house and Charlie driving elsewhere in a decoy car in case the Russian was followed. When Kalenin arrives at the safe house he reveals that the whole defection has been a ruse and his men now surround the house and the two western security heads are his prisoners who will be released in exchange for Berenkov. Kalenin tells Sir Henry that he really should have had more regard for the skills of Charlie Muffin. A man like that does not take kindly to being used as an expendable pawn or being shunted aside by an unimaginative superior. How can he expect loyalty when he treats his subordinates so shabbily. The defection was a KGB sham to see if it would shake out any agents of sufficient rank to use in exchange but when Charlie Muffin met with him a better plan was put forward. Sir Henry realises that Charlie arranged this whole set-up with Kalenin at their original meeting and orchestrated the whole thing to personally get back at him. And the money that Kalenin apparently demanded was actually "retirement" money for Charlie who has by now vanished without trace with it - and with Charlie's skills it is unlikely he will ever be found wherever in the world he has chosen to go.

Writer: Derek Marlowe (from his own novel) / Director/Producer: Anthony Mann
Type: Spy Drama	Running Time: 107 mins
Alexander Eberlin is a 36-year-old British spy with an aristocratic bearing who is quite haughty in manner and not especially liked by his colleagues, although women find him very appealing. His role in the British Intelligence services is to carry out strategic assassinations. However Eberlin is secretly a Russian double agent and it is to the soviets that his true allegiance lies. He has been living in England for eighteen years under his current false identity. His real name is Klasnavin and he uses his skills to carry out clandestine assassinations of British agents abroad for his soviet paymasters. Recently Eberlin has become weary of the double life he leads and desperately wants to retire and return to the East but the KGB consider him too great an asset to allow that to happen. Eberlin is summoned to MI5's headquarters to be briefed on his latest assignment. The number of British agents being killed abroad has become a concern but the best that intelligence sources have been able to piece together about the killings is that they have all been carried out by a Russian agent named Klasnavin who is believed to be based in West Berlin. Eberlin's new mission is to find Klasnavin and eliminate him. Eberlin has to hide his astonishment that without realising it the British have ordered him to hunt down and kill himself! Eberlin is teamed up with an agent called Gatiss who is due to take up a post abroad and is most concerned that Klasnavin is dealt with lest he become the assassin's next victim. Gatiss is a highly motivated and cheerlessly ruthless agent who trusts no one. They travel to Berlin and begin their separate investigations. Eberlin uses his time to contact his soviet handlers restating his desire to be repatriated but is again turned down. His controller Sobakevich says he will arrange things so that an expendable agent is falsely believed to be Klasnavin and can be eliminated to satisfy the British Secret Service's current concerns. Sobakevich makes a show of arranging a mercenary deal with Gatiss under the terms of which he will give up Klasnavin's identity for a huge monetary payoff. Upon payment of half the money Gatiss is given a location and finds a dead agent with enough corroborating paperwork upon him to convincingly prove he must have been Klasnavin. Gatiss goes back to Sobakevich to pay the other half of the money but instead coolly executes him. The mission is unexpectedly over and it suddenly dawns upon Eberlin that he has been rumbled. The British knew he was Klasnavin all the time and they had used this opportunity to find out who his network of contacts were and eliminate them before arresting him.

Writer: Meade Roberts / Director: Seth Holt / Producers: Max J. Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky
Type: Thriller	Running Time: 88 mins
Jonas Wilde is a clandestine government agent who works for a compartmentalised section through which officially sanctioned assassinations are carried out. The operation is known as the "Route" and Wilde is the assassin whose services are called upon a couple of times a year when a notice is placed in The Times Newspaper personal ads to notify him he is needed. At such times he meets up with his partner Brian Stern and they sail to Jersey where Wilde receives his target details and false travel papers from planner Peter Ravenspur who gets target orders from Wilde's overall boss Tony Canning. Brian remains out to sea while Wilde is away and the cover is that Wilde is with him. Only those four men know how the Route operates. Wilde has just come back from an operation abroad and is preparing to settle back into his regular life with his girlfriend Jocelyn Kirby when he is ordered to report again for another operation. Wilde doesn't like it because normally he has weeks to prepare and this time is only being given a few days. When he gets to Jersey with Brian he finds that Ravenspur has been saddled with an assistant called Mari supposedly sent by Canning to help because Ravenspur is an invalid and can no longer cope as well as he once could. She seems to know all about the way the Route operates although Wilde is distrustful of her. The current emergency assignment is to eliminate a germ warfare scientist called Balin who has defected from the East and is being brought to England by the Americans so he can be questioned. It is apparently believed Balin is a double-agent and is to be eliminated so he cannot fool the Americans with false information. Wilde manages to carry out the killing but is captured by the CIA and interrogated by their top agent "Lucinda" (a man). Lucinda knows all about the "Route" and has devoted a great deal of CIA resources into discovering who is involved. He tells Wilde that he has been duped and not all of his missions are genuine. Somewhere in his operational chain is a rogue who has been introducing assignments that have not been sanctioned by Whitehall but have come from Soviet sources to suit their objectives - this assassination of the genuine defector Balin is one such example. Wilde heads back to Jersey and finds that Ravenspur has been murdered - he suspects Mari and takes her back to his boat to meet up with his boatkeeper friend Brian Stern. Only to discover that the turncoat is Stern! Wilde's long-term friend had started assisting the ailing Ravenspur and discovered by chance how easy it would be to introduce an unsanctioned operation into the Route. He sold this "service" to the Russians and took his orders from them when they needed a "special" job done. But now Wilde's usefulness is over and he is to be terminated. But first Stern needs to interrogate Mari to find out who she is working for. He discovers she is CIA and has been planted by Lucinda to find out more about the Route's operations. Wilde manages to get free and kill Stern although Mari is also killed. Wilde returns home to his apartment thinking it is all over. His girlfriend Jocelyn is waiting for him but a sixth sense alerts him to a change in her attitude and he finds out she is a Soviet agent planted to act as his girlfriend but with instructions to kill him when ordered - and those orders have now been given. He kills her instead. Wilde meets up with his boss Canning to arrange a "clean-up" team and says he has become disillusioned with the job and wants out - but Canning tells him that he is far too valuable an asset for them to release and refuses to let him go - if he were to try then the murder of his girlfriend would be used against him. Wilde is trapped in his job.
Comment: We know from the outset (in a prologue sequence) that a mystery man was giving orders to someone unseen (presumably Stern) that Wilde should not be allowed to survive this operation, but should he do so then a female agent had been put in place to kill him when it is over. Naturally we are supposed to think that the woman in question is the suspicious-seeming Mari and not innocent girlfriend-type Jocelyn.

Writer: Paul Dehn / Director/Producer: Sidney Lumet
Type: Spy Drama	Running Time: 102 mins
Charles Dobbs is an ageing spymaster who was active during the war and now works in British intelligence. His latest task is to run security checks on a Foreign Office official called Samuel Fennan after an anonymous typewritten letter denounced him as a possible spy. However Dobbs finds no evidence of current wrongdoing and is ready to clear him. But then Dobbs is found dead by gunshot leaving a typewritten suicide note stating he cannot live the rest of his life under a cloud of suspicion. Dobbs is puzzled by this turn of events because the matter was just a routine background check and he begins to suspect that Fennan could have been murdered to cover up something else going on. Dobbs also has domestic pressures to concern him - his marriage to his much younger wife Anne is breaking down due to his work commitments and he knows she is having affairs. He discovers her latest affair is with a younger Russian man called Dieter Frey who is an old friend of Dobbs'. During the war Frey had been a spy whom Dobbs had run and they became close allies. Frey has recently arrived in England and Anne met him and was drawn to his charming manner. Dobbs plunges himself into his investigation to take his mind off his personal troubles. He interviews Fennan's widow Elsa who is a Jew who suffered badly in Nazi concentration camps. She was devoted to her husband who gave her a new future. Dobbs begins working with a local police inspector called Mendel and they discover that Mrs Fennan had a regular appointment at the theatre where she met a mystery man. Staff there recall that they both used to bring identical music cases which they left in the cloakroom and collected afterwards. A classic spycraft exchange tactic. Could Fennan have been a spy after all, using his devoted wife as the exchange courier? Or was she the spy who was handing over documents that her husband legitimately took home to work on? Dobbs and Mendel work out that Fennan was innocent and secretly discovered what his wife was doing and so sent the anonymous letter denouncing himself so that when he told his wife he was under a cloud of unwarranted suspicion she would have to stop her activities and their life would proceed as normal without him ever having to tell her he knew what she had been doing. However her spymaster got wind of the official scrutiny and decided it was necessary to eliminate Fennan to avoid being exposed. Dobbs sets a trap so that Mrs Fennan and her runner meet each believing the other had arranged for the rendezvous. Dobbs is appalled to find that her spymaster is Dieter Frey. Frey had come to the country when the quality of the material being passed had deteriorated to low-level inconsequentials (Fennan stopped bringing home anything important once he knew what his wife was doing, but she didn't know the difference). Frey began his affair with Dobbs' wife to keep tabs on Dobbs. The two former friends fight at a dockyard and Frey falls into the water and never resurfaces apparently drowned. Dobbs proceeds to try and patch things up with his wife.

Writer: Wally Bosco / Director: Frederic Goode / Producer: Harry Field
Type: Thriller	Running Time: 81 mins
Dennis Parbury is an undercover investigator looking into the activities of a casino owner on the island of Malta who is suspected of drug smuggling. It is thought that he lures gamblers into debt and then turns them into unwitting couriers as a way of repaying that debt. Parbury is posing as an unlucky gambler so he can find out more about who is involved. Another key character is Francesca, a beautiful femme fatale who has shown herself (to us the viewer) to be a cold-blooded killer of any men who get in her way. She is involved in the drug smuggling operation with her short-tempered lover Joe whom she easily tames with her keen intelligence and womanly wiles. As far as she is concerned his only use to her is his brawn but she lets him believe he is an equal. Together they have been accumulating a cache of drugs which are safely hidden in a secret location. At the casino Parbury artfully runs out of funds and as expected the owner Malo is more than happy to extend him a line of credit. But things take an unexpected turn soon afterwards when Malo is found dead in his 7th floor apartment inside a room locked from the inside with no sign of the murder weapon. The police suspect Parbury who was the last to be seen with him and the only way Parbury can hope to clear his name is to prove how it was done and by whom. Parbury visits Francesca's apartment which is in a building opposite to Malo's casino hoping to coax some information about her connections to Malo that might help Parbury track down the real killer. But she is too shrewd and gives nothing away and instead realises that he is some sort of investigator and the sooner she can arrange to leave Malta the better. Francesca and Joe's secret hidey-hole is a cavern that can only be reached from underwater using scuba equipment. Francesca does not trust Joe to be clever enough to remain discrete under questioning and so she tells him to lay low in the cavern while she sorts out some details before they can leave. Parbury has been keeping an eye on Francesca's movements and when he sees her with scuba gear and spear gun he finally works out how Malo was killed. He demonstrates his theory to the police that a diver's spear gun fired from the opposite apartment could have killed Malo - and then the spear could be hauled back on its rope to leave no trace of the murder weapon with the victim left dead in a locked room. Francesca's apartment is the only one that the shot could have come from and she is identified as the killer. Meanwhile Francesca has obtained a boat ready for an open sea getaway. She returns to the undersea cavern where Joe is waiting and they collect the horde of drugs. On the way back she kills Joe in the water. Francesca has double-crossed and killed all her accomplices in the operation to prevent them talking and make sure she need not share the proceeds. But when she returns to the boat a police launch comes alongside and she is arrested.

Writer: Lyn Fairhurst / Director: Lance Comfort / Producer: Tom Blakeley
Type: Horror	Running Time: 84 mins
In the present day (1965) writer Paul Baxter is on holiday in France staying at a hotel with a female companion called Anne Forrest. Anne's brother Keith and another friend called Dave are with them and whilst exploring a cave the two men are killed seemingly in a terrible accident. The local landowner called Arman du Moliere and his wife Tania offer their condolences. The grieving Anne finds Moliere's manner charming and spends some time walking with him by a lake - but when she notices he has no water reflection he abducts her. In the struggle he accidentally drops a medallion. Later when Paul goes looking for Anne he finds the bat-shaped medallion and hides it. Later Anne's body is found and the verdict is suicide brought about by grief. Paul returns to England full of doubt about the true nature of the deaths. Backtrack: Moliere's real name is Count Sinistre and he is an immortal vampire. In a prologue sequence set some centuries before we saw Sinistre use his medallion to raise gypsy girl Tania from the dead to be his eternal bride. And she has clearly remained his devoted companion ever since. In the present day Sinistre is the head of a demonic cult called the Devils of Darkness who worship his occult power. The medallion is an important artefact that gives him the necromantic power to raise the dead and when Sinistre discovers he has lost it he realises that Paul Baxter must have it. It is essential to recover it, so Sinistre and his followers relocate to England and set up a new base of operations at a country house owned by one of his English followers called Madeleine Braun. Paul is invited to a party held by Madeleine Braun whom he became acquainted with at the hotel in France. She introduces him to a model called Karen Steele whom Paul takes a fancy to and arranges to meet again for a date. Karen was hired by Madeleine to model for Sinistre and also be an unwitting lure for Paul. The intention being that once Paul has become enamoured by the beautiful model, they can use threats against her as a means to secure the medallion's return. But Sinistre becomes smitten by Karen himself and decides he wants her for his new eternal bride. He uses his power to mesmerise her in readiness for her transformation once he gets the medallion back. His current wife Tania becomes jealous that her long-standing position as Sinistre's companion is in peril and decides to turn against her husband and warn Paul. She leaves Paul a page from an ancient book that describes Sinistre's legend dating back to 1588 with an illustration that shows it is the same man. Fearing for Karen's safety Paul involves the police and they speed to Madeline Braun's country residence carrying with them the medallion. Sinistre has readied his demonic worshipers in the caves beneath the old manor house with Karen laid on an altar as part of a black magic ritual. As Paul arrives there is a sudden bolt of lightning from the sky which causes an earth tremor and the caves start collapsing. Most of the followers are killed by rockfall but Sinistre manages to escape with Karen. However it is daytime and in a churchyard he is exposed to a shadow of a cross and dies in burning agony. This releases Karen from his power and Paul leads her safely away with the danger over.
Comment: It's not completely clear what causes the lightning to strike which so fortuitously turns the tables on Count Sinistre's evil plans.

Writer: Philip Levene / Director: Sidney Hayers / Producer: Peter Miller
Type: Thriller	Running Time: 79 mins
Detective Inspector Alan Lomax is in charge of an investigation into the disappearance of a woman called Julia Hayward after she was reported missing by her husband Dr Stephen Hayward. Dr Hayward is a busy psychiatrist with a private practice at his large residency beside a lake. He also works at the city hospital. His private appointments are arranged by his attractive young secretary Helen. The police receive an anonymous note with letters cut from newspapers declaring that "Doctor Hayward has killed his wife". And although no body has been found the police are obliged to step up the scale of their investigation. Lomax guesses that Hayward is having an affair with his secretary Helen due to her over-familiarity with him and also uncovers that Mrs Hayward had a personal fortune - both possible motives for Hayward to want to murder her. The police begin an extensive search of Hayward's house and gardens and then plan to drag the lake to try and find a body or some incriminating evidence. Dr Hayward and Helen are indeed lovers and she begins to have her own suspicions that Hayward is behind Julia's disappearance. Hayward decides to trust her and admits his plan. Whilst the police are still busy searching his property he takes Helen to a remote country cottage he has rented where he is holding his wife Julia captive in a constantly drugged-up state. It was he who has sent the anonymous letters to the police accusing himself of murder because he wanted them to do a thorough search. Once they are finished he intends to really murder his wife and dump her body in the lake knowing the police will not search there again. Helen is appalled but she is in love with Hayward and knows he is doing all this because of his love for her. Hayward tells her he cannot simply divorce Julia because most of the property and wealth he enjoys is in her name and he cannot face having to start again to build up his current standard of living - but once she is eventually declared legally dead he will inherit it all. The police search draws a blank and Lomax is told to call a halt to his investigations due to lack of evidence. He phones Hayward at the city hospital to tell him he is no longer under suspicion, but the doctor seems to have gone missing which Lomax finds suspicious. Lomax thinks that Helen may know where Hayward has gone and calls upon her hinting they have uncovered evidence which incriminates Dr Hayward (although they haven't really). The police then wait outside and as hoped Helen speeds off in her car towards the country and they follow. Helen is off to warn Hayward because she knows he has gone to finally kill Julia. Meanwhile at the cottage Hayward is about to give Julia a fatal dosage of the liquid knockout drops he has been using to keep her unconscious. But he is interrupted by a caller at the front door and has to break off to attend to that first. Unbeknown to him Julia has recovered slightly and knows what her husband is about to do but is too weakened to resist - however during the interruption she manages to pour away the knockout mixture and replace it with plain water. Hayward returns and administers what he believes is the deadly overdose and wraps her up in a sleeping bag and goes outside to prepare his car while she dies. Meanwhile Helen arrives and goes upstairs and she is hit over the head and knocked out by the now-sufficiently recovered Julia and placed in the sleeping bag instead. Hayward then returns to the bedroom and carries the bagged body to his car not realising it is his unconscious lover rather than his dead wife. He drives back to his house and using a boat dumps the bag in the middle of the lake with heavy chains wrapped around to weigh it down. He then returns to shore and finds the police waiting to arrest him - he sees his wife beside them and cannot understand who, in that case, he has just dumped in the lake.
Comment: There is a sideplot involving Inspector Lomax's mistress Mary and her unhappy marriage to a mean, crippled husband. But other than giving the film an odd "surprise" ending it has no real relevance to the main plot.

Writer: Jack Turley / Director/Producer: Bert I. Gordon
Type: American / Horror	Running Time: 86 mins
Prologue: A disposal craft is dumping drums of radioactive waste at sea off the coast of Florida. However one drum washes to shore and over time this corrodes and oozes silver slime. Ants are seen crawling in the slime...(end of prologue) Marilyn Fryser is a real estate agent who is trying to attract investment for an isolated area of Florida coastline which is to be developed into a resort called "Dreamland Shores". A party of ten or so potential investors are taken by motor yacht up the coastline and dropped off at the beach where they are treated to a gourmet buffet before being shown around the land plot which has all the proposed (but unbuilt) facilities marked out. One investor and his wife go off on their own to look around in the surrounding woodland and are suddenly attacked and killed by murderous ants the size of ponies. And when the other investors get back to the shore they see giant ants destroying their boat. The motor yacht was their only escape route with the only other unappealing option a treacherous trek through the jungle-like everglades where these horrific ants are on the loose. They stay put on the beach and light a fire which keeps the killer ants at bay but after a flash storm the protective fire is put out and they are forced to attempt the land trek. Their numbers are reduced by ant attacks until there are only five that remain. They begin to realise that the ants are allowing them to go in one direction and only attack if they stray - almost as if they are being herded. Eventually they reach a small town and feel they are at last safe. They contact the local sheriff who appears to be helpful at first but when they try to leave town they discover they are being held prisoner. They are taken to a sugar refining plant where they discover that the queen ant has taken residence and has used the same pheromone control she has over her worker ants to enslave the town's entire human population into working to feed her ant colony with refined sugar cane. The survivors are lined up to be indoctrinated by the queen's pheromone spray - but the yacht captain Dan Stokely has a flare in his pocket and uses it to mortally wound the queen - the humans become released from their docile enslavement and the worker ants start attacking all the humans in revenge. Another of the survivors Joe Morrison drives a petrol tanker into the refinery and it blows up the ants and their main source of food - sugar. The immediate crisis is over and the survivors quickly leave town.
Comment: Four of the original party survive the terror and are able to safely leave - although not shown it seems almost certain that there would be other mutant ants elsewhere in the vast jungle-like area that did survive. Marilyn Fryser's final fate is uncertain - she was attacked by the queen as she died and sprayed with her final pheromone command - but what this was for and whether Marilyn lived or died after the explosion is not shown. One can surmise it was a set-up for a possible sequel in which Marilyn had been imbued with queen ant status and become their new leader. Marilyn is an unsympathetic character who it seems is probably trying to swindle the investors with a bogus investment opportunity into worthless land that is not actually going to be developed into a luxury resort.

Writer: Wolf Mankowitz / Director/Producer: Val Guest
Type: Drama	Running Time: 101 mins
Johnny Jackson is a small-time manager of music acts who is big on ideas and ambition but lacking any acts with any major potential. He nevertheless uses all his persuasiveness to push forward his beat group clients and get them gigs in coffee bars playing to the teenagers. At one such Expresso bar he spots a teenage youth playing the bongos and singing with such a golden voice that Johnny knows he has discovered a major talent in the offing. The lad's name is Bert Rudge who remarkably considers drumming to be his real talent with singing being just a sideline - Johnny convinces him it is his winning voice that needs to be cultivated. Bert is a fairly naïve youth who is eager but has no idea he is anything special. Johnny brings his coercive talents to bear to get Bert to sign a contract splitting his earnings 50-50 with Johnny. Unfortunately Johnny cannot railroad Bert's overly suspicious working class parents to agree to countersign permission for their underage son so Johnny decides to dispense with that formality. (NOTE: Underage means under-21 in this case). Johnny decides that Bert Rudge is not a good name for a pop star and so renames him Bongo Herbert. Johnny then begins a campaign of bringing his new wonderboy client to the attention of the music industry and public. He uses all manner of devious tactics to hoodwink a record label boss into signing up his boy by making it seem that other companies are clamouring for a deal. He wangles Bongo a spot on a TV documentary about youth culture and then uses this as a launch pad for wider fame and before long Bongo's first record is rising up the hit parade. At a variety performance Bongo meets an American singer called Dixie Collins who is hoping to revive her flagging Stateside career with a resurgence in her British sales. She realises that if she helps Bongo's career along with her star name then her own profile will be raised and she starts to take a great interest in him. Bongo is overawed by her attention and becomes her constant companion. Johnny begins to feel shut out and starts trying to regain control of his money-spinner. When Dixie discovers what an exploitative management contract Bongo signed with Johnny she decides to look into it and finds out that Bongo's parents never gave their consent and so the contract is worthless. She therefore gets her own agent to sign him up instead on a fairer basis. Even though it was Johnny's steadfast efforts that made Bongo into a superstar he is squeezed out with nothing he can do about it. Johnny is stoical and realises it is all part of the business he is in and goes back to his old routine looking out for the next big thing. Meanwhile Dixie's strategy of using Bongo to raise her own profile also backfires - she had been hoping to re-launch her own TV show with Bongo as her regular guest - instead Bongo is given his own show with Maisie offered just a couple of guest slots.

Writer: Peter Welbeck / Director: Don Sharp / Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 92 mins
It is the early part of the 1900s (1920s?) and in Imperial China the fiendish criminal Fu Manchu appears to have at last been brought to account. He has been tried and publicly executed by beheading and Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Nayland Smith was present to witness the final demise of his evil adversary. Months later back in London, Smith is becoming concerned about a rising crime wave across Europe which he perceives to be of an organised nature as if controlled by one mastermind - and if he didn't know him to be dead his chief suspect would be Fu Manchu. Smith makes some enquiries and discovers that a Chinese actor famous for his Fu Manchu impersonations has not been seen for many months. Smith realises that the cunning criminal must have hypnotised the actor and effected a substitution and the man seen executed was in fact the replacement. And sure enough we soon discover that Fu Manchu is alive and operating with his daughter Lin Tang from an underground base beneath the Thames. A death in London of a scientist's chauffeur leads Smith and his friend Dr Petrie into the investigation of a kidnapped scientist called Professor Muller. The professor's assistant Carl Jannsen explains to Smith that the research they were conducting involved the distillation of a liquid made from rare black berries from a Tibetan mountainside that is the most deadly poison ever created. However it only retains its lethal qualities in below freezing temperatures - above freezing it is harmless. Only the Tibetan monks knew the ancient secret of retaining its potency above freezing. The monk's secret was discovered by a British expeditioner in 1910 but that knowledge is kept safely locked away in a museum vault amongst the expedition papers. The megalomaniacal Fu Manchu announces his presence to the world declaring that he will soon be making demands that must be obeyed and to demonstrate his power he aerial sprays a small English town with the poisonous liquid on a cold morning while temperatures are still below freezing. Everyone in the town dies in an instant. But to be truly all-powerful Fu Manchu knows he cannot rely on it being cold so he steals the 1910 expedition papers from the museum and sets Professor Muller the task of utilising the ancient knowledge to adapt the liquid to retain its toxicogenic qualities at all temperatures - using the professor's captured daughter Maria to force cooperation. Elsewhere Smith and his colleagues manage to work out where Fu Manchu's base is located by triangulating recent activity. With military support they mount an attack and manage to rescue the prisoners and flood the base thereby destroying Fu Manchu's work and supply of berries. The Chinese criminal survives this set-back and heads off to Tibet to get a new supply of berries armed with the secret of how to effectively distil the devastating poison and renew his global threat. Smith and Petrie follow him to the Tibetan monks' palace temple upon the only mountainside the rare berries grow. The monks are unaware of Fu Manchu's evil intentions and are quite happy to supply him with berries. Smith and his colleagues manage to substitute themselves for some berry-gathering monks and deliver to him a casket of berries which Smith has packed with high-explosives on a timer. After delivery they quickly depart to a safe distance and watch as the palace erupts in a huge fireball explosion - destroying too in its swell the berry-rich mountainside. Moments before the blast Fu Manchu had realised that something was seriously wrong - but did he and his daughter have enough time to somehow save themselves? - inevitably if they did then the world shall hear from Fu Manchu again.

Writer/Director: Robin Hardy / Producer: Mark Forstater
Type: Thriller	Running Time: 94 mins
In a prologue we see a young woman being phoned by a persistent anonymous caller whose words are compellingly romantic belying the somewhat sinister underlying implications that the man has been stalking her and knows everything she does. Not long afterwards the man calls at the door and subjects her to a brutal stabbing attack and later her dead body is found stripped naked laying on her front on her sofa. We do not see her attacker's face. End of prologue. Patricia Teeling is a young woman living in rural Ireland who decides to take a year away from her uncle's farm after passing her agricultural degree to work in the city as a teacher. She moves into an apartment in Dublin where she meets Danny Sullivan and his wife Fionnuala from the floor below hers. Danny is a writer and his wife an artist although they have drifted apart and now are merely tolerant of one another for the sake of convenience. Danny is an American and Patricia finds him pleasant and charming company and he clearly likes her and they begin to see each other socially. Media outlets are warning the women of Dublin to be wary of a serial killer who may make first contact via the phone. When Patricia is round at Danny's holiday home she catches him making an obscene phone call but he claims it is a joke on his wife. She rushes away back to her apartment somewhat surprised that he made no attempt to stop her. Next day she finds Fionnuala stabbed to death and laying naked on her front on a sofa. Patricia meets Inspector Seamus McMyler who is in charge of the serial killer investigation. She does not mention Danny's phone call because she does not believe he could be the killer since he is too sensitive and innocent to be that brutal and were he to be the culprit he wouldn't have let her leave after she caught him making the crank call. But as the victim's husband, Inspector McMyler is duty bound to keep an eye on him and treat him as a possible suspect anyway. Patricia then begins to receive anonymous phone calls from a man with a rich eloquent English voice using soothing words and poetic phrases that she finds strangely gripping. She does not report it in case it is merely Danny playing a joke. (Note: we know it is the same caller's voice that the woman in the prologue heard). Over the next few months she goes out with Danny some more and is reassured to notice that Inspector McMyler is never far away keeping a close eye on him. One night she gets another anonymous call from the same poetically attuned man but now his tone has become a bit more sinister and she becomes unnerved. Later on she thinks someone is trying to break into her apartment and she escapes out of her window and wanders the streets in panic. To her relief she chances to meet Inspector McMyler who takes her back to his private apartment to calm down. He is pleasant and reassuring company. But when she is ready to leave he asks that she first see his little collection and takes her into a room set up as a photographic studio. On the wall are pinned hundred of photographs of herself and she suddenly realises that he is the one. He had not been following Danny around but was obsessively following her. McMyler delightedly admits he is the literary caller as he locks the door. He has spent such a happy few months following her around and has fallen obsessively in love with her. McMyler's demeanour has become more focused and sinister as he asks that she do him a big favour before she goes and to pose for him in the manner of his favourite painting Amourphis by François Boucher from the 1700s - depicting his ideal of Irish womanhood pictured in a naked prone repose. The artist's model had been Mary Louise O'Murphy, a mistress of Louis XV of France. McMyler is toying with a knife and so Patricia knows her only chance is to play along. She strips off and adopts the required pose causing McMyler to become feverishly excited as he asks her to look into the camera imagining that he is the king himself. McMyler then comes to sit beside her still playing within his fantasy and Patricia sees that as the key to her getting away. She takes sexual control of the situation and gives him half-an-hour of pleasure and at the end of it he is in no condition to stop her leaving. Patricia rushes home to have a cleansing bath and then writes a letter to McMyler's sergeant telling him that McMyler is the killer. She posts it and then takes the night ferry to England to get as far away as she can. She thinks she is safe but McMyler has followed her onto the ferry and tries to kill her. They struggle on the deck and in a lucky blow she catches him off balance and he goes over the side and drowns and she is safe.

Writer: David Franden / Director: Jeremy Summers / Producer: Michael Holden
Type: Music / Drama	Running Time: 87 mins
Liverpudlian Gerry Marsden, his brother Fred and their two friends Les and Chad have formed together into an affable musical beat group. They play at small gigs and are held in popular local acclaim, but they do not yet have a manager. Gerry and Fred are art students along with Gerry's girlfriend Dodie Dawson. She is very determined to boost Gerry's group into the limelight which she thinks their talent richly deserves. Dodie uses her charm to persuade a local pop group manager called Jack Hanson to hear them play and he is impressed enough to sign them up on the condition they win a local battle of the bands competition. Hanson buys them new instruments and smart suits to overhaul their image. On the day of the competition hosted by Jimmy Savile the boys arrive in plenty of time for their slot but unfortunately their new instruments are accidentally taken away by a courier service delivering things to the city airport. Gerry and his friends have a mad dash across the city to recover their instruments and return in time to compete whilst Hanson does his best to push back their position in the running order with help from his celebrity friends including Cilla Black. At last Gerry and the Pacemakers get on stage and resoundingly win the show which qualifies them to represent Liverpool in a forthcoming European version of the competition. (Although the film ends at their initial local success with the prospect of wider fame still to come).
Comment: Gerry & co play themselves in a kind of biopic of their early days - although whether the story told has any basis in fact or if it's all invention I don't know. The dash across the city to recover their instruments is played out in the style of a keystone cops silent movie.

Writer: H.A.L. Craig / Director: Alberto Lattuada / Producer: Dino De Laurentiis
Type: European / War Drama	Running Time: 100 mins
Set during the Second World War. In Scotland an attempted incursion of German spies is intercepted during a beach landing and two men are captured although a third gets away. The British commander Colonel Foreman questions the captured Germans and persuades one of them to talk. He is called Meyer and his loyalty is to himself and whoever will pay him the most. He tells Foreman that the third man was actually a woman of consummate acting skill with the ability to blend into her surroundings to achieve her mission objective. She is known only as Fräulein Doktor and in a previous mission in France she posed as a maid who stole research on poison gas from an eminent scientist. Her latest mission is to gather intelligence on the naval movements of Lord Kitchener so a German submarine can lay mines to destroy his ship and kill him. Despite Foreman's efforts to track her down she succeeds in her mission and returns to Germany. Foreman becomes determined to eliminate this dangerous woman and engages Meyer on a secret mission to kill her using poison. Meyer returns to Germany with a story that he evaded capture and found his way back to Germany but the commander Colonel Mathesius quickly sees through the subterfuge and Meyer's mission is compromised. However Mathesius decides that Fraulein Doktor has become a liability because of a drug addiction and allows Meyer to carry out his mission anyway so that he can become a useful double agent trusted by the British. Meyer has dinner with the Fraulein and the poison is delivered by the waiter in her drink which she consumes and immediately feels unwell and makes a hasty exit. Meyer is devastated by what he has had to do because he was secretly in love with her. Later he is shown her dead body in the morgue and allowed to return to England to report his success. However Meyer has been duped by Colonel Mathesius and the Fräulein was playing along and is not really dead. It suited them to have the British believe she was dead so that she could be free to carry on with further missions. Her next mission is to organise a plan to get into Allied High Command in Belgium to steal the allied strategic defence plans for the Western Front. For this she poses as a nurse on a humanitarian Red Cross train. Her task is to keep the Belgium ambassador busy whilst specially chosen soldiers infiltrate the headquarters and copy the plans held in his office. Meanwhile back in Britain, Colonel Foreman becomes suspicious and heads off to Belgium with Meyer who is the only one who can recognise the Fraulein. The German mission succeeds and they get away with the plans and then use the poison gas formula the Fraulein previously obtained to wipe out their opposition on a nearby battle front. The Red Cross train leaves the area but the Fräulein gets left behind. Foreman arrives and although Meyer claims she is not the Fräulein out of his loyalty and love for her, Foreman thinks otherwise and arrests her. But then Meyer shoots Foreman dead to allow her to escape. Meyer himself is then gunned down by arriving German troops thinking him to be British. The Fräulein returns to Germany with another successful mission behind her. Her emotions are mixed between hilarity and extreme sadness that she was saved by a man who thought he loved her.

Writer: Harold Pinter / Director: Joseph Losey / Producers: John Heyman, Norman Priggen
Type: Drama	Running Time: 111 mins
Set in Norfolk in the early 1900s. For the summer holidays 12-year old schoolboy Leo Colston comes to stay at the country home of his best friend at school Marcus Maudsley. The Maudsleys are a wealthy upper-class family and their home is a grand mansion with a vast estate. Leo does not come from quite such a privileged background but he is nevertheless a well-spoken and politely mannered middle-class boy. Leo is quite taken by Marcus' beautiful older sister Marian upon whom he develops a crush. Marian is pleasant to him and does not mind his attentiveness - in fact she cultivates his friendship because it is a diversion from being with the other adults and having to spend too much time thinking about her courtship with Viscount Hugh Trimingham whom her family expect her to marry but which she is none too enthused about. Marcus falls ill with measles and has to stay quarantined in his room for a time and so Leo is left without a playmate and goes ambling off on his own for long aimless walks. He comes upon a farm and meets the tenant farmer Ted Burgess, a powerfully built working-class man with a kindly manner whom Leo finds impressively charismatic. After establishing a rapport Burgess asks Leo if he wouldn't mind delivering Marian a letter and Leo agrees assuming it is some sort of business matter. When Leo hands Marian the letter she behaves very furtively and makes him promise not to tell anyone else about it. She gives Leo a reply which he takes back to Ted. Over the next couple of weeks Leo regularly passes messages between the two of them wondering what it could all be about because (being of a more innocent age) he doesn't really understanding the ways of grown-ups. Mrs Maudsley is growing suspicious of Marian's absences but Leo loyally covers for her supplying confirmation of innocent explanations when Marian calls upon him for affirmation of her activities. Leo finally realises that Marian and Ted are secret lovers although he remains unsure what that entails. The notes he is passing are for times when they can secretly rendezvous. Leo is hurt by this realisation because he feels it is unfair on Hugh whom Leo has found to be a nice chap. He refuses to continue to be the couple's secret postman and only carries on very reluctantly when Marian gets angry at him for his disloyalty. When Marian is late home for dinner one day because of a thunderstorm the family send a carriage to pick her up from where she had said she was going - but when it is reported back that she is not there Mrs Maudsley feels her worst suspicions confirmed and demands that Leo tell her what he knows. Leo has no choice but to lead Mrs Maudsley to an old abandoned farm building where he knows the lovers meet and Marian and Ted are caught in the throws of their lovemaking.
Comment: The story ends at that point but in an epilogue set in the present day a grown-up Leo is visiting a now-elderly Marian. We discover that Marian did indeed end up marrying Hugh but was carrying Ted's baby - and Marian asks Leo if, because of his knowledge of what really happened all those years ago, he wouldn't mind doing her one last favour and tell her grown-up grandson the truth of his bloodline - about how her love for Ted was a beautiful one and he must not feel ashamed to be descended from such a gloriously loving union.

Writers: Joseph McGrath, Spike Milligan / Director: Joseph McGrath / Producer: David Grant
Type: Comedy	Running Time: 85 mins
Set in Dundee, Scotland in the 1890s. William McGonagall is an impoverished unemployed weaver living with his wife and two young children. He has lofty aspirations to become a great poet but unfortunately his ambition outweighs his talent although he does not realise this himself. His clanking sense of rhyme makes him an object of ridicule although a few find his published book of poems to be interesting. After a recital some upper class fops think it a lark to treat him as if he were a genius and during this time he receives a letter from Queen Victoria herself inviting him to Balmoral to give a personal recitation. Unfortunately (although he doesn't know it), the fops are playing a practical joke on him. McGonagall embarks on an epic 60-mile walk to Balmoral which takes him several days as he endures the bitterly cold snowy conditions. During his journey he dreams of the grand reception he will receive and how the queen will make him poet laureate (the viewer is led to believe he has really arrived at Balmoral and that the dream is the real thing until it is revealed to be a dream). But when he really arrives at the gates of Balmoral he is turned away because he is not expected and has to walk back home again crestfallen after a completely wasted journey. He publishes an account of his epic journey which is received with some acclaim but he soon falls dangerously ill. He is visited by Lord Tennyson on behalf of Queen Victoria to apologise for him being turned away from Balmoral. He also gets a visit from a foreign native king who has become an admirer of his work and makes him poet laureate of the Andaman Islands. McGonagall dies of his fever soon after (and possibly the final turn of fortunes was just a deathbed dream).
Comment: Unfortunately some of the dialogue is a bit unintelligible due to the thick Scottish accent that Spike Milligan adopts for his character.

Writers: Jan Read, John C. Cooper / Director: Robert Day / Producer: John Croydon
Type: Horror	Running Time: 75 mins
Set in England in 1880. James Rankin is a middle-aged novelist living a comfortable married life who has become intrigued by the story of a notorious serial killer dubbed the "Haymarket Strangler". The killer had plagued the area twenty years ago, strangling and stabbing young girls. He was finally caught on the identification testimony of a young cancan girl called Cora Seth who saw a one-armed man attack one of the victims. The blame was pinned on a one-armed man called Edward Styles who protested his innocence but the circumstantial evidence seemed overwhelming and he was hanged. And after that there were no more murders. Now twenty years on, James Rankin believes there was an injustice done and Styles had been innocent. He investigates the archived police records and discovers inconsistencies. The surgeon's knife used to kill the victims was never found and a doctor called Dick Tennant who examined all the victims' bodies mysteriously had a mental breakdown after the execution and went missing after he had been taken to a psychiatric hospital. Rankin has a theory that the real killer craftily hid the knife in Styles' coffin where it would never be found, but he cannot get any support for his theory to reopen such a long-closed case. So with an obsessive determination Rankin digs up Styles' coffin in the dead of night and as he suspected finds a knife hidden inside. But as he holds the knife a strange transformation comes over him - his left arm becomes limp and useless and his face contorts into a twisted grimace - as if the spirit of the killer has inhabited his body and taken him over. In this deranged state Rankin returns to the cancan club and murders a young dancer - he is shrouded in a cape under which his useless arm is hidden. Cora still works there as a senior dancer and sees him again and screams in shock identifying to the police that it is the same man she saw two decades ago. The police are dumbfounded - if it's true and the wrong man was hanged then why has the real killer waited twenty years to strike again? Rankin recovers his senses and normal countenance and pieces together what has happened. Twenty years ago he had been a patient at the psychiatric hospital and his nurse fell in love with him and smuggled him out and they got married. They are still happily married - but he had no memory of who he was before that time and started his life anew as a writer. Now he realises the truth - HE was Dr Dick Tennant - and Tennant was the real murderer whose guilt at seeing an innocent man executed for his crimes must have caused his mental breakdown after hiding the knife in the condemned man's coffin - and this resulted in a suppression of all memory of Tennant's identity and deeds. And only the recovery of the knife released those memories and former state of mind - the true identity of the infamous serial killer Rankin has been trying to discover all this time is in fact himself! He tries to convince the police he is the killer -but they don't believe his preposterous story and suspect he is going round the bend with ludicrous false confessions brought about through the stress of his work. He is therefore locked up in a secure wing of the hospital for his own protection. He transforms again into Tennant and escapes believing that only by reburying the knife will he be free of Tennant's evil personality. But the police follow and his menacing wielding of the knife is misunderstood and he is shot dead on Edward Styles' grave.

Writers: R. Prawer Jhabvala, James Ivory / Director: James Ivory / Producer: Ismail Merchant
Type: Drama	Running Time: 111 mins
Tom Pickle is a world famous British pop star who has come to Bombay, India to learn the sitar under the guidance of a maestro of the instrument called Ustal Zafar Khan. Tom's superstar status ensures much publicity and his adoring fans gather to see him arrive. Ustal feels very proud to have been chosen to teach this famous Western idol. Ustal's other pupil is an English girl called Jenny who is totally in awe of him as a Guru whom she hopes will teach her his overall philosophy of life. Tom proves to be a competent sitar pupil but it soon becomes apparent that he has no interest in embracing the inner philosophy of peace and harmony that the Guru says is necessary to really play the instrument properly. It takes many years to learn it and without a true understanding of the Eastern culture one can only get so far. Tom's fame brings with it too many pressures on his time to be able to fully immerse himself in the Indian culture and way of life as the Guru expects. The Guru anticipates obedience from his pupils and a willingness to follow his directions in all things, but Tom still feels the need to fulfil personal appearance commitments which the Guru disapproves of and finds gaudy. Jenny has the right attitude of devotion, but Tom is unwilling to surrender so much of his individuality and free-mindedness. The two men realise that they will never be able to reconcile their different expectations of this relationship. The Guru was looking for a disciple, but Tom just wanted a music teacher. So when Tom has reached a certain level of musical competence and realises that he can improve no further he decides it is time to leave. Tom and Jenny had become friends during his stay and she cannot decide whether to stay or leave - she has no ties and nothing to go back to, so Tom suggests they marry. She accepts and returns with him to England. They leave on good terms with the Guru who despite the difficulties faced is still sad to see them go.

aka: Rain of Fire
Writers: Sergio Donati, Alberto De Martino / Director: Alberto De Martino / Executive Producer: Edmondo Amati
Type: Fantasy Drama	Running Time: 97 mins
Robert Caine is head of a construction company that is planning to build a thermonuclear power plant in a third-world middle-eastern country to solve that country's energy needs. The country's Prime Minister has agreed to the project despite political opposition from his rivals. The construction requires the demolition of an ancient cave system within which was found a carving of the name of Jesus and a depiction of a seven-headed serpent. Back in England at Caine Enterprises' headquarters anti-nuclear demonstrators become very vocal in their disapproval of the project. Robert's wife Eva who is the majority shareholder tells Robert she has decided to cancel the project at the next board meeting for fear that the controversy will be the company's ruination. But before she has the chance to announce her decision she is accidentally killed by a fanatical protestor whose target had been Robert - and so Robert carries on with the project which he so fervently believes will be of great benefit. Robert's grown-up son Angel has a brilliant mind and has designed the power plant's unique and revolutionary new efficiency concepts which include seven spherical towers. Angel is eager to be helpful to his father and assist in any way he can to get the plant built. After his wife's death Robert starts a new relationship with a much younger woman called Sara Golan and before long she falls pregnant. Angel is pleased that he will have a younger brother and Robert tells him a long held secret that Angel had been a twin at birth but the first born twin had become entangled in Angel's umbilical cord and been strangled. A scientist working for Caine Enterprises called Professor Griffith is asked to double-check Angel's figures and when he feeds it into the computer it outputs the seemingly meaningless alphanumeric string "2V231" which neither Griffith or Robert can understand. However when held up to a mirror it is found to resemble the word "Jesus". Robert asks a padre called Monsignor Charrier if it means anything and is told that a reversed "Jesus" is a symbol of the anti-Christ - an evil force that represents a mirror image of Jesus. Where Christ had 12 apostles, the anti-Christ would have 21 and his teachings would lead to destruction rather than salvation resulting in the end of the world as foretold in the Apocalypse. The ancient writings speak of it raining for 1263 days and the destruction is symbolised by the appearance of a seven-headed serpent just like the painting from the cave. The anti-Christ will be born as a second son and is prophesised to appear in the second half of the 20th century and so may be born soon or perhaps is already born and waiting for the right moment. Robert has a nightmare vision of the destruction that may come and suddenly realises that all the design characteristics of the proposed power plant match numbers from the ancient prophecy - for instance the power output is to be 1263 megawatts (one example of many such numeric coincidences, the others I've not mentioned) - even the design of the plant's seven towers seem to resemble the seven headed serpent of prophesy. Robert fears that his power plant will unwittingly bring about a holocaust and that the baby that Sara is carrying will be an evil second son who will become the anti-Christ that will make it happen. Robert tries to persuade Sara to have an abortion but she refuses and so in desperation he attempts to trick her by taking her for what she thinks will be a routine gynaecological check up at a clinic but whose staff he has paid to actually perform a forced abortion on her - however Sara realises just in time what has been planned and flees the clinic. Robert's increasingly fragile mental state results him in being committed to a psychiatric hospital that specialises in religious fanatics. However what Robert had overlooked is that Angel is already a second son (his older brother being the dead twin) and we discover it is he who is the anti-Christ already. Angel has designed the power plant that when completed will bring about a rain of destruction which will wipe out all mankind and purify everything - he has hidden his evil nature behind a mask of calm inscrutability and helpfulness but has been secretly making sure that any obstacles that lay in the way of the smooth progress of the construction were quickly eliminated - such as his own mother and political agitators in the middle-eastern country.. With Robert now safely out of the way in hospital Angel takes over as company chairman. One of his first moves is to increase the number of under-executives on the board to 21 as he presses forward with the plans to build the plant on schedule...
Comment: The story is left hanging unresolved on the assumption that Angel has won and his plan will come to pass.

Writer: David Sherwin / Director: Lindsay Anderson / Producers: Michael Medwin, Lindsay Anderson
Type: Drama	Running Time: 106 mins
Set in the modern day (1968) in a boys public school run on very traditional old-fashioned values of discipline and order. The school prides itself on educating boys to the highest standard and providing the nation with its future leaders. The senior year boys are called Whips and they maintain the strict protocol of the school's disciplinary structure and are treated with reverence and fear by the younger boys who know they have to do whatever they are told or suffer unpleasant consequences. Mick Travis and his two roommates Knightley and Wallace are seniors a year below the whips and hate the codes of conduct they have to abide by. They have a barely concealed rebellious nature that no amount of punishment and humiliation from the whips is able to eradicate. Mick has a keen fascination with warfare and glorifies famous gunmen - he believes that revolution is the purest act of self-expression. Plotwise not a lot happens throughout the film as we just live out a year in capsule form witnessing Mick's growing resentment to the rigid strictures around him and the way he is being forced to behave in ways he finds reprehensible. He is biding his time until a suitable opportunity comes along to allow him to take his just revenge. The school also teaches soldiering and all the boys don cadet uniforms and take part in mock military exercises carrying rifles and dummy ammunition. Mick and his friends have difficulty taking it seriously and find the playacting ludicrous and resent taking orders from stuffy teachers and whips pretending to be generals. When Mick and his two pals take pot-shots at the Chaplain with their air rifles they are punished by having to clear out the basement storehouse underneath the chapel of its old theatrical props. While doing this they discover a secret passage into an underground room containing an arsenal of weapons and live ammunition - and a fitting revenge is plotted. At the end of term there is an assembly in the chapel with an ex-boy who has become a general giving a stirring speech about how tradition and high values are not to be scorned at. During his address a fire starts from underneath and the invited dignitaries and parents rush out into the courtyard in panic. And from the rooftops Mick and his friends open fire with machine guns and bazookas mowing down the establishment figures they despise. The general takes charge and organises a response using the cadets' live training rounds and a huge gun battle ensues between the opposing sides. THE END (consequences not revealed)

Writer: Lowell S. Hawley / Director: Robert Stevenson / Associate Producer: Hugh Attwooll
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 94 mins
It is 1858 and siblings Mary and Robert Grant are on a mission to find their missing father. Captain Grant was the skipper of the sea vessel Britannia which was reported lost at sea several years ago and he was believed dead. But recently the orphaned children were contacted by a jolly Frenchman named Jacques Paganel who discovered a message in a bottle from Captain Grant indicating that he made it to land. Unfortunately the note had deteriorated but Jacques believes he has been able to decipher enough of what remains to determine the captain's approximate location. The Grant children make a personal appeal to Lord Glenaryan who owned the Britannia to mount an expedition to search for their father. Lord Glenaryan eventually agrees and so he and his son John along with Mary, Robert and Jacques set sail to follow the clues contained in the message. All they know is the latitude position and so they decide to follow the 37th parallel until they find him - starting in the South Americas because the message mentioned "Indians". Their trek takes them over mountainous terrain and through snowy regions and deserts where they experience many dangers such as earthquakes and flash floods. They eventually realise they have interpreted the message incorrectly and they should have been in the Indian Ocean. They set off to Australia and in Melbourne they meet a man called Thomas Ayerton who claims to know the exact position the Britannia went down and that Captain Grant is being held prisoner by the Maoris in New Zealand. Ayerton brings on board cargo crates which he says he will use to barter for the release of the Captain. But once at sea Ayerton is revealed as a gun-runner and pirate and the crates are full of weaponry. It was he who hi-jacked the Britannia and set Captain Grant and his officers adrift and now he does the same to the five adventurers. After days adrift at the mercy of the Pacific currents Lord Glenarvan & co are washed ashore in New Zealand and captured by a cannibalistic Maori tribe. They are imprisoned and find themselves locked up with one of the former Britannia crewmen called Bill Gaye who was cast adrift with Captain Grant. He has news of the children's father. They mount a daring escape from the tribe which involves them triggering a lava flow from an active volcano. Bill Gaye leads them to a cove where they find Captain Grant who is being been forced to negotiate with Ayerton for weaponry on behalf of the Maoris. The heroes retake Lord Glenarvan's vessel and defeat Ayerton and his men when they come back aboard. Captain Grant and his children have a happy reunion.
Comment: Another plot element throughout the epic expedition is a budding teenage romance between Mary and Lord Glenarvan's son John.

Writers: John C Barker,Paul B Hutchinson, Michael Parkinson / Director: David Kent-Watson / Producer: Michael Parkinson
Type: Thriller	Running Time: 91 mins
Prologue in Naxxar, Malta, a couple of decades ago. A young child discovers that his mother is a common prostitute and the mother sneers unkindly in the child's face - mocking his dismay as his illusions of her as a perfect mother are shattered. End of prologue. Present Day England. Jeff Conti is an out-of-work actor with a reputation for being difficult to work with because of his temper. All his agent can get for him is some modelling work in Malta playing male characters in a women's swimwear photoshoot for an upcoming advertising campaign. The photographer is Steve Sutton who is under instructions to ensure he delivers good results in Malta because the shoot has been commissioned by an important new client. Four female models are selected for the shoot and together with Jeff and Steve's two assistants Jim and Liam, they all fly off to Malta. One of the models is called Debbie and just like Jeff she is new to this sort of thing and they become friendly. None of the girls like assistant Jim who always looks at them in a creepy lustful sort of way. Photographer Steve is much-liked however and they get down to work taking swimsuit shots around the local beauty spots and old ruins of the area. Debbie regularly spots a strange bald-headed man following them and always watching them from a distance. Later the man reveals himself to be David Beckett, the owner of Aurora Swimwear who commissioned the shoot and is checking up on their progress - he comes across as a bit strange always making cryptic fatalistic remarks. On a day off one of the models is attacked and killed by an unseen assailant - the others don't find out because a note is left in her name saying she had met an old boyfriend and decided to go back home. The work continues without her. Later another model is killed and this time her body is discovered. Then a third is killed in the shower and Debbie discovers her body - she is then attacked herself by sleazy assistant Jim who tries to rape her. She screams and photographer Steve comes to her rescue and starts fighting Jim. Debbie runs away to hide in case Jim overcomes Steve's gallant rescue attempt. She is followed but fortunatelythe victor was Steve and not Jim and she falls gratefully into his arms. Then Steve's whole attitude changes and Debbie realises that he is the killer who despises loose women like models and prostitutes who use their bodies for gain (we find out he was the young boy from the prologue). Jim had "only" wanted to rape her but was not the killer. Fortunately Jeff arrives and has an all out titanic struggle with the now totally deranged Steve in a derelict house. Jeff emerges as the victor and thinks he has killed Steve and he takes the distraught Debbie away to safety. But as the end credits roll Steve's eyes pop open and he is not dead after all! FREEZE FRAME END (but leaving it open for a sequel).
Comment: In addition to the killings in Malta we also witness some murders in England - firstly a street prostitute and secondly that of an ambitious model who was turned down for the Maltese trip and tried to get Steve to take her along by seducing him. We don’t see the assailant's face but know he must be someone who came from England to Malta.

Writers: Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais / Director: Michael Winner / Producers: Ben Arbeid, Maurice Foster
Type: Crime Caper	Running Time: 90 mins
David and Michael Tremayne are brothers who like challenges that will stretch their creative ingenuity. They have both been in the army although David progressed to higher ranks and Michael was booted out. His discharge was due to him cheating to win a war games exercise although Michael's intention had been to display his resourcefulness. Michael is viewed by his family as a comparative failure when judged against his brother David which Michael feels is unfair - they are both equally clever it's just that David has never been caught. The two brothers decide they want to do something spectacular that will grab the headlines with its breathtaking audacity and propel them to fame. They decide that to steal the crown jewels from the Tower of London would be a sufficiently high-profile stunt. However they don't wish to go to prison for theft so they both write letters which they will lodge with their respective solicitors explaining in advance that they acted not to permanently deprive but to test the security of the nation's treasures. Then they set about their strategy. Using army skills David builds small bombs and they begin a campaign of planting the explosives at London landmarks and phoning anonymous warnings which the Royal Engineers bomb disposal squad have to come and defuse. David dons his old army captain's uniform and makes himself a familiar face at the army base. When the brothers have laid sufficient groundwork they plant a bomb at the real target - the visitor's jewel room at The Tower of London. That evening Michael attends his girlfriend's coming out party to establish an alibi and David goes to the army base. When the bomb alert comes through David intercepts the call and poses as the officer in charge of defusing the bomb. Michael slips out unseen from the party and joins him as a junior soldier. The brothers enter the jewel room alone and hide the royal crown and orb in their equipment case. Then they dab themselves in fake blood and set off a small explosive and rush out as if injured and are put in an ambulance. Once on route they overpower the crew and escape. Michael returns to the party unmissed and David takes the stolen treasures home. Next day Michael joins him and they hide the treasures under David's floorboards. They view with great satisfaction the massive police response to their audacious theft and decide to wait a week before giving themselves up. Thus, a week later David phones his solicitor to release the letter and the police are informed. When the police arrive at his home David lifts his floorboards to retrieve the treasures - but they have gone! David is perplexed and when he turns to his brother for corroboration Michael claims to know nothing of his brother's actions. He never lodged his confession letter with his solicitor and even has a solid alibi - a mantelpiece clock in a group photo at his girlfriend's party clearly shows he was there at the time of the robbery. Everyone recalls seeing David as the officer but no one can recall what the soldier with him looked like. David is put on remand for his offences and Michael is free. Michael is delighted that at last he outsmarted his own brother - his masterstroke had been changing the time on the clock when posing for the party photo. Michael lets David sweat for several days before giving the jewels up that he re-hid elsewhere without David's knowledge - and only after securing a massive deal with a newspaper for exclusive story rights. The two brothers have to spend some time in prison for their offences but they are both regarded as folk heroes for their daring stunt.

Writer: Alexander Doré / Director: Charles Saunders / Producer: Guido Coen
Type: Crime Drama	Running Time: 78 mins
Terry Collins is a rebellious young man from a working class background who wants to better himself and not live a life of drudgery like his father. But the only way he can see to achieve this is by turning to a life of crime. A year ago he was involved in a safe robbery with his friend Johnnie Calvert. Terry got away with the money and Johnnie was caught and sent to prison but did not grass Terry up. Terry works at a garage and does some odd jobs for Jacko Fielding, the owner of a strip club called The Adam & Eve Club. Johnnie's girlfriend Sue works there as a stripper and Terry has a secret desire for her. But she is waiting for Johnnie to be released from prison and isn't interested in Terry. Terry needs some more money so he mugs an old man in a dark alleyway and steals his wallet. He then goes to the strip club where he talks to a spiv acquaintance called Joe Lucas - Joe notices Terry's messy appearance and wonders what he's been up to. The next day the newspapers report that the mugging victim died and the police are looking for a murderer. Joe figures out that Terry must have done it and blackmails him for some money in return for keeping his suspicions to himself. Terry is scared because if he's found guilty of murder he will hang. He decides he wants to get out of the country but needs a lot of money. Meanwhile Johnnie's term in prison ends and he comes looking for Terry wanting his share of the loot from the robbery a year ago. But Terry says he has spent it all. Terry suggests they do another job and he tells Johnnie that the strip club safe in Jacko Fielding's office is always full on Sundays ready to bank the week's takings on the Monday morning. Terry seems to have it all worked out so Johnnie agrees unaware of Terry's involvement in the recent mugging incident and his urgent need for some getaway cash. He is also unaware that Terry secretly owns a pistol. The two of them break in to the club on the Sunday and Johnnie blows the safe - but then Terry double-crosses Johnnie and knocks him out with the pistol and takes all the money for himself. Johnnie is captured by the police and this time has no hesitation in naming Terry as his accomplice. The police have by now also worked out that Terry was responsible for the mugging murder and follow a tip-off to where Terry is hiding out. Terry is at Johnnie's flat where he has taken Sue hostage after unsuccessfully trying to persuade her to come away with him. He also has a neighbour hostage. The neighbour tries to reason with Terry to give himself up but Terry is so desperately scared of the consequences of being caught that he accidentally shoots the man just as the police storm in to arrest him. Terry is taken away hysterically kicking and screaming that he doesn’t want to hang.

Writers: Barry Hines, Ken Loach, Tony Garnett / Director: Ken Loach / Producer: Tony Garnett
Type: Drama	Running Time: 106 mins
Billy Caspar is a young boy from an impoverished family living in a mining town in the North of England. He has no father, his mother is more interested in her social life than being a good mother, and his illiterate older brother Jud bullies him. At school Billy is always being picked on by some of the teachers who consider him no good because he doesn't appear to be very bright and has a record with the police for petty crimes. The sports teacher is especially mean to him. Away from school Billy's only passion is wildlife, a hobby which he keeps to himself. He spends his free time wandering around the nearby woodlands. One day he spots a kestrel and follows it to its nesting place in a ruined monastery wall on a farm. The farmer says the wall is getting dangerous and will have to be demolished so Billy decides to rescue the kestrel's chick and care for it at home in his shed. He names the bird "Kes". Billy reads up on the art of falconry and successfully finds out how to train it. He becomes very knowledgeable on the subject and when his English master Mr Farthing presses Billy to engage in a speak-and-tell lesson Billy talks proudly about his kestrel. This impresses Mr Farthing who realises there is more to Billy than everyone previously thought. Jud asks Billy to put a horseracing bet on for him - but when Billy is told at the bookmakers that Jud's horse stands no chance he doesn't bother and buys himself some fish and chips with the stake money instead. But then Jud's horse does win and he is furious with Billy for not placing the bet. Jud searches for him at school and Billy goes into hiding to escape his brother's furious temper. When Billy gets home he finds Kes is not in the shed and he becomes frantic thinking that Jud has let him loose. He searches the woods calling the kestrel's name hoping he will come back but to no avail. When he returns home he finds Kes' body dumped in the dustbin with its neck snapped - Jud had been so angry at not being able to find Billy to give him a good beating that he took his revenge on Kes instead. Billy is very upset and buries the bird in the woods. THE END
Comment: The film is about Billy's life in general at home and school showing what a miserable time of it he has - the falconry is just one aspect of his life but it does not dominate the film - although in the above summary I've concentrated mainly on that side of things.

Writers: David Shaw, David Seltzer / Director: Jerzy Skolimowski / Producer: Lutz Hengst
Type: European / Comedy Drama	Running Time: 91 mins
Charles Dreyer is a successful English businessman living in Munich who has built up a booming business empire at the heart of which is the Dreyer Department store. He has been married for twelve years to a younger Italian woman called Martha who has a vivacious glamour. Their marriage is no longer passionate and they have a suitable "understanding" of each others casual affairs. As the story begins Charles' nephew Frank is orphaned in England and as his only living relative comes to live with Charles in Munich. Frank is approaching young adulthood but is shy and awkwardly clumsy and lacks any confidence in himself. Charles is getting on a bit in years and with no children of his own decides that Frank shall be his heir and inherit his entire fortune one day. Martha has a mercenary attitude to her current rich lifestyle that Charles' wealth affords her but can see how that might change if Frank were to take over - so she decides to hedge her bets and get her seductive hooks into the young Frank. Her sophistication and wily manoeuvrings easily manipulate Frank's inexperienced adolescent lustfulness and he falls madly in love with her. She in turn enjoys his virile stamina and devotion to her every desire. She finds him an apartment in town and they conduct a secret affair that Charles knows nothing about. Charles only knows that Frank has a secret girlfriend but doesn't begrudge him his privacy on her identity. Martha uses the promise of her sexuality as an inducement which Frank slavishly craves and she exploits it as a lure and reward to encourage him to consider her formulating plans. She starts hinting that she could spend much more time with him if only Charles was out of the picture. Frank is very reluctant to cause harm to Charles who has only ever shown him kindness - but the power of Martha's allure proves too persuasive and he agrees to her scheme. The three of them go on holiday together to the South of France and take a rowboat out across the bay. The two schemers know Charles cannot swim and so upon Martha's signal Frank's "job" is to push Charles so he falls in and has a dreadful "accident". However when the time comes Frank's clumsy nervousness causes the stunt to go wrong and all three of them fall into the water. But the only one who drowns is ... Martha. Back in Munich a grieving Charles throws himself into his work and dedicates himself to the moulding of Frank into his rightful business heir. The recent events have matured Frank and without Martha's overbearing influence he has become more confident in manner. He realises how lucky he is to be in the position to inherit the Dreyer fortune but is now prepared to wait patiently in the wings for natural events to take their course. Charles never knew of the illicit affair with Martha or their secret plan to be rid of him. Frank knows that if that alliance were ever to be discovered things would unravel fast - but he has burnt all their personal love letters and believes that he has successfully covered the tracks ... or has he? (see comments for the "twist" ending).
Comment: Intertwined into the plot is a business venture in which an eccentric inventor called Ritter has developed a lifelike synthetic skin with which he proposes to swathe robotic shop window manikins in Charles' store. Ritter lives in the same apartment block as Frank and has seen his "girlfriend" not realising she is Charles' wife. Charles knows Frank has a secret girlfriend whom he has never met and so tells Ritter to model the manikin's likeness on her as a "surprise" for Frank. And then at very end after it seems Frank has covered all traces of his relationship with Martha which might derail his chances to inherit, we see Ritter bring around his finished manikin for Charles' final approval. It is an exact likeness of Martha and so clearly matters are soon going to become complicated - but there the film ends and we don't see what happens next when Charles finds out just whom Frank's secret "girlfriend" had been.

aka: Kiss of Evil
Writer: John Elder / Director: Don Sharp / Producer: Anthony Hinds
Type: Horror	Running Time: 84 mins
Set in the early 1900s. Young newlyweds Gerald and Marianne Harcourt are on their honeymoon in Europe but they have become lost after taking a wrong turning and find themselves in a small hamlet overlooked by an imposing gothic château on a hillside. Then to add to their difficulties their vehicle runs out of fuel. The village has a hotel although the owners are surprised to see them because no one ever comes anymore - although no one will explain to Gerald why that is. Soon after settling in they receive an unexpected invitation to be the dinner guests of the château's owner, Dr Ravna which they kindly accept. Dr Ravna comes across as a most charming host and offers to send his wagon to the next town for some petrol although he advises it may take several days. His castle is furnished with exquisite art and he explains that he likes to be surrounded by beautiful things. Dr Ravna's son Carl and daughter Sabena appear equally welcoming and they all have a pleasant evening. Ravna tells the Harcourts that he is holding a masked ball the next day and he hopes very much they will attend. After the Harcourts have gone we discover that Ravna and his family have a sinister special interest in Marianne. The hotel has one other guest - a Professor Zimmer. He appears to be often drunk but we know he has a particular purpose and is grieving for his dead daughter and is planning something against the perpetrators of her death. Next day the Harcourts arrive at the masked ball which is a resplendent affair with many dozens of guests. Carl and Sabena Ravna soon split up the newlyweds and entertain them separately with dancing and champagne. Later in the evening Carl dons a copy of Gerald's mask and beckons Marianne upstairs and she follows him thinking it is Gerald. But she is led to a private bedroom and shut inside and finds herself confronted by Dr Ravna - he is revealed as a vampire who mesmerises her into docility and takes his drink of her blood. Meanwhile Gerald is given a drugged drink and put to bed to sleep it off. Then the party is suddenly over - it had all been laid on purely for the Harcourts benefit to ensnare them. The guests don white cultish robes and congregate in an altar room where their leader Dr Ravna introduces them to the latest acolyte Marianne! Next day Gerald awakens with a splitting headache and goes looking for his wife. But he finds the Ravna's now very curt and discourteous towards him - they deny even knowing Marianne and insist he came alone and want him to now leave and never return. He is abruptly ejected. Back at the hotel all Marianne's belongings have gone from their room as if she never existed. Even the hotel owners claim he came alone and appear scared to say otherwise. Gerald asks the local police to help but they say they will not start an investigation against the town's most respected citizen on the word of an outsider like himself who cannot even prove he had a wife. In desperation Gerald turns to Professor Zimmer who knows what has happened because his daughter suffered the same fate. Dr Ravna and his clan suffer from an affliction called vampirism which means they have to drink human blood to survive - but they glory in it and seek to infect others and indoctrinate them into their fiendish cult. Zimmer's daughter died at Ravna's hands and he has planned a suitable revenge which he intends to enact tonight when the planetary alignments are just right by using an ancient incantation he discovered. He says it might not be too late for Marianne but she must be rescued from the châteaux else she too will die tonight alongside the vampires. So Gerald infiltrates the castle and manages to forcibly kidnap Marianne even though she spits in his face and says she wants to stay with Ravna. Once Marianne is safely out Zimmer begins his ritual calling upon arcane dark forces to wipe out the vampire sect. And in response a host of vampire bats swarm into the castle and kill all the occupants. Once Dr Ravna is dead and with the help of a priest to exorcise her, Marianne returns to her normal senses and is once more in love with her husband Gerald. THE END

Writers: Christopher Wicking, Just Jaeckin / Director: Just Jaeckin / Producers: Christopher Pearce, André Djaoui
Type: Drama	Running Time: 100 mins
Set in the mid-1910's starting in 1914. Lady Constance (Connie) is the new young wife of Sir Clifford Chatterley to whom she is devoted. Connie is just getting used to her new life as the wife of a rich and socially active aristocratic landowner when war is declared and Clifford becomes an officer fighting in the trenches in France. He is badly injured and becomes a wheelchair bound invalid. He returns home and Connie takes on the new role of his nursemaid which she is happy to do because she loves him. Clifford's paralysis has made him impotent and being aware of her needs he tells Connie that if she were to feel the urge to take a lover he wouldn't object. He would even embrace as his own any child she might have as a result. As time passes Connie finds she has become fascinated by the youthful vigour of their insolent gamekeeper Oliver Mellors. He is a brooding and powerfully built working class man who lives by himself in the woods in the gamekeeper's cottage. Connie begins to visit the cottage on regular errands building up a rapport with him to break through his natural reticence and suspicion of the upper classes until eventually they begin a passionate affair. Connie discovers that there is a lot more to Mellors than meets the eye and he is a deeply proud man with a forthright view of the world. Mellors becomes obsessed with Connie and she has constant need of the strength and vitality he can provide her with and they fall in love. He is all too aware how far below her he is on the social scale but she tells him she is so grateful to him and cannot bear to be without him. She knows she dare not tell Clifford about it for even though he allowed her a lover he had in mind someone of her own class and certainly would not approve of Mellors as her choice. Connie becomes increasingly bold with her secret rendezvous with Mellors until eventually at his insistence she agrees to spend the night with him at his cottage. Clifford eventually finds out about her secret lover and is so angry that she has chosen a peasant to conjoin with that he sends her away for a holiday to France with her sister. While away Connie discovers she has fallen pregnant and after a time she returns. She finds that Clifford has dismissed Mellors and he has gone to work at the mines to save enough money to emigrate. Connie tells Clifford she is pregnant but he refuses to give his name to the child of an underclass labourer. So Connie seeks out Mellors and persuades him that the two of them could be happy together and buy a farm with her money which he could work with his skills. Mellors is at first unwilling to consider benefiting from her income but eventually seems to be coming around to the idea of their life as a classless partnership and they go off together. Back at home Clifford waits for Connie to return not yet aware that she has left him for good.

aka: The Man From SEX*
Writer: Jeremy Lee Francis / Director: Lindsay Shonteff / Producer: Elizabeth Gray
Type: Action	Running Time: 95 mins
Britain's best secret agent Charles Bind (codenamed No 1) is sent to America to find a high ranking diplomat called Lord Dangerfield who has gone missing. Dangerfield's last known contact was with an English senator called Lucifer Orchid. Orchid is immensely wealthy with a ruthless ambition and a viciously sadistic streak - but not being American he can never become President of the United States so he has devised a plan to bring about the next best thing. To protect him Orchid has hired a mercenary hyper-agent called Jenson Fury (codenamed Ultra 1) who is the equal of Charles Bind. Fury has a demented fascination with guns and likes practicing his sharp-shooting skills using live targets. Bind arrives in America and links up with Lord Dangerfield's daughter Charlotta who is just as keen to find her missing father. Bind goes to see Orchid and establishes that the senator does not know Dangerfield's whereabouts either. During the course of his investigations Bind survives repeated attempts on his life by utilising the various gadgetry at his disposal - but eventually after much skulduggery Orchid manages to capture Dangerfield and his daughter and the action returns to England. In London Dangerfield is released but Charlotta remains prisoner to force her father into cooperating with the next stage of Orchid's plan. (his plan is as follows) The President of the United States is going to be in London and will be meeting with Dangerfield who is chairman of an action committee. To save his daughter's life Orchid wants Dangerfield to have that meeting as planned - but Dangerfield has been unwittingly turned into a bomb which is timed to explode when the meeting starts. When the president is dead the vice-president will be sworn in. But Orchid has secretly captured the vice-president and replaced him with one of his flunkies whose features have been altered to match the VP by a skilled plastic surgeon. The fake-VP will then be sworn in as the President and through him Orchid will become President by proxy. Bind figures out Orchid's plot but his boss won't believe him so Bind goes it alone and deliberately creates a presidential security scare that tightens up the President's security and causes his meetings for the day to be cancelled including the one with Lord Dangerfield (who subsequently explodes "safely" elsewhere at the proscribed time). Bind then sets out to single-handedly save Charlotta and the real vice-president from Orchid's private island in the Atlantic before the mad senator, with his grand plan ruined, disposes of them. Bind kills Orchid using a gadget which turns the senator's own flame throwing lighter against him. Then he has a grand final fight with Jenson Fury whom he at last manages to defeat and he successfully rescues the two prisoners.

Writer: Millard Kaufman / Director: Jack Couffer / Producer: Paul Radin
Type: Drama	Running Time: 86 mins
Following on from the events of the first film "Born Free". Conservationists Joy and George Adamson are still working in Kenya's northern district. They continue to see Elsa the lioness when they are in her roaming area - she brings her three cubs with her but the Adamsons have decided to leave them alone and not pet them and make the mistake of taming them. But when Elsa falls ill of an infection and dies the cubs are left to fend for themselves and Joy is desperately anxious that they are not old enough to be able to survive without their mother to hunt for them. Joy wants to try and train them but their boss John Kendall can only give them six weeks before they must return to work. Joy feels they owe it to Elsa to try. Training proves problematic because it takes ages just to find the timid cubs. The cubs seem to have picked up some instinctive abilities by themselves and they start becoming a nuisance to the locals by killing livestock. The indigenous locals threaten to kill the cubs if they are not dealt with soon and so the Adamsons have to rethink their strategy and try to capture the cubs so they can be relocated to a place where there are no human settlements. George resigns from his job so that they can remain to see this obligation through. They decide they cannot use tranquilliser darts because the cubs are too young. They prepare three cage-traps baited with meat. However before springing the traps all three must be in a separate trap at the same time and be fully inside so the falling gate does not harm them - because if they don't catch all three simultaneously the uncaptured ones will be forever wary of the cages. This proves to be a lengthy process taking many weeks of patience until the exact conditions are met because they only get one attempt per day when the cubs are hungry. Finally, and only when they have reached the point of despair that it will ever work, the cubs are captured and Joy and George are finally able to drive them to the Serengeti reserve 700 miles away where they are released and able to continue living free.
Comment: This film spends its first ten minutes recapping the events of the first film using clips from it as well as recreating some scenes with the new cast. The film is fairly light on plot as they take the whole film (and a good many months of their lives) trying to do just one thing. Overall it is not nearly such a good film as the first one.

Writer: David Zelag Goodman / Director: Michael Anderson / Producer: Saul David
Type: American / Sci-Fi	Running Time: 113 mins
Set in the 23rd century where mankind have long ago taken to living in entirely self-contained, self-sufficient white-domed cities following devastating wars and pollution. The citizens live a carefree life and have no concept of what may lay outside the dome. The city is controlled by a computer that maintains an ecologically balanced environment - but this can only be achieved if people do not live beyond the age of 30. It is therefore an accepted fact-of-life that everyone has a thirty-year life span controlled by a life-clock crystal embedded in their palms and when it blinks red their time is up and they must submit to the Carrousel ritual for their "lastday" ceremony where their bodies are destroyed - the people joyously believe that as their current lives end they are reborn as babies and so complete the cycle of life. There are however a small number of citizens who are unwilling to accept the termination of their lives and prefer to go on the run. A team of special policemen called "Sandmen" are employed to track down and kill these runners. Logan is a Sandman who is dedicated to his job and thinks of runners as being mad misfits who have bizarrely foregone their chance of being gloriously reborn. Logan is given a special mission by the life-clock computer. He is told the surprising news that not all runners are killed and some get away to a place called "Sanctuary". Logan's assignment is to pretend to be a runner himself and find this "Sanctuary" and report back its location so that the 1056 missing people can be accounted for. Logan's crystal is prematurely made to blink to back-up his story of being a runner approaching his "lastday". Logan contacts a woman called Jessica who has been identified as a sympathiser connected to an underground movement that assists runners. Although Logan's status as a Sandman is cause for suspicion he manages to gain her trust and she introduces him to the people who can help and he is directed to a route under the city by which he can make his escape. Jessica is nowhere near her 30th year but she too would like to find Sanctuary and decides to go with him. Logan and Jessica follow the directions which take them through an automated hydro-powerplant under the city and then upwards on an ancient mechanical elevator to an ice cavern. There they encounter an ancient silver servo-robot called Box whose purpose was to store fish protein as food - a now superfluous requirement which was never decommissioned and has therefore continued automatically. Once the fish stocks ran out the robot's adaptive nature caused it to seize upon any form of protein that it encountered - namely the human runners. Box has therefore frozen and stored galleries of humans who have previously passed this way seeking Sanctuary. Logan manages to destroy the robot and he and Jessica continue on with their journey through the caves until they come to the mythical "outside". It becomes apparent that they are probably the first runners to ever make it this far - all previous runners must have fallen victim to Box. "Sanctuary" is just a word for hope that people have clung to but no one has ever reached. Logan and Jessica explore the outside and eventually come to an abandoned outdoor city overgrown with vegetation (it is Washington DC). It seems completely deserted until they find one sole occupant - an old man. Logan and Jessica find it hard to accept that anyone could grow to be so old. Logan and Jessica have strongly bonded during their travels and Logan has come to see that the whole life-cycle of the dome-city citizens is based on a falsehood and that people need not die at thirty when they are still young and vigorous. He realises that no one is ever reborn but just replaced by newborn to maintain a stable population number. Logan is determined to return to the city and tell the people the truth. Jessica does not want him to go because she fears no one will believe him and he will be killed - but Logan is determined to try. They travel back and find another way into the city - and just as Jessica predicted the people are not interested in Logan's words which to the peoples' ears make him sound like a raving madman. Logan is captured by Sandmen and taken to the computer room where he undergoes a mind-probe so the computer can discover what Logan has learned of Sanctuary during his mission. Logan's information that there is no such place as Sanctuary goes against the established facts with which the computer has been programmed. It cannot handle the contradictory data and it starts malfunctioning. Logan escapes and uses a weapon to blow up the computer. This causes the whole city to begin to be rocked by explosions and the citizens flee in panic and escape through the now breached dome walls to the outside. The concept of outdoors is alien to them but the people soon come to accept their new-found freedom and readily adapt to the new way of life.
Comment: Another aspect of the plot is that Logan's Sandman friend Francis gets suspicious of Logan's activities and being unaware of the special mission follows his friend outside trying to track him down and kill him thinking he has become a real runner. Francis tracks Logan to the city but is eventually killed after they have a big fight-off.

Writers: Juan Cobos, Miguel Rubio / Director: Pedro Lazaga / Executive Producers: Manuel Perez, Robert Ausnit
Type: Romantic Drama	Running Time: 91 mins
David Autager is an unmarried architect in his late 30s living in Madrid. While attending a concert recital he spots a remarkably pretty young woman from across the room - Their eyes meet and there is an intense mutual attraction - but she is with her friends and David does nothing about it. The girl is an arts student called Anna and she does not intend to let the matter rest. She finds out more about the man she saw and effects a way to meet him properly. Once they get together it is clear they are made for each other and that it is she who is most determined to make it happen. Her personality is so fresh and lively that he cannot help but be charmed by her playful zest and enthusiasm for living. David receives a commission to build a villa in Majorca and regretfully tells Anna he will be away for a while meeting his new client. When he arrives he discovers that Anna has been a bit mischievous and it is she who is his client. She has persuaded her rich father to let her build her own villa and has drawn rough designs of the way she would like her ideal home to look like. Over the coming days and weeks their romance continues - both of them are blissfully happy in each others company and it is clear they are the perfect couple. They get married and have a happy honeymoon in Venice. They settle down into married life still totally smitten with one another. Before long Anna begins to have periods of unaccountable tiredness. She is able to shake it off at first and act like her normal self. But then she begins to suffer memory lapses that come and go and it soon becomes clear that there is something seriously wrong with her. She lapses into a coma and the specialists tell David that she is suffering from a lipomatosis of the nervous system - a very rare disease for which there is no known cure. The specialist Dr Valls gives Anna less than a week to live. David is utterly devastated about the impending loss of his soul-mate and rails with despair imploring the doctor that there must be something that can be done. Seeing David's overwhelming distress Dr Valls ventures that the only thing that they can possibly do is use cryogenics to freeze Anna's body into a state of suspended animation and then wait and hope that medical science will come up with a cure for her condition some time in the future. David agrees to the measure and Anna's body is placed into frozen suspension in a cryogenics capsule. David carries on his life without Anna as best he can throwing himself into his work but always thinking about her and reliving in his memory the happy months they had together in perfect bliss. He does not enter into any new relationships with women and remains completely faithful to Anna clinging to the hope of a miracle. Forty years go by and it is now the year 2014. David is an old man in his seventies. Fashions and technology have moved on but for him there have been no positive developments - Anna is still in frozen suspension. Then David gets a visit from a specialist called Dr Aurgery with some remarkable news. Scientists have finally discovered a cure for Anna's disease and they are at long last going to treat her. Anna is successfully revived and cured. She is unchanged in age from forty years ago and is still as young and beautiful as ever. The doctor's advise David not to visit her until she is made fully aware of the enormous amount of time that has passed in the world around her. Anna comes to terms with the passing of the years and aches to see David again no matter what he looks like. When she has fully convalesced she is taken to be reunited with David. He is living in the dream villa she designed and which he went on to build. David is the most anxious not sure if Anna will accept his elderly looks. But Anna is oblivious to any change and is still deeply in love with him and overwhelmed that he waited forty years just for her. David's happiness is complete and the long-hoped for miracle has come to pass. Anna is once again full of the vitality and youthful exuberance that she always had. She thinks he is the most wonderful man ever for giving her this second chance at life. They resume their life together and are blissfully happy again for a while until David begins to feel unwell and succumbs to a sudden heart attack and dies. Anna is overcome with grief. They waited so long to be together again and now after too short a time reunited they are parted again forever. Anna has maudlin thoughts of joining him in death but vows that she will not wallow in sorrow but use the second chance he gave her to live her life anew.

Writer/Producer: John Patrick / Director: Daniel Petrie
Type: Drama	Running Time: 84 mins
Eddie is an American drifter who is wandering Europe on his way to nowhere in particular. He has a talent for singing and along the way he takes jobs in bars and restaurants performing for the customers. He is a bit of a hot-head and usually ends up getting the sack and being forced to move on. Currently Eddie is working in an Italian restaurant and gets into a fight with a boisterous customer. The owner fires him but a patron called Gina takes a shine to his looks and his talent and offers him a job with the circus she works at. Gina is in her forties and has a hankering for younger men who can make her feel as if she still young and vital. Part of the arrangement is that Eddie will share her trailer and her bed and in return he will get paid work at the circus helping her in her ventriloquism act as a dashing minstrel that her cheeky manikin "Godiva" takes a liking to for the audience's entertainment. Another circus act is the equestrian Moreno Trio who perform daring horse-riding stunts. The trio consist of husband and wife Ricco and Elenora Moreno and also Tessa who is Elenora's younger sister. Tessa is young and pretty and takes quite a shine to Eddie who likes her in return. However Gina is very possessive and dislikes Eddie being around the younger woman. Ricco too is not keen on Tessa finding romance because he secretly fancies her himself although his desire is not reciprocated by Tessa who is respectful of her sister. Gina's jealousy eventually gets out of hand and she wields a knife which Eddie wrestles from her grasp - but Gina's ex-husband Bozo the clown is nearby and hears the commotion and jumps to the wrong conclusion that Eddie is attacking Gina (whom he still adores). The two men fight and Bozo ends up being stabbed in the stomach and falls down seemingly dead. Eddie knows he cannot stick around because no one will believe it was an accident and he quickly departs town on the next bus to escape whatever justice might be forthcoming. He is surprised to find Tessa on the same bus - she too is running away so that her presence will not ruin her sister's marriage. The bus is heading for Innsbruck over a snowy mountain road. When they come to a police checkpoint Eddie assumes it is for him and gets off the bus and starts making his way on foot across country - Tessa decides to go with him. They walk for ages and eventually find an isolated log cabin in a snowy mountain pass. The cabin shows signs of recent habitation but seems to have been mysteriously abandoned so they make themselves comfortable for the night. However what they do not know is that the real reason for the roadblock was to turn vehicles back because of the danger of an avalanche which this area is prone to at this time of the year. The next morning the army are due to be firing cannons into the mountains to force the accumulated snow to dislodge before it builds to dangerous levels and so the area has been evacuated as a precaution. Eddie and Tessa spend a blissful night together falling in love and next morning set out early unaware of the army's plans. When the cannon's are fired they are almost caught by the tide of avalanching snow but just manage to find cover. Tessa decides to return to the circus after Elenora and Ricco persuade her that there is no need for her to run away. Eddie also decides he must return and face whatever punishment is in store for him for Bozo's death. Upon his return he finds he had been running for nothing because Bozo is not dead after all and is on the road to recovery from the knife wound. Eddie is ever so happy and rejoins the circus act and he and Tessa soon decide to get married.

Writer: Andrew Meredith / Director: John Krish / Producer: Judd Bernard
Type: Drama	Running Time: 86 mins
Peter Reaney works for a management agency whose top act is pop megastar Barry Black who has his own TV show and a legion of young girl fans. Barry is a demanding client, but his importance to the agency is so high that every little whim he has is catered for - including arranging for any groupies that take his fancy to be smuggled discreetly into his hotel rooms. Peter's job keeps him away from home a lot when Barry is on tour and his wife Angela is fed up with it all and wants a divorce. So Peter leaves home and goes to live temporarily with his best friend Val Pringle (a man) who also works for the same agency. Val's wife Jody and Peter have been secretly having an affair behind Val's back - although Val has been carrying on with another woman himself. When a 17-year-old groupie called Mary Gray gets pregnant by Barry Black the agency boss Alfred Felix arranges for her to get a back-street abortion in order to keep any hint of scandal out of the newspapers. But Peter is outraged when Felix insists on saving money by going for the cheapest abortionist they can find and he offers his resignation - giving four weeks notice. When Val is killed in an accident Peter reassess his life and with his separation from Angela - he and Val's now-widow Jody look set to become more of an official couple - although she wants him full time and Peter's agency work is so demanding on his time. But when Felix offers him a partnership in the firm, Peter decides to give the agency another chance. However one of his first tasks is to smooth over the complications which resulted from Mary Gray's abortion. She died as a result of haemorrhaging caused by a drug-induced miscarriage carried out by the cheap doctor. Peter attends the inquest and is so appalled by the tragedy that he confronts Barry Black on the steps of a gig in front of a legion of screaming young fans telling him about the consequences of his actions. Above the noise Barry shouts back that he couldn't care less about the little scrubber and there are plenty more where she came from. The crowd hear this and fall deathly silent at his show of utter contempt for them and he falters knowing his outburst has left his career in tatters. Peter walks away quitting his job and going to take up a life with Jody.
Comment: The title of the film seems somewhat overblown for what is a fairly routine sort of film - no one has any special powers or displays any unusually high level of charisma that no women can possibly resist. Mind you it's not completely clear if the "man" referred to in the title is Barry Black or Peter Reaney - the pop star's "power" might be his star quality that lets him pick and choose from girls only too willing to sleep with him - but Barry is a peripheral character compared to Peter who has a string of affairs to his name because he has a certain special something that women fall for - but nothing that could really be classed as an especially significant "power".

Writers: Adriano Aprà, Fiorella Infascelli / Director: Fiorella Infascelli / Producers: Lilia Smecchia, Ettore Rosboch
Type: European / Period Drama	Running Time: 86 mins
Set in Italy in a previous century (1800s?). Leonardo is a rich Italian nobleman in his early 30s who finds ordinary life very dull and can only enliven his existence through pleasure seeking, drinking and gambling. He is a successful gambler and many of his neighbours are in debt to him, but despite the urging of his bookkeeper Viola he can never be bothered to collect. His latest winnings include the services of a troupe of travelling players that a local duke had hired for his son's birthday and put up as collateral in a losing bet. Leonardo lets the performance go ahead on his grounds since they have already encamped but finds the act dreary. That is until the leading lady comes on - she is called Iris and is 17-years-old. Leonardo finds her beauty remarkable and after she has finished he attempts to woo her expecting her to be easily overawed by the attentions of a man of his nobility. But instead she is wilful and speaks her mind telling him that she finds him an arrogant oaf who lacks even the good grace to have invited the boy whose birthday their show had been originally intended. Next day the travellers depart. Leonardo is reeling at her rebuff but cannot shake the feeling of attraction he felt towards her - however he knows that he has firmly squandered any chance of penetrating her negative judgement of his character. Leonardo decides his only hope is to resort to artifice and present himself in a different guise. He visits a master craftsman called Elia whose trade is the making of disguises for masked balls. Leonardo purchases some of Elia's unique creations and then begins his pursuit of the fair Iris. He follows the trail of the travelling players' wagon and at their camp makes contact with Iris in the woods wearing the mask of a woodland elf. He represents himself as a mysterious and enigmatic denizen of the forest who speaks in serenely elegant tones. Iris is fascinated by the charismatic stranger who does not give his name and whose face she cannot see. Over the next few weeks he adopts various guises and although she knows it is always the same intriguing man she has no inkling it is Leonardo. She falls in love with him despite never having seen his face and eventually they consummate their love in a gazebo by a lake. Then in the morning he has gone. Iris does not understand why he has abandoned her so unexpectedly. Leonardo has returned home disgusted at himself for taking advantage of the girl and blames the masks for corrupting him. He descends into a pit of despair and remains in bed wallowing in his shame. He eventually sees himself for what he has become and decides to reform and live up to his responsibilities as a nobleman and stop neglecting the upkeep of his estate. He writes a letter to Iris confessing to being the masked man and explaining why he did it. He says he loves her but knows that she finds him repulsive. After reading the letter Iris realises her initial judgement had been hasty and a soulful man lay beneath that brash exterior. She returns to his estate and forgives him for everything and as the film ends they kiss passionately.

Writers: Donald S. Sanford, Joyce Perry / Director: Boris Sagal / Producer: Lewis J. Rachmil
Type: War Drama	Running Time: 86 mins
During World War II, RAF Mosquito Bomber Squadron 641 is on a mission to destroy German V1 rocket launching platforms to combat the growing threat of the "flying bombs" that are terrorising London. The squadron leader of the four-plane mission is David Scott and one of his wingmen is his best friend Quint Munroe. The squadron is attacked by Messerschmitts and Scott's plane goes down. Quint sees his friend's plane explode shortly after crashing and knows that Scott could not have possibly survived. This is a crushing blow for Quint because David "Scotty" Scott had been like a brother to him. Quint had been an orphan and was virtually raised by the Scott family. It falls upon Quint to tell Scotty's wife Beth the tragic news - she is devastated by her loss. Quint is promoted to Squadron Leader just as a vital new operation is being planned. Intelligence information has revealed that the Germans are working on the development of a next generation of V rockets at an underground research lab beneath a French castle called Châteaux Charlon. Reconnaissance photos show access to the research laboratories is via a tunnel mouth that would be hard to bomb conventionally. Therefore they plan to use the bouncing bomb principal developed by the wartime inventor Barnes Wallis and bounce bombs across a field and directly into the mouth and down the tunnel to explode inside. Once that is accomplished the whole châteaux must be obliterated with a follow-up carpet-bombing raid using conventional bombs. Quint's squadron go through extensive practice to try and establish the ideal distance and altitude at which to launch the special bombs - but there are too many random elements involved to increase the success rate much beyond about 1 in 10. In off-duty hours Beth seeks the emotional support of Quint and they spend days out together and eventually this leads to a romantic affair. The Germans make a strategic move to defend the castle by turning it into a Prisoner of War camp for captured RAF men and they send the British a film to show the prisoners arriving hoping it will lower morale of the pilots if they know that any attack they make on the installation would be killing their own buddies. When the film is shown Quint is shocked to see that Scotty is amongst the prisoners. Quint decides it would be kinder not to tell Beth that Scotty is still alive. High Command order the bombing raid must go ahead despite the barbaric German tactics although the pilots are justifiably uneasy. Quint proposes an adjunct to the mission that they could use one of the bouncing bombs (called High-Balls) to destroy the castle wall and give the men inside a fighting chance to get out before the carpet-bombing. Quint's plan is approved and the POW's are informed via a French underground network to be ready to make a break for it on Sunday morning. High Command's only proviso to Quint is that the tunnel mouth is the priority and a bomb may only be used for the castle wall if there are High-Ball bombs left over after the tunnel has been successfully destroyed first - each plane in the squadron can carry two of the High Ball bombs and only four Mosquito's that can carry them. The follow-up carpet-bombing squadrons will go ahead regardless of the success of the "bonus" castle break-out mission. The raid goes ahead - one Mosquito is destroyed by German air defences, several High-Balls miss their target and the success of the mission finally hinges upon two Mosquitoes with one remaining bomb each and two targets. Quint's wingman makes his run with the penultimate bomb which MUST hit target if the final High-Ball is to be used for the castle. But he is hit by anti-aircraft fire and unable to deploy so in a final effort of bravery he flies his dying plane into the mouth of the tunnel in a suicide run and ensures the success of the first stage of the mission. Quint is then free to use the final bomb to blow up the castle wall as planned and the prisoners fight their way out into the surrounding countryside. Quint's Mosquito is hit and his plane makes an emergency crash landing - he survives and joins the men on the ground. Quint finds Scotty who has lost his memory in his crash and does not remember who he is or about Beth. The escapees become pinned down by a German tank which must be taken out if they are to get away. The French resistance are helping the airmen and have a bazooka and Scotty volunteers to head the tank off and fire it. This exposes him and he has to fire at point blank range which kills him as well as destroying the tank - just as he dies he remembers Beth. With this obstacle removed the airmen manage to get away and through underground French Resistance networks find their way back to England. When Quint arrives back at base Beth is waiting for him but he decides it would be unfair to tell her that her husband had been alive after all but has died "again" in an act of selfless bravery.

Writer/Producer: Tim Purcell / Director: Morris Barry
Type: Thriller	Running Time: 78 mins
Two young married couples go away for a camping holiday together in the countryside. Their names are Roger & Val, and Edwin & Philipa. The two couples are friends who have known each other for seven years and spend most weekends round at each others houses but have never been on holiday together. Roger organised this trip as a way of varying things and getting them away from their normal comfort zones to break the monotony. However the trip is proving to be a disaster - the second-hand camper van Roger bought is on its last legs and breaks down leaving them stranded way off the beaten track in the middle of nowhere. They are tired and irritable and constantly arguing and laying blame for their misfortune. They decide to stop where they are and set up their tents. The bad tempers and recriminations don't stop though and Roger seems to be going out of his way to stir things with his juvenile antics. He goads them into revealing home truths, secrets and revelations about their lives in a series of confrontations. Roger considers that Val has been holding him back from making something of himself and her lazy neurotic dependency on him has prevented him from pursuing career opportunities. Val accuses him of being a laddish womaniser and it emerges that he has had a fling with Philipa in the past which causes friction between the two women. Edwin is in the police force and is secretly gay but didn't want anyone to find out hence his marriage of convenience to Philipa. With everyone riled up to boiling point and their marriages no longer seeming tenable Roger proposes a challenge game and as the stakes are raised the "rules" end up being that they must murder each other to win because that is the ultimate solution to divorce. Roger is playing the game his way even if the others are less keen and Edwin finds he has to fight for his survival by being equally brutal in return as they stalk each other in the surrounding forested terrain. As things escalate the camper van and tents get destroyed amid the genuine attempts to kill one another. Finally things come to a climax along a clifftop. Philipa falls over the edge and is holding on for dear life and Val has to make a decision - does she allow her former best friend to fall to her death for having an affair with Roger or does she help her up. She eventually pulls her to safety but then walks away making it plain that she wants nothing further to do with her. Meanwhile Roger and Edwin are beating the living daylights out of each other and finally both collapse in exhaustion unable to continue and then suddenly they see the funny side of it all and start laughing their heads off as if they have finally purged the anger from their systems. No one dies but nothing will be the same for any of them again after this holiday.

Writers: William Marchant, Jenni Hall / Director: John Newland / Producer: Wilbur Stark
Type: Drama	Running Time: 95 mins
Francesca Anderson is well-off married woman in her early 40s who lives in a mansion with her somewhat older husband Robert and their 19-year-old son James who is on the verge of going to university. James and Francesca are unusually close and they sometimes behave more like a flirting couple than mother and son. Now that James is almost a man Robert is beginning to think that their affectionate behaviour is becoming inappropriate and James himself is starting to feel he needs a girlfriend. James meets a girl called Julie and they start going out. This causes Francesca to become jealous, feeling she is losing the special bond she has with her son. When she was much younger Francesca had an affair with a man called Macer who died in an accident and in her mind James has become a substitute for her lost lover. She cannot bear the thought of losing him again. Francesca starts drinking heavily and causing Robert embarrassment - they have a bitter argument and in her ire she whispers to him a secret that makes him lose all reason and physically attack her. James has to step in to protect her and drive her away. But Robert is so incensed that he chases them and on a country road cuts them off. A fierce fight ensues between father and son in which an enraged Robert starts swinging a golf club. James grabs the club and hits Robert who falls to the ground. James sits in the car to recover while Francesca checks on Robert and soon comes to tell James that he is dead. James is arrested for murder but fortunately his story of self-defence in protecting his mother is believed and he is found not guilty. Back home Francesca is delighted to have James all to herself once more and hopes things will return to the way they had always been between them. James however is still reeling from the knowledge that he killed his own father. But Francesca tells him he shouldn’t feel guilty for two reasons:- firstly Robert didn't die when James hit him - it was actually she who finished him off when she went to check on him; and secondly Robert wasn't even really James' father. Macer was actually his father (and this was the whispered secret that sent Robert into a rage). Instead of reassuring James as she'd hoped, these revelations appal him and despite her begging him to stay he immediately leaves home and heads off to be with his girlfriend Julie, leaving Francesca in a hysterical state of sorrow.

Writers: John Prebble, Daniel Ullman / Director: Cy Endfield / Producer: Charles H. Schneer
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 96 mins
Starting in America in 1865 during a battle between Union and Confederate forces. Union Captain Cyrus Harding is a Confederate Prisoner of War and during a ferocious siege of the town where the prison is located he and three of his men see as a means of escape a hot-air observation balloon. They manage to escape taking a Confederate soldier prisoner with them to help fly it. The balloon is then buffeted by one of the worst storms ever seen and is blown thousands of miles out to sea. After many days in the air over the Pacific Ocean the drifters finally spot a small tropical island. They hastily contrive an emergency landing procedure but the balloon's valve controls are broken in the process with no hope of using it again for another journey. The five stranded men agree to forget their political differences and work together to survive under the leadership of Captain Harding. They explore the island which is formed around an active volcano and find that it is occasionally used by pirates. Also they discover that the island is populated by monstrous insects, crustaceans and animals many times their normal size. After a few days two English women are washed ashore, the only survivors of a shipwreck, and they join the group. They find a cave to make their base and start thinking about boat building as a way of getting back to civilisation. Then they have a bizarre stroke of fortune when a chest is washed ashore containing just the sort of nautical aids and tools that they will sorely need to accomplish their task. The chest comes from the Nautilus which the men know of from news stories of eight years ago. It was a submersible ship that was believed lost off the coast of Mexico and belonged to a certain Captain Nemo who was notoriously anti-war and used his remarkable vessel to destroy warships. A pirate ship arrives and the pirates start firing on them with cannons from their ship pinning the castaways down with no hope of self-defence or retaliation. Suddenly there is an unexpected explosion and the pirate vessel sinks. The castaways discover that their mysterious benefactor is none other than Captain Nemo himself. He too is stranded on this island with the Nautilus which is in a lagoon cavern but is no longer seaworthy. Nemo has been using his time alone here to conduct genetic experiments to increase the size of animals with the aim of solving the world's food problems. He has been keeping an eye on the castaways helping them out when he could because he needs their help in getting off the island so he can share his discoveries with the world. Nemo has a plan to refloat the pirate vessel using the Nautilus' pumps - but time is short because the island's volcano is due to erupt soon and destroy the island. With time running short the castaways have to work hard to implement Nemo's plan and just manage to refloat the pirate vessel as the volcano erupts and the island begins to self-destruct. Unfortunately Nemo has to remain on the Nautilus to operate the pumping equipment and becomes trapped as the island is finally obliterated. The rest of the castaways use the pirate vessel and find their way back to civilisation and dedicate themselves to bringing about a more enlightened and peaceful world as Captain Nemo would have wanted.

Director/Producer: George Harrison Marks
Type: Naturist	Running Time: 59 mins
The story of five working girls who go on holiday:- secretary Petrina, shoe-shop assistant Jackie, and dancer Pamela are three chums who decide to go on a weekend away together touring South West England in their car. Meanwhile another two friends Angela and Bridget, who both work in a petrol station, also decide to take a break and go hiking down to the Cornish coast to a place they know where they can partake in their favourite pastime of naturism. The two groups of girls variously take in visits to Stonehenge; the picturesque fishing village of Clovelly; the ruins of King Arthur's castle at Tintagel; and the Minak outdoor theatre at Porthcurno. Eventually the three girls arrive at Lands End and see "The First and Last House in England". They go down to a deserted beach cove and change into their bikinis for some fun and games. Pam strays onto the neighbouring beach not realising it is part of private club owned by the Trewyn Sun Club. There she meets naturists Angela and Bridget who have the beach to themselves. Pamela calls her two pals to join them and soon the five girls become friends and Pamela, Petrina and Jackie have all shed their costumes to experience for themselves the uninhibited delights of naturism. They play on the beach for a while and then Angela and Bridget invite the other three back to the sun club itself to have a look round the facilities and meet other members. The three girls enjoy themselves immensely with the new found freedom of being naked and the film ends with them still spending a pleasant relaxing day in the sunny outdoors - as nature intended.
Comment: The film is an hour long although the first 40 minutes is a kind of travelogue of the South West of England as the girls make their way to the coast - and the nudism element of the film does not begin until the final third of the film. However the journey is not uninteresting - it is well filmed (and in colour) and the narrator delivers some suitably corny dialogue that is reasonably entertaining. There is a soundtrack with some speech heard from the girls but the story is mostly told via the narrator's words.

Writer: James Goldman / Director: Franklin J. Schaffner / Producer: Sam Spiegel
Type: Historical Drama	Running Time: 177 mins
Historical drama telling the story of the changing fortunes of the Tsar of Russia Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra. This summary only provides a brief overview of some of the key events seen in the film. It begins at the start of the 20th century with the joyous event of the birth of their first son Alexi. Nicholas and Alexandra already had four daughters but now with their first son they have assured the continuation of the Romanov dynasty which has ruled Russia for 300 years. However it soon becomes clear that Alexi is unwell and is afflicted by haemophilia meaning his blood is slow to clot and any bleeds he has could by fatal - even everyday grazes. He is therefore treated with extra care to shield him from harm and is a constant concern for the parents. Alexandra seeks the counsel of a peasant monk called Rasputin who is said to have special healing powers and an innate insight into the course of future events. She believes that Alexis will be safe as long as the monk is close to hand and she therefore overlooks the excesses of Rasputin's hedonistically corrupt lifestyle. Nicholas is a well-intentioned man who is benevolent by nature but enters Russia into a disastrous war with Japan in 1904 which leads to a crushing defeat. A growing mood of revolutionary discontent gives rise to a radical Bolshevik movement whose principal players are Stalin and Trotsky. The story moves on a decade and political unrest is rife across Europe. In 1914 war breaks out and Russia sides with England and France against Germany. Patriotism briefly overrides internal unrest, but as the war continues Nicholas makes what the people and agitators consider to be unwise decisions which result in crushing military defeats. The Bolshevik movement gains momentum and Nicholas becomes a hated figure. A politician called Lenin comes to prominence. Tsar Nicholas is eventually forced into a position where he has no choice but to abdicate and place the country in the hands of the Duma (parliament). The new leaders are indecisive about what to do with the Romanov family who are placed into custody and moved from place to place for a year. Some say they should be allowed to live abroad in exile and others demand they must be executed for the misery they brought upon the Russian people and for all the millions of brave soldiers who died in the still ongoing war. Eventually orders come through that Nicholas, Alexandra and all five of their children must be executed and this is carried out without fanfare or ceremony or any prior warning to the family by their guards in July 1918 just as the Romanov's were allowed to start becoming optimistic for their future.

aka: Burn, Witch, Burn
Writers: Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont / Director: Sidney Hayers / Producer: Albert Fennell
Type: Horror	Running Time: 87 mins
Modern day setting (1962). Norman Taylor is a tutor at the Hempnell Medical College where he lectures in psychology and imparts to his students his sceptical views on superstition and supernatural folklore which he believes have no place in a modern society. Norman and his wife Tansy are relative newcomers to the area and Norman is delighted at how well they have been accepted by the faculty. He does not detect the undercurrent of resentment which some of the other staff, and in particular Professor Flora Carr, have towards him due to his prospects of leapfrogging the more established staff for a forthcoming senior post. Tansy however has been long aware of an atmosphere of carefully disguised hatred and jealousy towards her husband and has resorted to using superstitious talismans secreted around their house to ward off evil forces. She firmly believes in their power to deflect any bad spells cast their way. When Norman discovers what she is doing he becomes angry at her for believing in such ancient nonsense and collects all her hidden charms and burns them. Tansy descends into panic saying she can no longer protect him from those that wish to destroy him. Soon afterwards things start to go wrong for Norman. A female student accuses him of raping her and his cosy world begins to fall apart. Tansy feels sure that there is an assault upon them by a powerful opponent free to act now that they are unprotected. She decides the only way to save her husband is to draw the curse he is under onto herself using a ritual she read about and then take her own life. But Norman realises what she is planning and manages to prevent her although she then falls into a trance and tries to kill him as if possessed. He notices she is walking with a limp and the only person he knows with such an impairment is his faculty colleague Flora Carr. Could Tansy have been right about her supernatural concerns - and is Flora their nemesis? That night Norman breaks into Flora's study at the college and finds objects of occult efficacy. Flora arrives and when confronted she does not deny it but instead challenges him to confront his scepticism about whether witchcraft is hokum. To demonstrate she builds a tower of tarot cards as a representation of Norman's house which she then sets alight and asks if he can be absolutely certain that his house is not now on fire with his wife asleep inside. Norman realises he cannot be sure and rushes out to get home and save Tansy. However as soon he is out on the college grounds Flora switches on the public address system and broadcasts a subsonic whine and he is attacked by the giant stone eagle that overlooks the entrance - made real by Flora's spells. Norman cannot deny the reality of the attacks and has to flee for his life. The attacks stop only when Flora's husband, oblivious to her secret machinations, arrives to escort her home and she has to switch off the noise. All the destruction the eagle caused has vanished and Norman realises it was all somehow in his mind as if he had been hypnotised. He rushes home and finds his house ablaze just as Flora had foretold but is relieved to find Tansy is safe having been rescued by the fire brigade. And back at the college as Flora and her husband leave she is fairly satisfied that Norman won't cause any more problems and she has cleared the way for her husband to take the top job. But as they exit the college building the giant stone eagle suddenly topples from its high mount and falls upon Flora crushing her to death.
Comment: We don't find out the identity of the "villain" of the piece until Norman does. At the end it is not entirely clear what causes the stone eagle to fall but perhaps it was weakened by the subsonic vibrations from the public address system that Flora used to "hypnotise" Norman.

Writers: Joseph Kessel, Paul Dehn / Director: Anatole Litvak / Producer: Sam Spiegel
Type: War Drama	Running Time: 138 mins
Set during the Second World War and starting in 1942 in Warsaw, Poland under German occupation. In an apartment building a young Polish prostitute is murdered. Local police investigate and they call in German Intelligence officer Major Grau because the woman was also a German agent. A witness comes forward who had heard the woman's screams and hid in fear - but from his hiding place had seen that the murderer had been wearing the uniform of a German general. Major Grau has high respect for the principals of the law and is determined to catch the murderer no matter what his rank and high privilege. He establishes that there were three generals in Warsaw on the night in question who had no solid alibis:- Generals Tanz, Kahlenberg and Seidlitz-Gabler. All three generals prove reluctant to be interviewed and consider the murder of a prostitute to be of little consequence to them as they seek to quell civilian unrest in the city. Tanz is considered a great military leader who uses the might of the German army like a bulldozer to flatten whole towns to weed out and arrest dissenting factions. Kahlenberg and Seidlitz-Gabler are engaged in some secret plot together and distrust Tanz immensely. As Major Grau's investigative persistence grows he suddenly finds himself promoted to Lt Colonel and posted to Paris upon the recommendation of General Kahlenberg. Grau is in no position to refuse and so there his investigation stalls. Time and location move on to Paris in July 1944. Generals Kahlenberg and Seidlitz-Gabler are now posted to Paris and Tanz has just arrived after fighting a successful campaign on the Russian front. Lt Colonel Grau has good connections with Inspector Morand of the French police and with all three generals back together again he decides to discretely reopen his former waylaid investigation. The conspiracy that Kahlenberg and Seidlitz-Gabler are involved in is a plot to kill Adolf Hitler. They believe the war is lost but Hitler is too fanatically obsessed to be realistic and surrender and so the generals want to seize power and salvage some dignity for their nation before it is completely destroyed by the Allies. The culmination of their plot is imminent with a bomb ready to blow up the Fuehrer at a briefing in his bunker in the next day or so. Tanz is their big problem because he is fiercely loyal to the Nazi cause and must not be allowed to suspect anything. So as senior generals the conspirators order Tanz to take an enforced rest from duties and assign a lance corporal called Kurt Hartmann to accompany him around Paris and show him the sights. During his off-duty break Tanz at times appears on the brink of madness and has a fearsomely unpredictable nature. Tanz uses his privilege to gain access to restricted decadent art which he views with a cold sweat. On the second night he instructs Hartmann to arrange a prostitute for him. Tanz then brutally kills the woman but in a chilling display of calculated cunning he makes sure that Hartmann will be implicated - Hartmann is trapped because no one will believe his word against that of a general and he goes on the run. Grau immediately notices similarities between the current murder and the one in Warsaw and does not believe the evidence that points to Hartmann being the culprit. He restarts his investigation into the generals and comes to the conclusion that Tanz is the guilty man and goes off to arrest him in his office. He confronts Tanz alone with the murder charge just as news comes through on the radio that a plot to kill Hitler with a bomb has failed and Tanz reacts by shooting Grau dead to avoid arrest and then claiming that Grau was a part of the traitorous conspiracy to kill the Fuhrer. His word is not questioned and the murders of the prostitutes go unsolved. It is now the present day (1967) in Hamburg, Germany. A prostitute has been murdered and Inspector Morand, now working for Interpol, realises it is uncannily like the one he investigated in Paris in 1944 and the one his late friend Grau investigated in Warsaw in 1942. All three ex-generals are in Hamburg. The two ex-conspirators ended their war and became normal citizens but Tanz was arrested as a war criminal and has just finished serving a 20-year sentence. He is due to attend a reunion of his ex-troops as guest of honour. Morand follows up his leads and tracks down Hartmann who went on the run in 1944 and has been living under a new name ever since. He finds out from Hartmann what really went on in 1944 and the man agrees to testify. Tanz is confronted with the evidence against him and realises the game is finally up. He asks for a gun and goes off and shoots himself dead.

Writer: Robert Dillon / Director/Producer: William Castle
Type: Comedy Horror	Running Time: 82 mins
London-based American car salesman Tom Penderel has for the last month been sharing a flat with a man called Caspar Femm after responding to an advert. The arrangement is rather odd in that Tom is allowed to have the flat at night and Caspar uses it only during the day. Tom finds out that every night Caspar goes back to his ancestral home of Femm Hall in Dartmoor even though he is in fear of his life when he is there. Caspar buys a car from Tom and asks him to drive it down to Femm Hall for him to deliver it and he can at the same time meet his errant family including his cousin Cecily who is the only nice one of the lot. Tom arrives at Femm Hall one stormy evening and finds it is a large and gloomy gothic mansion. His first grisly discovery is that Caspar has just died of a fall down the stairs. He then meets the sweet and lovely Cecily who warns Tom to leave for his own safety - but the weather has closed in and made the roads unsafe so Tom has to stay the night. The Femm family are an odd bunch:- these include the gregarious head of the family Roderick and his nervous wife Agatha who knits to calm her nerves; Potiphar, who has built a great ark in the garden ready for the great biblical-scale floods he predicts will come; and the overbearingly seductive Morganna, whose father Morgan is insanely protective if she talks to any man. The odd thing is that none of the family really seem to want to live in the old house but are obliged to by the terms of an ancient will. Roderick's great great great grandfather was a pirate captain and left a fortune but stipulated that the money would only be inherited by the last remaining Femm who adhered to his rule that every Femm who wishes to inherit must live in this house and be home by at least midnight every day for a family gathering or they automatically forfeit their claim. The family fear that one of their number has become a murderer to speed up the progress of the inheritance by eliminating all their rival beneficiaries - but which is it? Tom doesn't know since none of them seem normal except for Cecily who says she only stays because she was born and grew up here and it is the only home she has known - but she is greatly concerned how the house seems to wickedly twist people as if it is itself alive with evil. There follows a series of murders after each of which a deep male voice booms out a mocking warning from a tape recording machine. The survivors wonder who will be next - even Tom is not safe because Roderick thinks he might be a distant Femm relative as he resembles a portrait of the pirate captain. As the murders mount up killing even the most likely suspect Roderick himself, Tom realises that the tape that is being played is artificially slowed down and when he replays it at the correct speed he finds it is the voice of Cecily. She reveals herself as the murdereress who wants the money for herself and she has planted bombs all round the house to kill all those remaining and destroy the house. Tom rushes round trying to find and disable the bombs and just in time he finds the final one and lobs it randomly into the woods where it happens to land just beside Cecily who is waiting with eager anticipation to watch the house explode - she is the only one who dies. Tom is the hero of the surviving Femms and much to Tom's dismay even Morgan decides that the seductively unquenchable Morganna can have him after all.
Comment: Although the plot description might not seem to have much comedy content it is played in a light comedic way by lead actor Tom Poston as he muddles his way through the situation.

Writers: Tudor Gates, Anthony Simmons / Director: Anthony Simmons / Producers: Adrian Gaye, Victor Lyndon
Type: Drama	Running Time: 106 mins
Sam Hall is an ageing ex-music hall entertainer who is down on his luck and lives by himself in a run-down riverside slum area called "Nine Elms". He busks for a living and his only companion is a scruffy but lovable shaggy dog called Bella who is old and becoming poorly. A couple of cheeky local sibling kids called Liz and Mark taunt him with names and disrespectful rhymes but he tries to ignore them. Liz is 11 or 12ish and Mark is 6-years-old. They come from a poor working class family living in a small dilapidated home. Their mother is always busy with their baby sister and their father is always working overtime at his factory and they rarely see him. They aspire to leave their cramped rundown home and move into a council property but they are on a waiting list and have no idea when they will be re-housed. They are lonely and bored and that is why they follow the odd busker man around and poke fun at him - because they find him curious and unusual. But after a while as they see him perform for the crowds using his once sought-after talents they begin to feel some sympathy and they tag along and help him with his act. After a while they become unlikely companions and Sam regales them with his personal philosophy of the values of a bygone era. The kids become keen to see what is on the other richer side of the River Thames and Sam takes them on a bus ride to see the sites of London and later shows them a special dog cemetery at Hyde Park. The children want a dog of their own and Sam takes them to Battersea dogs home to choose one - but they need to raise a £3.50 fee which is beyond them. So they start doing odd jobs to try and raise the money and Sam eventually lends them the rest. They get their new dog whom they call "Battersea" but their mother and father are appalled at having a new mouth to feed and say she must go back - what's more the council have at last approved their re-housing and no pets are allowed at the new place. The children run away and ask Sam if they can live with him. But his dog Bella has just died and Sam is very upset and gets drunk. The children decide to take the dog's body and give it an impromptu burial in the Hyde Park cemetery. Their parents are worried sick when the children don't come home and call in the police to look for them. Sam's recent association with the children is discovered and he guesses they may have gone to Hyde Park. It is pitch dark and the children cannot be found because they are hiding. But next morning they are discovered safe and well and the family are reunited and they give Sam their new dog Battersea to replace Bella as they head off to live in their new home.

Writer: Leo Marks / Director/Producer: Michael Powell
Type: Thriller	Running Time: 97 mins
Mark Lewis is a shy young man who lives alone in the upstairs flat of a large property that he owns with the downstairs rooms occupied by tenants. His passion is photography and he not only works in a film studio but his spare time is fully occupied with trying to put together the ultimate documentary film on the nature of fear. He is so obsessed with this endeavour that he has become a killer who films his victims as he is murdering them in order to capture their expression of terror on celluloid. He then surreptitiously films the police at work investigating the murders. Mark's obsession is borne of the way his father raised him as a child. Professor Lewis had been a biologist who had treated Mark's entire childhood as an experiment subjecting him to scares and unpleasant stimuli in order to film and document his reactions. As a result of this abnormal upbringing Mark became very repressed. He never managed to have proper relationships and finds talking to women very awkward. One of his tenants is a bubbly young woman called Helen Stephens who lives with her blind mother and has just turned twenty-one. She becomes fascinated with her shy inarticulate neighbour and starts to spend time with him. She is a budding author and thinks he may be able to help her with some photographs she needs to illustrate her book. Meanwhile at the film studio, Mark murders again trying to capture the sheer look of terror in his unsuspecting victim's face when she realises she is unexpectedly about to die. Next day her body is found and the police start to investigate the studio cast and crew. Mark begins to realise that the game may soon be up and he must be prepared to quickly complete his documentary. Abandoning all caution he murders again, killing a model and the police finally realise all the clues point to him and rush round to his house. Meanwhile Helen has discovered Mark's secret. He is in love with her and cannot kill her but instead explains his methods. His camera tripod leg hides a sharp blade which he uses to kill his victims and to maximise the fear-factor he attaches a mirror to the front of the camera so the victim is forced to watch themselves as they die thereby confronting their greatest fear head on - and it is this ultimate look that Mark films to use in his documentary. Mark sees the police gathering outside and sets in motion his final pre-prepared scene in which he will kill himself by the same method impaling his throat on the tripod blade as he looks in the mirror while his camera films his dying moments for the ultimate final scene in his life's work. Helen looks in horror as he completes this gory denouement and when the police break into his room he is dead.

Writer: Eric Lieter / Director/Producer: Kenneth F Rowles
Type: Sex	Running Time: 38 mins
Mandy is a sixth-former aged about 17 or 18 who attends the St James's School for Girls. She hates school but has to stay on until the end of term because her parents are abroad and she has no job. The main reason she dislikes school so much is because of the crazed headmaster who picks on her because she's pretty and finds any excuse to cane her in his study. The headmaster is more than willing to exploit his position and takes bribes to allow a photographer to secretly film the older girls showering after games. When Mandy hears of an acting job going she bunks off school and heads along to the audition. It is to be a film about disco dancing and her innocent look is just what the director is after. She gets the part much to the annoyance of another girl who had thought she would get it. That "evil" girl phones the headmaster and tells him of Mandy's insubordinate behaviour in leaving school without permission. The headmaster is delighted that Mandy has at last done something really naughty and he can punish her properly and knock some correctional sense into her. The headmaster and the evil girl work together to lure Mandy to an abandoned building and take her prisoner. They tie her naked to a bed where the headmaster lasciviously slavers over the prospect of having her helplessly in his power at last where he can teach her a lesson she won't forget. Meanwhile Mandy's friends, Gloria and Natasha, realise she is in trouble and rush to the rescue with one of the film producer's assistants. They rescue Mandy and she goes on to make the disco related film called A Star is Born part of which involves her doing a striptease dance to a disco track. After the premiere of the film the still-smarting "evil" girl and a hired thug kidnap Mandy and tie her to a railway line with a train hurtling towards her ...
Comment: It ends on that cliffhanger with the narrator telling us to watch out for the next Perils of Mandy" instalment coming soon - although such a follow-on was never made.

Writers: John Esmonde, Bob Larbey / Director: Mark Stuart / Producer: Andrew Mitchell
Type: Sitcom Spin-off	Running Time: 97 mins
A new term starts at Fenn Street Secondary School and easy-going teacher Bernard Hedges is eager to begin despite his form 5C being considered the worst behaved in the entire school. At assembly the headmaster announces the annual two-week trip to a rural activity centre in the country which one lucky class will be allowed to attend. 5C are very disparaging about this because throughout their time at the school their class has never been chosen. When Hedges realises this he makes a successful appeal to the senior staff that his class ought to be given a chance and a spot of clean living may do them some good. After an incident packed coach journey they finally arrive at the Woodbridge Rural Centre and 5C's unruly antics are soon wreaking havoc with the normal good order of things. Most of them find the activities on offer at the centre to be a bit of a bore and their consequent rowdy misbehaviour gets them and Mr Hedges into trouble with the site warden who thinks they are the worst behaved pupils who have ever attended. It is only once 5C realise that Mr Hedges went out on a limb to allow them to come on this trip that they decide to devote their efforts to making him look good because they are really quite fond of their kind-hearted form master. 5C therefore begin a rivalry with the kids from a posh school called Boulters who are also at the centre and by means of trickery and underhand tactics manage to launch themselves to the top of the best school league table. This develops into a tit-for-tat battle with the other school which begins to get out of hand. The last straw comes when some money goes missing from the Boulters' hut and 5C are accused of taking it and Hedges lets his severe disappointment in them be known although they deny taking it. The matter is cleared up eventually as the actions of a misguided young gypsy boy who has befriended 5C and was trying to help. Eventually everything is smoothed over and they all have a celebratory party with the hope that the second week might be less fraught.

Writer: Henry Younger / Director/Producer: Michael Carreras
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 86 mins
In present day Africa David Marchand is a jungle safari guide for tourists interested in big game hunting. When a trigger-happy tourist wounds a leopard David decides he must humanely kill it and follows its trail into the land of the Gwunaka people. He kills the leopard but is then captured by the tribesmen who have strict laws against hunting in their territory. Back in the ancient past the Gwunaka worshipped the White Rhinoceros but then some white hunters arrived in the area and slaughtered them to extinction. This put the Gwunaka into a perpetual state of spiritual bondage which persists to this day. All they have left is a full size statue of a white rhinoceros and their state of depression will never be lifted until the statue spontaneously shatters. David is to be executed for his crime but before this sentence is carried out he curiously touches the horn of the rhino statue and everyone except him freezes in time. Then a gateway opens up in a cave wall and he walks through and finds himself in a lush land full of exotic plant life. He soon realises he is still in Gwunaka territory but somehow has been transported into the past. He is captured again but here the tribe consists entirely of young women. There are two castes - the brunettes who are in charge and the blondes who are their slaves. The overall dark-haired ruler is Queen Kari who is ruthless and sadistic and decides she wants David as her mate. But he shows his distaste for her brutality and is thrown in the work caverns with the men. The men are treated as wild savages but David discovers it was not always so. Once the fair-haired people ruled the land but when the white hunters came and killed the sacred rhinoceros confidence was shattered and one of their dark-haired slave girls made a pact with their savage tribal neighbours called the Devils of Darkness. The Devils helped overthrow the fair-hairs and the dark-hairs took over with the slave girl Kari now installed as their queen ruling with the same degree of cruelty she suffered as a slave. In return for their help the tribe have to surrender one blonde slave girl as a bride to the Devils every month. David meets blonde slave girl Saria who is trying to mount an uprising of the slaves. She believes David's coming has been prophesised and he will be instrumental in their success. David and Saria fall in love but she wishes him to exploit Queen Kari's obsession with him to their advantage. Yet when the time comes she cannot bear to see him with Kari and jealously blurts out the plan. For this Kari chooses Saria as the next sacrificial bride to go to the Devils and David is sent back into the work dungeons. David manages to break free of his dungeon and rescues Saria from her fate and a battle for supremacy between the castes begins. Queen Kari is killed when one of the last white Rhinos makes a reappearance and gouges her to death when she makes a defiant stand wrongly believing it will be obeisant to her supremacy. The Blondes win the battle and the prophecy is as was foretold. David wants to stay, but Saria tells him the prophecy says that the stranger came and went. She believes their love will surmount time however. David returns to the present day and is back in the Gwunaka trial chamber awaiting death as if no time at all had passed rather than the months he felt had gone by. But then suddenly the white rhino statue he just touched begins to crumble and shatter and the Gwunaka rejoice that their spiritual bondage has at last been lifted. David is hailed a hero for his part in helping them. In their jubilation David quietly slips away not sure if his trip to the past was all a daydream until he finds Saria's pendant in his pocket and knows it was real. Back at his base camp a new visitor has arrived, she is called Sarah and is the daughter of one of the hunters and when he is introduced he sees she is the exact likeness of Saria. The two of them seem to instantly connect and as the film ends it must be assumed that that a romantic relationship will ensue.
Comment: The actual distance that David travels back in time is not specified but there is certainly nothing to indicate it as being in prehistoric times as the film's title suggests (there are no prehistoric monsters). The fact that modern day David can communicate in their language would suggest something much more recent - perhaps a few hundred years
although they all speak in English for the viewers benefit, in actuality David is speaking their native language: .

Writer/Director: Arnold Louis Miller / Producers: Arnold Louis Miller, Stanley A Long
Type: Documentary	Running Time: 74 mins
A documentary that takes a look at life for modern young Londoners taking as its stated theme a kind of guide to a new-born babe showing it the variety of opportunities open to it in a society that seeks to categorise everything. It starts by explaining the difference between Mods, Rockers and Beatniks and interviewing some members of each persuasion on their views of life. It then opens up and becomes a mishmash of fairly random-seeming features such as the recording of a radio commercial; the life of a busy stripper; self-defence classes; a peek inside the workings of a hat shop; an erotic revue stage show; wrestlers; a tattooist; a delicate operation on a goldfish; a battery chicken processing plant; wife-swapping party; pop-star Billy J Kramer being mobbed by adoring fans at a signing; a foot corn removal procedure; nightclub comedian Ray Martine doing his act; ten-pin bowling.
Comment: Although it shows a few tassel-wearing showgirls and strippers it does not feature any proper nudity even though the filmmakers seem to clearly know that is what the (original 1960s) audience really wanted to see because occasionally a voiceover "interrupts" the main narration complaining about the lack of girls on show with another voice promising they'll be coming soon although they never really do. The potpourri of small sequences which are supposed to offer an insight into the lifestyle of a bustling society are not especially interesting (at least looking back on it now anyway). Perhaps the only notable item is one that stands out as a bit incongruous in that it is an acted "comedy" sketch in which a voiceover artiste is recording a straightforward line of dialogue for a TV advert which the director (played by Barry Cryer) is never happy with and wants him to keep over-stressing different words. All other items were seemingly real people doing things although some were clearly staged for the camera's benefit.

Writers: Ronald Harwood, Caspar Wrede / Director: Caspar Wrede / Producer: Ben Arbeid
Type: War Drama	Running Time: 85 mins
A British army battalion stationed on a Mediterranean island are engaged in an important mission to disrupt enemy activity. The mission's success depends on a stealthy approach through the jungle to take an enemy outpost by surprise and overwhelm the occupants. But as they approach one soldier called Private Potter suddenly cries out loudly in alarm and this alerts the enemy to the impending attack and the mission objective fails. Potter is arrested on a charge of wilfully assisting the enemy. His defence is that he couldn't help it because all of a sudden he saw God and was so shocked he shouted in alarm. Potter is a quiet and sensitive man who has no religious tendencies. The battalion's brigadier wants to throw the book at him and put him up for court martial but his commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Gunyon is more understanding and wants to try and determine if Potter truly had a spiritual vision, is suffering from madness, or if he is lying. Potter is interviewed by the brigade's padre and a psychiatrist who both offer differing opinions on how to proceed. But the Brigadier regards it as a moot point because Potter must be made an example of regardless of his reasons and will spend a considerable time in prison. Potter eventually decides to retract his assertion of seeing God and face the consequences. But he confides to Gunyon that he did really see the Almighty - all his life he had fought against a belief in God and he screamed out because he was scared when faced with the truth of His existence. He considers that his time in prison will give him time to properly reconsider his beliefs.

Writer: Harold Pinter / Director: Michael Anderson / Producer: Ivan Foxwell
Type: Spy Drama	Running Time: 100 mins
Quiller is an American working as an agent for the British Intelligence services. He is sent on an assignment to Berlin to continue the mission of two previous operatives who were each killed in the course of their investigations. The focus of the investigation is on a group of radical neo-Nazis whose ultimate goal is a return to the Germany of old. Its sympathisers are young and old pervading all facets of normal German society and it is considered essential that the ringleaders are arrested before the movement gets too organised and out of hand - it has already proved itself willing and able to murder to protect itself. Quiller's task is to find the location of their operational base. Quiller only has a few leads to go on that were left behind by his predecessors. One lead takes him to a school where a teacher who was exposed as a war criminal hanged himself. Undercover of being a journalist he interviews a young teacher from the school called Inge Lindt who can offer nothing of value about her late colleague. But he finds her attractive and offers her a lift home and they socialise. Not long afterwards Quiller is waylaid and rendered unconscious. When he comes around he is in a room tied to a chair and is subjected to questioning by a man called "Oktober". This menacing man is leader of the fascist group Quiller is investigating. Oktober wants to know how much is known about his organisation by the authorities and where the British have their local intelligence centre. Oktober resorts to using truth drugs to make Quiller talk but the American's training allows him to withstand questioning. Quiller is eventually rendered unconscious and when he wakes he finds he has been set free. He is puzzled by this because he felt sure they would kill him. He knows he must find the place he was taken to but he has no idea where it was. He goes to see Inge and they spend the night together. During pillow talk she mentions that a friend of her fathers once spoke of the evil men he is trying to find and Quiller asks to meet with him. Through these contacts Quiller is shown the location of a derelict looking mansion by the side of the river. He tells Inge to wait in the car whilst he checks it out to make sure it is the same place. He discovers it is the correct location when he is captured again by Oktober. They are packing up their records and equipment in preparation to moving to a new location now that this one has been compromised. He also discovers that Inge has been captured and Oktober uses threats against her as an inducement for him to talk. Quiller claims not to know her and Oktober lets him go so he can mull things over and return when he has decided if he wants to save her life. Quiller leaves and returns to his hotel but he is closely followed by Oktober's henchmen to make sure he does not make any phone calls. Quiller can not travel to the British operational centre without giving away its secret location - which is obviously Oktober's rational for letting him go. Time is of the essence because he must get the information to his superiors before Oktober has moved location. Quiller sneaks out the back way unseen to his car but luckily notices it has been booby-trapped with a bomb which would activate on engine ignition. He rigs it instead to explode only after he has got a safe distance away on foot. When the bomb goes off the henchman believe their precautions have worked and Quiller is dead and they call off their watch on him. Quiller then reports to his superiors the location of Oktober's headquarters and the police are sent in to arrest everyone. Quiller is puzzled that no mention is made of finding any girl - either dead or alive. He goes to the school and Inge is back at work, she is surprised to see him because she thought he was dead. She tells him she was lucky and Oktober let her go - Quiller finds that very surprising. Although Quiller does not say it directly, he realises that she is a secret sympathiser and had led him to the derelict house and acted as prisoner in order to further Oktober's plan. His fondness for her stops him from reporting her involvement but the underlying subtext of their words displays to each their mutual understanding of what has occurred. He tells her he is leaving Berlin and bids her goodbye leaving her to continue her life as before.
Comment: The ending is slightly ambiguous and I have applied my interpretation in the above description. Perhaps Quiller didn't report her because her cooperation seemed tinged with reluctance and he considers her to be harmless enough without the corrupting influence of an evil man like Oktober stirring events. All that said, Oktober's actions in letting Quiller go do seem somewhat foolish - he was taking a huge risk to try and find the location of the British headquarters and it is not completely clear what he would have done even if he had discovered it. It is also not clear why the title of the film refers to a "Memorandum" because there is no such article featured in the film.

Writers: Roman Polanski, Gérard Brach / Director: Roman Polanski / Producer: Gene Gutowski
Type: Drama	Running Time: 100 mins
Carol Ledoux is a beautiful young French woman living in London and working as a manicurist at a beauty salon. However Carol is not independently minded and has an almost childlike dependency on her older sister Helen whom she lives with in an apartment. Carol is prone to unresponsive episodes where she appears to have gone into a trance which her work colleagues put down to daydreaming. At times she seems normal enough but at others she becomes unable to fully engage with the world on anything other than a perfunctory level. Her beauty brings her many admirers including a bachelor called Colin who perceives her distant vagueness as being an exotically aloof affectation and is keen to get to know her better. Helen is planning a fortnight's holiday away with her boyfriend Michael during which Carol will be left alone. Carol can look after herself on a day-to-day basis and so Helen thinks she'll be able to cope alright. Carol dislikes Michael and hates it when he stays overnight resenting the intrusion - there is something about men in general that causes her feelings of disquiet and anxiety. Helen and Michael depart leaving Carol on her own. Without the stabilising grounding of her sister's presence Carol's mind begins to play tricks on her and her mental state quickly deteriorates. As the days of isolation go by she starts to see large cracks appearing in the apartment and imagine the walls are trying to grab at her. As her state of paranoia increases she retreats into a timid shell afraid to go out or perform any domestic tasks such as cleaning. In her fevered delusions a male intruder repeatedly rapes her. Colin tries to phone her but gets no reply so with increasing concern for her wellbeing he goes round to her apartment and has to break in. Carol panics and beats him to death with a heavy candlestick and puts his body in the bath. Some days later the landlord comes round for his rent and seeing how vulnerable she is tries to opportunistically seduce her. Carol reacts by slashing him with a razor and stabbing him to death. When Helen and Michael return home they find the apartment in a filthy unkempt mess, then find the dead bodies and finally discover Carol hiding under a bed completely withdrawn into herself in a cataleptic state of regression.

Writer: James Goldman / Director: Richard Lester / Producer: Denis O'Dell
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 102 mins
This review assumes a certain familiarity with the basic Robin Hood story and characters Robin Hood and his faithful companion Little John have been in the Holy Land for twenty years fighting in the Crusades alongside King Richard. But now the war is over and they decide to return home to Nottingham. They are aware that the years have taken their toll and they are no longer the young adventurers they had been when they left. Much has changed in Sherwood, but other things have stayed the same. The Sheriff is still in charge although he has mellowed somewhat displaying a grudging respect for his old rival and seems willing to let bygones be bygones. However the Sheriff is being pressurised by a representative of King John called Sir Ranulf into stamping down on certain religious practices with the arrest of the local abbess. That abbess is Maid Marian, the former sweetheart of Robin Hood. She had been so upset by Robin's abrupt departure twenty years ago she tried to kill herself and was brought to the abbey where she remained as a nun and eventually became the abbess. Robin Hood is forced back into action to save Marian and he reforms his band of merry men in Sherwood Forest. Robin's bravery is well-remembered and he has no trouble finding new recruits. Robin and Marian renew their romance and make plans to rebuild their former home in the forest. She hopes he can at last settle down and they can live out their lives in happy contentment. But Sir Ranulf will not let matters lie and brings a small army of King John's men to the outskirts of the forest - an action the sheriff is obliged to support. A stalemate is reached:- the king's men cannot enter the forest because they will be easily ambushed by Robin's men - and Robin's band of followers are too few in number to leave the forest and engage the soldiers. Robin proposes a solution - a battle of champions between himself and the Sheriff. If the Sheriff wins Robin's men will disband, and if Robin wins the army will withdraw and leave them to live in peace. The fight between the two ageing men begins, both of them highly skilled swordsmen and so evenly matched that neither can gain an upper hand. Both suffer wounds and start to tire but neither will yield. Eventually Robin manages to get a lucky thrust in and kills the Sheriff. Sir Ranulf refuses to abide by the terms of the contest and orders an attack and a battle begins. Robin is badly injured and Marian takes him back to the monastery. She knows he will never be at peace and will forever be trying to fight the good fight. So she decides to end it all for both of them - she drinks some medicinal wine and he follows suit - but it is poisoned and he realises too late what she has done to ensure they will be at peace together evermore. He fires his arrow out of the window and tells Little John to bury them together wherever it lands.
Comment: The ending is a bit unexpected and I can't say I totally understood Marian's reasons for doing what she did unless Robin's wounds were so bad he was going to die anyway.

Writer/Director: Bryan Forbes / Producer: Richard Attenborough
Type: Crime Drama	Running Time: 111 mins
Myra Savage is a psychic medium with a limited paranormal ability who has become frustrated that she cannot attract sufficient clientele to make a decent living. She has therefore devised a recklessly audacious scheme to boost her profile and reputation. Her husband Billy is a meek, weak-willed man who will do anything to please her and she easily manages to manipulate him into agreeing to her idea, overriding any concerns he has about its inherent wisdom. Myra's plan is to kidnap a young child and then (as nameless kidnappers) demand a ransom from the parents. Then she will approach the police and claim to be using her psychic ability to help them find the girl and recover the money. Myra and Billy have no children of their own. Their one chance at a baby was still-born and it is through his spirit that Myra conducts her psychic communications. They prepare a spare bedroom in their house to resemble a private hospital room and then Billy kidnaps the young daughter of a rich family from outside her school using a well-worked out plan in which he hijacks her chauffeur driven car and quickly chloroforms her. Her name is Amanda Clayton (aged about 9ish) daughter of the wealthy industrialist Charles Clayton whom they have decided to target. When she awakes in their converted bedroom they tell Amanda they are a doctor and nurse and she is in hospital with a disease hence their need to wear facemasks (which are really to hide their faces so she won't be able to identify them later). Billy is racked by unease at what they are doing but he sees how much it means to Myra to have her abilities recognised so he continues to go along with her wishes. They send a ransom note to the Claytons with detailed instructions on how to drop off the money. By now the kidnapping story has made national headlines and the police are involved. The money is paid by the desperately worried parents as the police keep watch - but due to some excellent planning Billy manages to collect the money from the drop-off point without being caught. Myra contacts the police claiming that she might be able to help but she is dismissed as a crank. Back home Amanda begins to run a high fever for real and Billy thinks they should abandon this folly and take her to a hospital but Myra insists they must continue with their original plan which she is convinced will work out in the end. But then Amanda sees them without their masks and will be able to identify them after she is released. Myra is becoming irrational as her plan unravels. She tries to claim to Billy that her powers have told her that the girl would be better off dying. Billy has had enough and accuses her of simply voicing her own self-deluded thoughts in the name of psychic messages from their dead baby. She denies it but is emotionally falling apart with the strain. Myra says they have no choice now but to kill the girl with a fatal overdose of sleeping draft and then dump her body. And then they can continue with the plan in a modified form and use her "powers" to inform the police where they can find the girl's body. Billy seems to go along with it to pacify her and we see him take Amanda's body wrapped in a blanket to a remote woodland area and leave it. The police come round to see Myra and request a séance because they have drawn a blank on finding the missing girl using orthodox methods. Myra goes into a trance but is by now so unhinged that she betrays herself with the things she reveals. She and Billy are arrested.
Comment: The ending isn't entirely clear - we are led to think the couple have killed the girl and dumped her body but a quick line of dialogue by the police right near the end seems to suggest that they knew the girl wasn't dead and they had come round to engage in the séance so that Myra might incriminate herself. Or perhaps Billy informed the police himself as he seemed unsurprised by the turn of events. It would seem on appearances that Myra's basic ability was a genuine one since she is seen holding other séances with no obvious suggestion that they are opportunistically fraudulent.

Writers: Bryan Forbes, Robert B. Sherman, Richard M. Sherman / Director: Bryan Forbes / Producer: Stuart Lyons
Type: Fantasy Drama / Musical	Running Time: 135 mins
A long time ago, in the kingdom of Euphrania, the King and his Lord Chamberlain see that the peace their nation has enjoyed for centuries is becoming threatened by the political ambitions of their neighbours. They decide that the best way to settle relations is with a royal marriage between the king's son Prince Edward and a princess from one of the other countries. However Edward is a romantic and believes that love is important to a marriage and he has no enthusiasm for selecting a bride he does not love - but he knows it is his duty and agrees to comply with what is expected of him. The king decides to hold a grand ball and invite all the princesses from the neighbouring lands so that Edward can make his choice. Local nobility will also be invited to make up the numbers. Elsewhere in the kingdom, a young woman called Cinderella has recently had a poor turn of fortunes. Her rich father whom she dearly loved has recently died - but he left control of his estate to his second wife. The stepmother despises Cinderella and only allows her to stay in the house as a lowly servant - performing menial tasks for both herself and her two real daughters Isabella and Palatine. As local nobility they receive their invitations to the ball although of course Cinderella is not permitted to go. But a Fairy Godmother who has dedicated herself to helping the worthy fulfil their dreams intervenes and magically provides Cinderella with a beautiful dress and glass slippers and tells her she can go to the ball. However she must depart before midnight when the magic will expire. At the ball Prince Edward is having a dreadful time entertaining the succession of hopeful princesses. And then Cinderella arrives using a false name and she is so breathtakingly beautiful that not even the stepmother and stepsister recognise the mystery girl as being Cinderella. The Prince immediately falls in love with her and they spend the rest of the evening together dancing and talking and becoming romantic. As midnight approaches Cinderella has to hastily leave but drops one of her glass slippers in the rush. Cinderella goes back to her servant duties treating the whole evening as an enjoyable fantasy but knowing that she cannot hope to ever really have a relationship with the Prince. The Prince meanwhile is devastated to lose the girl of his dreams and sets about to search for her using the made-to-measure slipper as a way of checking each maiden's claim to be the mystery woman. After many months the Prince at last finds Cinderella and they renew their love and Edward announces to the king that he has found the girl he wants to marry. However the king is not pleased by this because although Cinderella is very nice she is unfortunately from their own kingdom and so does not fulfil the marriage's diplomatic objectives of easing the unrest between neighbour states. The Lord Chamberlain tactfully talks Cinderella into a patriotic withdrawal from the marriage and go into a voluntary exile until the prince has married someone appropriate. Feeling very despondent by Cinderella's sudden departure Prince Edward gives in to his father's wishes and agrees to marry a princess. On the day of the Prince's wedding Cinderella is visited in her exile by the Fairy Godmother who despairs that her carefully laid plans for Cinderella's happiness have gone awry and she steps in to smooth things over. She transports Cinderella to the wedding and the Prince is overjoyed to see her again. Cinderella takes the bride's place and the king feels helpless to call a halt. The Fairy Godmother suggests an acceptable compromise that Edward's cousin should marry the foreign princess instead which is considered almost as good and so everyone ends up happily ever after.

Writer: David Ambrose / Director: David Hemmings / Producer: Antony I. Ginnane
Type: Australian / Chiller	Running Time: 77 mins
David Keller is the pilot of a 747 passenger plane which crash lands in a field outside a small town shortly after take off from an Australian airport. The plane explodes and becomes a raging inferno killing all the 350 passengers and crew - except remarkably David Keller who walks away from the wreckage with barely a scratch. David has lost his memory of the incident and cannot remember how the accident occurred. Air Accident investigators led by a man called Slater try and piece together the puzzle to determine what caused the disaster whilst David agonises over events wondering why and how he managed to survive. He is contacted by a woman called Hobbs who is spiritually sensitive and feels there is something important going on that needs to be explored and asks David to help her. Meanwhile some people involved in the investigation begin to hear strange noises like people screaming and some end up dying horrible deaths. The head investigator Slater is attacked himself but seems to come through it unscathed. Hobbs suggests to David that they try to coax out his memories by visiting the recovered cockpit being stored in a warehouse and recreate the flight. David re-lives the flight in his head and remembers that there had been a bomb that one of the passengers had found planted in his briefcase - this exploded and caused decompression and it was only David's skill as a pilot that prevented the plane coming down on populated houses rather than the empty field into which he eventually crash-landed. However the memories do not inform him how he managed to survive unscathed. (Somehow) David works out that it was Slater who planted the bomb on the plane and has been killing people. Slater seems to be under the control of the deceased passengers who resent David's survival and want him to be dead with them. Slater shoots David dead and with his task complete Slater is killed by the spirits. Then back at the crash site when workers prepare to move the main fuselage David Keller's burnt lifeless body is found which has been dead for many days and no one can understand it because he was seen alive and well only hours beforehand. But Hobbs finds she can now relax and whatever was troubling the spirits is now resolved.
Comment: The above summary is rather vague on what was going on because it does not seem to be explained very well in the film and I could not really get to grips with why some things were happening or what the confusing ending was all about.

Writer/Director: Ken Russell / Producers: Robert Stigwood, Ken Russell
Type: Music / Drama	Running Time: 106 mins
During World War II while on leave, RAF pilot Captain Walker and his wife Nora are on a romantic mountain-walking holiday and conceive a baby. Shortly afterwards Walker is killed in action. His grieving widow has the baby whom she names Tommy - he is a perfectly normal healthy boy. She brings him up with stories of his brave father. In 1951 when he is 6-years-old Nora takes Tommy to a holiday camp where she falls for a greencoat called Frank Hobbs. They start living together telling Tommy that Frank is an "uncle". But then one night Tommy catches them in bed together and it so traumatises him that he is struck deaf, dumb and blind. He remains so afflicted into young adulthood and his loving mother and her now-husband Frank continue to look after him in this helpless condition. Then one day when Tommy gets lost in a scrap yard it is accidentally discovered that despite his handicaps he can play a pinball machine better than anyone. Tommy wins in the Pinball World Championships and becomes famous as the Pinball Wizard. Exploitation of his amazing talent brings wealth and riches to his parents who start to live an opulent and extravagant lifestyle. A specialist reviews Tommy's case and says that his sensory deprivation is psychosomatic and it is a only a mental block that is preventing them working properly. Then one day during a fit of anger his mother inadvertently shocks him and his mental blockage is released and Tommy can see, hear and speak again. The miracle of Tommy the Pinball Wizard's recovery becomes headline news and that combined with his physically handsome appearance make him the subject of intense teenage adulation. A cult forms around his image and his parents begin to exploit it with merchandise and evangelical concerts where the sick and infirm gather in the hope of a miracle cure of their own. A phenomenon of Tommy-camps starts in which Tommy's fans gather into communes and worship him as if he were a new Messiah. Tommy's parents continue to mercilessly milk the potential with ever more garish Tommy-merchandising. Until one day the fans begin to see how they have been exploited. They turn into a mob and kill Tommy's parents and disband. Tommy is sad, but now free of all outside influences he begins to live life as he wants to. He climbs up the very same mountain where he had been conceived and starts to enjoy the beauty of life.
Comments: There is no talk-dialogue in this film - the story is told entirely in visuals and the various characters' narrative singing (all of which are pre-recorded by the cast and mimed to in the picture). Of the many songs featured only one is well known outside of its context - "Pinball Wizard".

Writer: Robert Bloch / Director: Freddie Francis / Producers: Max J. Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky
Type: Horror / Anthology	Running Time: 96 mins
An anthology of horror tales linked together by a framing story. Framing Story. At a funfair there is a sideshow called Torture Garden which features waxwork depictions of gruesome torture. At the end of the regular performance the showman Dr Diablo tells his audience that for an extra fee he can show them a more persuasive horror in a private exhibit that will guarantee to chill or they will get a full refund. Four people are intrigued enough to hand over a £5 fee - a very large amount compared to the 2'6 (25p) for the regular exhibit. Inside is a statue of Atropos, the goddess of destiny who holds thin threads in one hand, each one representing a human life, and in her other hand some shears demonstrating her ability to cut short a human life with a mere slice. Each patron in turn is invited to stand before the statue where a possible future will be laid out before them showing the hidden horror of their own evil. (In the following descriptions the first named person is the subject) Story 1 - Enoch Colin Williams is having money problems and visits his elderly uncle Roger hoping for an advance on his inheritance. Uncle Roger has lived alone for thirty years in his large house without working so Colin is sure he must be quite well off. The house was previously owned by an old lady that some said was a witch and Colin thinks that Roger must have found some sort of treasure hoard after he first moved in which he has been living off ever since - because he only ever pays for things with gold coins. Roger seems afraid to discuss the matter and claims there is no money. Colin gets angry and abusive and Roger dies of a heart attack. When the formalities are over Colin ransacks the house looking for the supposed secret hoard. He eventually finds a secret basement and notices a disturbed patch of earth. He digs up a coffin and opens it and is astonished when a live cat jumps out. He tries to catch the cat but its eyes mesmerise him and its force of will speaks directly into his head. It names itself Bactharus and it claims that if Colin follows its orders then he will be rewarded. Bactharus needs to feed on human flesh and Colin is compelled to kill and finds he cannot resist the commands that sear into his brain. In return he is rewarded with gold coins. Uncle Roger had managed to trick the cat and bury it alive years ago but now Colin has freed the evil creature which he realises must be the old witch's familiar. After several murders Colin tries to leave the house but a policeman arrives and finds the dead bodies and he is arrested. No one believes his wild gibbering about a cat that made him do it and they think he's gone mad. But Bathurus is in the cell with him and is hungry and when Colin cannot comply the cat turns on him and eats him instead and then moves on to find a new human to enslave. Story 2 - Terror Over Hollywood Carla Hayes is a budding actress who is ruthlessly ambitious. She hijacks a date that her flatmate has with film director Mike Charles so that she can push herself forward and get noticed by some of his Hollywood contacts. At the restaurant she meets Hollywood producer Eddie Storm and the evergreen box office sensation Bruce Benton who has been a top box office star for decades without ever seeming to noticeably age. Carla piles on the charm and gets a part in Bruce's next picture. Mike Charles is out of favour with his peers and is finding it hard to get work and in an angry confrontation with Storm he threatens to expose a big secret he knows about Bruce Benton. Mike is later killed by one of Storm's flunkies making it look like suicide. After a days filming Carla sees Bruce driven away in a car by some hoodlums and shot dead with a bullet in his forehead. But soon after she is astonished to find he is back at work with not a mark on him. She is fobbed off with a story about how it was his double that was killed but she is pretty sure it was really him. She does some digging in the newspaper archives and discovers that many years ago Eddie Storm too had survived a seemingly fatal accident. She confronts Bruce and accidentally scratches him revealing metal underneath and discovers he is a robot. Eddie tells her that all of Hollywood's ambitious elite have had their brains implanted into synthetic bodies because it is the only way to stay looking young and vital as the audience expect. But her knowledge is dangerous and she must be disposed of or undergo the same conversion process herself. And as the story ends Carla has become a star herself with her conversion successfully accomplished. Story 3 - Mr Steinway Dorothy Endicott is a young music journalist who goes to the home of concert pianist Leo Winston to interview him. He is a shy young man who still talks fondly of his late mother who had always looked after him and had bought him his grand piano. She always shielded him from female company who she thought of as a distraction from his career. Leo calls the piano Aterpe and talks about it as if it were a person using the female pronoun. Dorothy falls in love with Leo and he with her. They start going out together but as Dorothy starts to make more and more demands on his time his piano playing begins to suffer. The way Leo seems to describe it is that the piano normally virtually plays itself but it has become jealous of the time he spends with Dorothy and is now refusing to cooperate. Dorothy believes that Leo is overworked and suggests he cancel his concert tour and they go away on holiday together. He goes upstairs to pack leaving Dorothy alone with "Aterpe". The piano begins playing the funeral march by itself and then starts moving around the room under its own volition. It blocks Dorothy's exit and then rams her against the window and she falls to her death - all under the watchful eye of a portrait of Leo's late mother. Story 4 - The Man Who Collected Poe Ronald Wyatt is an enthusiast of the works of 19th century horror writer Edgar Allan Poe. When he visits an exhibition he is amazed by the rare first editions on display from the collection of Lancelot Canning who is considered to have the finest Poe memorabilia in the world. The two men get talking and Canning invites Wyatt to his home to view the rest of his extensive collection. At Canning's home Wyatt is staggered by the items that Canning has amassed - Canning explains it was a collection begun by his grandfather. Eventually Canning decides to show Wyatt his special archive in a locked cellar. This contains unpublished manuscripts in Poe's own hand. But when Wyatt examines the paper more closely he notices that the paper is too modern to have been used by Poe even though he recognises the handwriting from Poe's known letters. Canning tells him that his grandfather had been a grave robber in America and had dug up Poe's remains and used occult magic to reanimate them. Canning is sceptical and decides to search the basement. He finds another door and goes inside and finds Edgar Allan Poe himself sitting at a desk. Poe is world weary of his eternal immortality and so Wyatt agrees to help release him by setting fire to the room but this was a trick because anyone who helps someone break their pact with the devil becomes trapped themselves. Back to the frame: After each episode the subject comes out of the trance shocked at the possible future that could befall them but with the forewarning they have the chance to make sure they avoid it happening. And when all the visitors have left the exhibit Dr Diablo reveals himself to the viewer as being the Devil who has decided to give some people a fair chance of avoiding his clutches.

Writer: Rene Hardy / Director: Terence Young / Producer: Jacques-Paul Bertrand
Type: War Drama	Running Time: 120 mins
Starting in 1939 with war looming. Eddie Chapman is a brashly confident and resourceful cat burglar who is responsible for a successful series of daring jewel thefts around London. When he goes on holiday to Jersey the police eventually catch up with him and he is thrown into the local jail where he spends ten months in solitary with no outside news. He does not even know war has broken out until the Germans arrive and take over Jersey. Chapman demands to see the new commandant and makes an offer of his services (for a suitable fee) to work for the Germans which he views as a better alternative to rotting away in prison. The Germans view his impressive criminal record and take stock of his cocky self-assuredness and decide that he has the necessary motivation and ability to work for them as a spy. Chapman is taken to a château in France where he is given intense training in espionage skills. His commander is Baron Von Grunen and he receives special attention from beguiling beauty Countess Helle Lindstrom who helps train the English spies. After passing a test to assess his loyalty Chapman is sent on a mission to England to blow up a factory that manufactures aircraft parts. Upon arrival by parachute Chapman makes immediate contact with the British military leaders to let them know about his mission and offer his services (for a suitable fee and a full pardon) to double-cross the Germans. He also passes on what he has learnt about other spies working for the Germans. After deep consideration on his reliability the war cabinet decide to trust Chapman and use him as an asset - but to maintain his usefulness to the Germans he must successfully carry out his mission so they allow Chapman to proceed with his sabotage mission but instead destroy hastily constructed decoy buildings designed to fool German air reconnaissance photos into thinking the target is destroyed. Chapman then returns to Germany as per his orders. He is initially viewed with suspicion as it seems somewhat coincidental that a number of their valuable spies had been captured after he went to London. But Chapman manages to convince the Germans that had been nothing to do with him and he is given a medal for his bravery and becomes a trusted member of the Baron's military staff and has an affair with the Countess. During this time Chapman is able to pass back important information to London via the French resistance. (time passes) When word comes that the Allies have landed at Normandy the Baron sends Chapman on another mission to England to send back coded radio reports on troop movements. Chapman arrives back in London and briefs the war cabinet on the current state of confusion in the German command. The war chiefs use Chapman to pass back bogus troop movement information to the Germans in order to draw bombing raids into unimportant areas. When victory comes in 1945 Chapman is given a full pardon from his pre-war crimes although he is told ironically the records office was bombed early on in the war and so his records had been lost anyway!
Comment: Several years pass during the film from early on in the war to much later - although precisely what goes on in the "unseen" time is not made entirely clear.

Writer: Wolf Mankowitz / Director: Terence Fisher / Producer: Michael Carreras
Type: Horror	Running Time: 87 mins
Set in London 1874. Dr Henry Jekyll is a research scientist who is studying the nature of man's inner personality and how the rigid strictures of society might inhibit the true nature of the individual. Jekyll believes there is a hidden power within man awaiting release and it is his duty as a scientist to discover that inner potential. Jekyll's controversial theories opened him to ridicule and he resigned from professional life to devote himself to pure research. He lives in a large house and has sufficient independent means to be able to fund his work which totally consumes him. He lives like a recluse in his laboratory neglecting his wife Kitty and finding social interaction an awkward and uncomfortable process. With no affection forthcoming from her marriage Kitty has long given up on Henry and has secretly taken a lover called Paul Allen. Paul is one of Henry's only remaining friends although Henry does not know of the affair. Paul is an inveterate gambler who relies heavily on his friendship with Jekyll for loans to bail him out of trouble and support his expensive social life. Jekyll has developed a potion that he believes will release the repressed personality he has theorised. Animal testing has gone well and he is ready to try it on a human subject - himself. He injects the formula and becomes wreaked with an inner turmoil as his hidden-self is awakened. The emergence manifests itself physically as well and where once stood a heavily-bearded, gruffly-voiced and stiff-mannered scientist, now stands an unrecognisably different clean-shaven, sprightly-mannered and softer-spoken gadabout eager to have some gallivanting fun. The new side of Jekyll calls himself Edward Hyde and instructs a cabby to take him to an opulent nightspot where he can taste the highlife. At the Sphinx Club he finds his wife out with Paul Allen and realises her infidelity. But the couple don't recognise him so he introduces himself as an acquaintance of Henry's as if a stranger to them. His charm turns Kitty's head and she is drawn to his brash confidence. Hyde finds his wife desirable but to her he is a stranger and she loves Paul. Later Hyde reverts back to Jekyll when the potion's effect wears off (including his beard returning) and he writes up his experiences in his journal. As Jekyll he tries to make an emotional connection with his wife but she cold-shoulders his clumsy overtures. Jekyll carries on with his experiments and becomes Hyde every night. As Hyde he becomes addicted to hedonistic pleasures in the company of tarts but wants mostly what he cannot get - Kitty - but she still loves Paul despite his many faults. Hyde has shown himself to have a hard and calculatingly callous side concealed beneath his veneer of charm and sophistication and he embarks on a strategy to achieve his goal. He agrees to be Paul's guarantor for his gambling promissory notes. When these have mounted up considerably Hyde presents them to Kitty and says she can buy them back and save her lover from social ruin if she agrees to sleep with him in return. Kitty is appalled by this unspeakably degenerate suggestion and storms away vowing she never wants to speak to him again. When he reverts to being Jekyll the scientist is so appalled by his alter-ego's actions that he vows never to use the potion again and destroys all the supplies and formulation notes. But he finds that Hyde is still within him and is able emerge by sheer strength of will. Hyde decides he must be free of Jekyll by destroying his life. He lures Paul to a private meeting to discuss money matters and kills him. Then he allows Kitty to discover her lover's body and she is so upset she throws herself off a balcony and kills herself. Then Hyde returns to the laboratory and shoots a passing tradesman placing his body at Jekyll's desk and then setting the whole place on fire. The resulting inferno renders the body unrecognisable and as Hyde had planned it is assumed at the inquest that Jekyll had committed suicide after killing Paul Allen due to a delusional madness brought on by an addiction to experimental drugs. Hyde is at the inquest to give evidence and as the verdict is given he is inwardly triumphant that he is now free of any ties and can live out the rest of his life in a pleasure-filled luxury with Jekyll's money which as Jekyll's "friend" he had previously arranged for himself to inherit. Although Hyde is the stronger personality Jekyll is still suppressed within him. The scientist makes one final massive effort to re-manifest and thus in front of an astonished assembly of courtroom officials and despite Hyde's agonised attempts to stop it happening he changes back to Jekyll and the truth is revealed. Jekyll is arrested and has condemned himself to death for the murders his alter-ego carried out but in his self-sacrifice has assured that Hyde will die with him. (Comment] The heavy beard does admittedly make Jekyll look drastically different from Hyde but one must assume that Jekyll has always had it for his wife and friends not to have known it was still him when seen clean-shaven - unless of course the physical difference is meant to be more marked than that shown to the viewer.

Writer: Frederic Raphael / Director/Producer: Stanley Donen
Type: Drama	Running Time: 106 mins
Mark and Joanna Wallace have been married for ten years and their relationship has become very strained and argumentative. He is a successful architect and forever busy. They are currently on holiday in Europe and as they travel they reminisce on the key points over the span of their relationship which have all seemingly taken place whilst they were on holiday. They first met when Mark was hiking across Europe studying classical architecture and Joanna was with a group of singing friends in a mini-bus whom Mark helps out. When all her friends came down with chicken pox, Mark and Joanna set off by themselves and fell madly in love. On their next vacation they have married and are taking an ill-advised holiday with some friends which shows them some of the pitfalls of long-term married life; later Joanna announces she is expecting a child; on another holiday they meet a man who is impressed enough by Mark to give him a job designing a holiday home complex. As the years progress we see their relationship begin to deteriorate as Mark becomes busier and busier and Joanna has an affair. Back in the present they wonder how and why they have stayed together and eventually realise that despite the loss of deep affection they still have high regard for one another and are still in love.
Comment: The film flits back and forth between the different periods in their life in a non-linear way - sometimes fairly randomly and other times to juxtapose how much they have changed as people - turning into the very sort of jaded couple that their earlier love struck selves could not fathom.

Writer: Michel Parry / Director: Denis Héroux / Producers: Claude Héroux, René Dupont
Type: Anthology / Horror	Running Time: 85 mins
Wilbur Gray is an author who specialises in writing books that uncover fantastical unsuspected theories about unexplained events. He has just completed the research on his latest book and the implications of his discovery have made him very nervous and jumpy. He takes his manuscript to his publisher Frank Richards who is very sceptical and asks him to talk him through the details of three of his case studies ... Case 1 - London 1912 Elderly Miss Malkin has decided to change her will to disinherit her ungrateful nephew Michael and leave her fortune to her dozens of beloved cats instead. The maid Janet overhears her new arrangement and tells Michael with whom she is having a relationship. Michael persuades Janet to steal the new will from the safe. But Miss Malkin catches Janet in the act and Janet has to kill the old woman when she threatens to call the police. But before Janet can destroy the new will the cats turn on her and eventually kill her after subjecting her to several days of terror. Days later Michael and the police find the two bodies which have been half-eaten by the cats. Michael sees the new will and tries to destroy it but the cats kill him as well. (It is believed the cats became murderous because they were so hungry). Case 2 - Quebec Province 1975 Newly orphaned youngster Lucy comes to live with her aunt Joan's family. She brings her beloved pet cat Wellington, much to Aunt Joan's annoyance because she dislikes cats. Joan's own daughter Angela is a bit older than Lucy and mercilessly bullies her believing it's not fair that Lucy is allowed to have a cat when she is not. Lucy's mother was into witchcraft and the distressed girl uses her old books to cast a spell that shrinks Angela to mouse size so that Wellington can terrorise her instead. Then Lucy steps on little-Angela and squashes her dead like a bug. (Angela's disappearance is never solved). Case 3 - Hollywood 1936 Valentine De'ath is movie actor in horror films. His wife is the leading lady but she is tragically killed when a medieval torture stunt goes wrong. In fact Valentine had rigged the accident so that he could replace his wife with his new young mistress Edina in both the film and his personal life. At home Valentine tries to get rid of his wife's cat Scat but the cat proves elusive and a battle of wills commences. The cat seems to haunt Valentine who becomes obsessed with its destruction until eventually whether by accident or design the cat's actions cause the death of Edina and Valentine. (The deaths go unexplained). Back in the present - Wilbur's conclusion is that the common factor in all these unsolved cases is the cats. Wilbur adamantly believes that man has been fooled by these seemingly aloof and innocent creatures who are welcomed into homes as pets where they listen and observe without really being noticed. It is Wilbur's postulation that cats are the true masters who always get their way in the end with patience, cunning and guile. Wilbur leaves his documents with Richards to read and on his way home he is attacked and killed by a mob of cats (evidently to make sure he doesn't reveal to the world the secret truth he has discovered). And back at Richards' house the publisher decides it's all nonsense and puts the manuscript on the fire under the watchful gaze of his own pet cat whom Richards dotes upon.

Writer: Peter Welbeck / Director: Jeremy Summers / Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 87 mins
Set in the 1920s(?). In China, Fu Manchu and his daughter Lin Tang return to their ancestral homeland in the Northern Province of Kwang-su. Once ensconced in his palace Fu Manchu begins plotting his vengeance on the man who is forever thwarting his plans - Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard. To do this he sends his agents to kidnap a world-renowned plastic surgeon called Dr Lieberson and his daughter Maria. By means of the threat of harm to Maria, the doctor is forced to operate on a hypnotised prisoner and change his features into an exact double of Nayland Smith. Meanwhile Nayland Smith himself has just helped found an international organisation of police chiefs called INTERPOL with which to combat the growing threat of world-wide criminal networks. After this he goes on a well-earned holiday to Ireland with his good friend Dr Petrie. Whilst on holiday Fu Manchu's men make the switch - kidnapping the real Smith and leaving the double in his stead. The impostor is gaunt, silent and Petrie thinks his friend has been struck down by a sudden illness that has turned him into a virtual living zombie so he quickly takes him home. Once home in England the fake Smith murders the household maid and is arrested. Smith's great reputation is publicly ruined - he is put on trial for murder, found guilty, and condemned to death by hanging in four weeks time. The real Smith has been crated up and shipped to China to be delivered to Fu Manchu's palace so that the criminal mastermind can revel in his vengeance by murdering his adversary, the real Smith, at the same time as the double is executed. Meanwhile Smith's loyal police chief friends (still unaware of the switch) plan a mission to Fu Manchu's palace believing that their colleague's massive fall from grace is the work of the evil Chinese criminal and hope to find evidence that will exonerate Smith and save him from the hangman's noose. Journey times to the remote Chinese province are long and by the time they arrive it is only a few hours until the execution. They infiltrate the palace and join up with the real Smith who has managed to free himself from a cell and begin to organise his own escape attempt. In London the fake Smith is executed and Fu Manchu calls for the real Smith to be brought before him. But unknown to Fu Manchu the guards accompanying Smith are now Smith's associates and they turn the tables on the criminal. A dynamite truck is set alight in the ensuing battle and the heroes flee leaving Fu Manchu and his daughter in stunned shock at the sudden downturn of events. The palace explodes and no one knows if Fu Manchu survived or not but Nayland Smith has the feeling that the world shall hear from him again. (We don't see Smith return to England and clear his name but must assume that once he explains what happened his reputation is quickly restored in time for the next film). {Comment] There is a secondary interwoven plot in which the major criminal organisations of the world decide to unite and ask Fu Manchu to be their leader if he can help them defeat the threat posed by the world's law enforcement agencies. This dovetails into the specific plot to discredit Nayland Smith but doesn't expand much beyond the basic premise. Fu Manchu's extended plan was to repeat the same replacement-double tactic with all of the world's major police chiefs until they were all discredited and confidence in law enforcement was eroded so much that the criminal gangs could operate more freely.

Writer: James Costigan / Director/Producer: George Schaefer
Type: Drama	Running Time: 74 mins
Set in present day Belfast, Northern Ireland (1972) during the escalating troubles between the catholic and protestant communities while occupying British troops patrol the streets trying to keep the peace. The catholic Tomelty family and protestant McCullum family have been friends for the past three years and meet up every Sunday for days out. Neither family are militant and don't let religion get in the way of their friendship. Both husbands are into pigeon racing and their two young sons Donal and Reggie are best friends. Lately however the families have been finding it hard to meet up as attitudes of hatred are becoming more entrenched and they fear being ostracised by their own neighbours if it became known they were socialising with people from the other community. Wife Nora Tomelty strongly believes in living peacefully and respecting each other's views and prefers to ignore the bigotry around her and her husband Frank is a easy-going man with no interest in getting involved in any hard-line movements. Teenage daughter Maureen Tomelty is being wooed by a cockney British private called Reg Hogg. They are forced to keep their relationship secret as the catholic based IRA have vowed to rid their country of occupying British troops by whatever means possible and catholic women fraternising with British soldiers are considered traitors. When her parents Nora and Frank find out they are content to let her continue providing her relationship is kept discrete and low-key. As inter-faith bad feeling intensifies meetings between the Tomelty's and McCullum's become impossible and Nora misses her best friend Meg McCullum. Nora defies the bigoted upholders of the religious divide and goes round to see Meg. Nora wants Meg to join her in a small women's movement intent on trying to get the two sides to reach agreement through reason rather than violence and hatred. But Meg is too scared to join her and suggests they stop seeing each other for their own mutual safety. Then one day in the middle of the night British soldiers burst into the Tomelty home and arrest Frank on suspicion of being involved with the IRA and place him in detention. Nora knows he is innocent and the activists have spread false rumours against him as a way of getting back at her for trying to be conciliatory and friendly towards protestants. This turns Nora from easygoing pacifist into a hardnosed supporter overnight as she seeks to protect her family from further retribution - she forbids Donal to have any contact with Robbie and especially tells Maureen to cut off all contact with Reg. But as the time moves on Maureen and Reg continue to meet and eventually find a discreet room to rent for a night of passion together. They are found out by the local women and Maureen is hauled out onto the streets to be tarred and feathered for consorting with the enemy - the group is led by her mother who shows no mercy or compassion for her daughter and views her with disgust. The catholic women's group find out that their detained men are being transferred to another internment centre by the army and they form a roadblock to try and stop it and liberate their men. The army are in a quandary because they cannot shoot at the woman and children pelting them with stones. Donal climbs up onto the armoured truck and a young soldier rifle butts him down and this unfortunately kills him. Nora is so radicalised with hatred that rather than show grief at her son's death she seizes on the incident as a way to score a political point as she vows to carry the boy's body into town to show the world what the British army do to children. Maureen watches in horror at the goings on and manages to sneak a word with her still even-minded father Frank in the prison van whilst it is being delayed. Frank tells her he doesn't think it'll ever change here and advises her to get out - to leave Ireland with Reg and find a place where people are not out to murder each other all the time in Jesus' name. As the story ends Nora is heading into town with her women and Reg and Maureen are driving away.

Writer: Brian Clemens / Director: John Hough / Producer: Ron Miller
Type: Ghost Story	Running Time: 79 mins
An American family with a British father move to England and rent a large mansion in the country from an old woman called Mrs Aylwood who herself lives alone in an adjacent cottage. The family consist of mother Helen, father Paul and their two daughters, teenager Jan and her younger sister Ellie. The secluded mansion borders some woods and Jan immediately gets an eerie feeling of being watched and has a strange vision in a mirror of a blindfolded girl. Ellie too is affected and hears voices and both daughters are clearly sensitive to something mysterious in the area. When they get a puppy Ellie names it Nerak because a voice told her too. Nerak is "Karen" spelt backwards and Karen was the name of Mrs Aylwood's daughter who 30 years ago went missing in a mystery that has never been solved. Jan manages to piece together what went on 30 years ago. Karen had been a teenager who with three friends, Mary, Tom and John, had been playing in a disused chapel in the woods enacting a mock-demonic ceremony to initiate a blindfolded Karen into their gang as test of her courage. The time of the ceromony was purposely chosen because a forecast lunar eclipse added to the atmospheric significance of the ritual. During the ceremony a storm was raging and lightning hit the belfry and with a blinding flash of light the massive bell crashed down on to the platform that Karen was standing upon. However when the debris was cleared no trace of her body could be found. To this day, the horror of those events still haunt the three friends who all still live in the area. Ellie becomes prone to sleepwalking and in her trance-like state leaves cryptic messages saying that she needs to be saved and that the event must be repeated before it is too late. Jan thinks they are somehow messages from Karen whose ghost is haunting them and wants them to do something to release her - but Jan cannot figure out what it is. When Jan finds out a solar eclipse is due she realises that the messages are telling her the action must be taken during that time. Jan manages to persuade the three former friends to return to the chapel and re-enact the ceremony in which Jan will stand in as Karen. The ceremony begins and Ellie becomes possessed by the spirit who explains that it is an entity from a planet in another dimension who was accidentally transferred here 30 years ago by the celestial configurations and swapped places with Karen just before the bell fell. Conditions are now right for the process to be reversed. And as the ritual continues the blinding flash reoccurs and the entity vanishes and is replaced by Karen who is still a young girl unchanged by the passage of 30 years. Her mother welcomes her back in a tearful reunion.

Writer: Michael Pittock / Director: John Gilling / Producer: James Ward
Type: Action	Running Time: 85 mins
A scientist has created a revolutionary light metal alloy called Spurrium that efficiently absorbs radiation - a thin slice of which has the same absorption characteristics previously only obtainable with thick and heavy lead casing. This has made small mobile nuclear reactors practicable propositions and the first of these has been installed in a Dakota aircraft for a test flight. The Spurrium alloy is of great interest to enemy powers and a determined effort is made to hijack the plane in mid-flight and fly it to Russia. The RAF are forced to shoot the aircraft down to prevent it falling into enemy hands. Top British agent Charles Vine is assigned the task of making sure the Spurrium formula remains secure. The Russians have engaged the services of a criminal consortium in Britain called International Exports. It is run by a man named Angel whose special agent Seraph he has tasked with getting hold of a sample of the new metal. Seraph discovers where the metal is being manufactured and using false identification papers manages to obtain a sample. Seraph is later killed and Vine manages to recover the stolen sample. Angel is put under pressure by the Russians to deliver the promised "goods" and so he and his gang make an all out ruthless effort to seize the second prototype aircraft from Birley Airfield. Angel and his pilot manage to commandeer the aircraft and plan to fly it away to a secret destination. Charles Vine is on hand and manages to jump aboard just before they take-off and has a mid-flight fight out with Angel. Vine manages to kill the enemy agent and regain control of the aircraft just in time before the order to scramble the warplanes to shoot it down has to be given.

Writer/Director: David Leland / Producer: Sarah Radclyffe
Type: Drama	Running Time: 88 mins
In a south coast seaside town in the late 1940s Lynda Mansell is a teenager whose rebellious attitude is at odds with the austere times. She has a sunny disposition but is wilful with a bright-line in artful backchat and entirely unmindful of her language. Her widowed father Hubert despairs at her behaviour which causes her to stand out as a constant source of embarrassment to him. Now Lynda is older she is beginning to discover a liking for boys and has a frank liberated attitude to chat-up rituals that undermine regular conventions of social courtship. She is sensible and always makes the lads she dates take precautions - however the young lads are always in such a rush and Lynda finds things a bit unsatisfactory. She loves the attention that her exhibitionist tendencies bring her but it makes her father fear for her sanity and he takes her to a psychiatrist to try and find out why she has no normal inhibitions. The specialist believes that the trauma of her mother's early death when Lynda was 11 may be at the root of Lynda's problems but her father cannot afford the treatment which would be required to continue - so he just decides to let things run their course hoping that maybe she'll grow out of it. One of Hubert's friends called Eric is a sleazy creep in his 50s who works as a cinema projectionist. He has a liking for young girls and sets out to opportunistically seduce Lynda. Although Lynda finds Eric repellent she eventually lets him have sex with her because as a more experienced man he is likely to take the proper amount of time with her to do it properly. He declines to use protection however claiming it is not necessary because he knows what he's doing. Lynda's father finds out what she's been doing and lets her know how disappointed he is in her. So she leaves home and goes to stay with Eric in his seedy little apartment. But she hates it there and soon leaves to go and work as a waitress in some tearooms and share a flat with a girlfriend. She discovers she is pregnant by Eric but refuses to go back to him even when he begs her. Her aunt advises her that as an unmarried girl she should have the baby terminated at a back street abortionist or certainly have it adopted as soon as it is born. But true to her individualistic unconventional self, Lynda decides to have the baby and keep it and she takes great delight in wheeling her baby proudly around town in her breezy confident manner caring not two-hoots what anyone may think. THE END

Writers: Larry Gelbart, Burt Shevelove / Director/Producer: Bryan Forbes
Type: Comedy	Running Time: 101 mins
In the early 1900s a special trust fund known as a tontine is created for the twenty young sons of the extended Finsbury family into which each parent places £1000. The tontine is a long-term lottery scheme in which the original £20,000 and any growth will be inherited by whichever boy is the last surviving. In the years that go by the various participating cousins and brothers grow up into men and gradually begin to die through war or accident until we reach the present day (1966) when only two remain alive. They are brothers Masterman and Joseph Finsbury and are both now in their twilight years. Masterman lives in London with his earnest but naïve-minded nephew Michael. Masterman is sickly and on the verge of death and asks that Joseph be sent for. Joseph lives in Bournemouth with his two nephews Morris and John. The two nephews are determined that they will benefit from the tontine via their uncle and shield him from any possible harm so that he will outlive his brother. They are delighted when they receive the telegraph announcing Masterman's imminent demise and sense victory in their sights. But their train to London crashes while Joseph is visiting the toilet cubicle and in the aftermath the nephews think Uncle Joseph has been killed when they see a mutilated body wearing his coat. What they don't know is that a stranger had stolen Joseph's coat and it is the thief's body they have found. Morris and John are determined to keep the death secret until Masterman has died so they can claim Joseph died afterwards. They crate up the body and send it to Joseph's London address which is next door to Masterman's. Their eventual intention is to make it seem Joseph fell down the stairs in shock upon hearing of his brother's death and so sustained his fatal injuries. At Joseph's London address lives Julia Finsbury who is Joseph's ward and she is secretly in love with her "cousin" Michael next-door and he vice-versa. Meanwhile, following the train crash, Joseph makes his own way to London and stays at his club. Masterman is in financial difficulties and has had to sell all his valuables. One buyer was not satisfied with a statue she bought and sends it back in a crate. Unfortunately that crate and the one with the dead body arrive on the same freight train and get delivered to the wrong addresses which adds to the upcoming confusion. It turns out that Masterman is not ill at all and has sent for Joseph so he can kill him and win the tontine to solve his money worries. Further farcical twists and turns ensue as circumstances contrive to make it seem that Masterman has died and Morris and John arrange a rush funeral for their uncle Joseph whose body they cannot now produce because they (unaccountably) have a statue instead. They manage to convince the solicitor that Joseph is dead with a bogus death certificate and get hold of the money which has accumulated to be worth £111,000. But Michael realises what has happened and gives chase in a slapstick finale in funeral hearses. In the end both uncles prove themselves to be still very much alive and Joseph decides that neither of them should have the money and it should go instead to his ward Julia and her soon-to-be-husband Michael. The scheming cousins Morris and John are left with nothing.
Comment: There are many twists and turns to this comedy farce that are too numerous to try and cram into the above description and keep it relatively coherent - but hopefully the essence of the story comes across.

Writers: Donald and Derek Ford / Director/Producer: Robert Hartford-Davis
Type: Drama	Running Time: 85 mins
Set in the present day (1963) at the Peterbridge New Town Grammar School for Girls. Anne Mason is a conscientious young science teacher who teaches biology to a class of 16-year-olds. A few of the girls have taken to wearing yellow teddy bear badges on their blazers which seems to be a harmless enough vogue. However the girls are not as innocent about sex as their parents and teachers would hope and suppose. They are into beatnik music and keen to go out with boys at dancing establishments and many feel under pressure to have sex and treat it as a rite of passage that ushers in their womanhood - they wear yellow teddy bears as a secret sign to indicate if they are no longer a virgin which earns a girl new respect among her classmates. Linda Donaghue is one such girl who has had many boyfriends including her latest, a cocky window cleaner called 'Kinky' Carson who is also lead singer in a beatnik group. Now, however, Linda has become pregnant and does not know who to turn to for help. She confides in an older friend called June Wilson who works as a prostitute and maintains friendships with the older schoolgirls so that they will come to her private parties where stripping sex games often ensue. June cautions Linda of the social stigma associated with having a baby whilst unmarried and says she will arrange for an abortion but hints that Linda may have to repay the cost of this with "favours" later on. At school Miss Mason discovers the significance of the yellow teddy bears and is shocked that the loss of ones virginity is considered a matter of boastful display - she gives her class a concerned lecture on how they should not treat sex so lightly and how it is meant be a wonderful thing with a man you love and not just a way of having cheap thrills. Linda's father finds out about his daughter's pregnancy and is furious. In his anger he decides she will not have the back-street abortion - she should not be allowed to get away with her crime so easily and having a child will serve her as a rightful punishment. Mr Donaghue also makes a formal complaint to the school, blaming them for teaching the sexual aspects of biology and putting ideas into his daughter's head. In view of this complaint the school governors convene a meeting to discuss it. Miss Mason is called to the meeting to explain her reasons for covering inappropriate topics in her lessons. She tries to explain to the older establishment figures that young people today are bombarded with adult images in advertising and films and become keen to experiment with sex themselves. Miss Mason puts across her view that rather than ignore this change in societal attitudes they should be educating the girls about responsible birth control as opposed to just telling them not to do it until they are married. However the governors believe that such instruction would simply hasten the onrush of promiscuity. They cannot see why they should change society so radically just to suit the needs of young people. In the end the meeting becomes judgmental upon Miss Mason's conduct and suitability as a teacher of teenage girls and she sees the way it is going and quits before she is fired.

Writer: John Whiting / Director: Jack Cardiff / Producers: Robert D. Graff, Robert Emmett Ginna
Type: Drama	Running Time: 107 mins
Set in Dublin, Ireland starting in the early 1900s. A young man called John Cassidy works hard to help support his impoverished family by doing labouring jobs. He lives with his mother and various siblings. Cassidy's main passion is for words and he reads all he can and writes down his own thoughts each evening. He has a friend called Mick Mullen who persuades him to join the fledgling Irish Citizen Army whose ambitious aim is to drive the occupying English forces out of Ireland. Cassidy's role is to write stirring propaganda literature to distribute at rally's. However the well-meaning recruits are badly organised and the leaders seem more interested in obtaining smart uniforms than waging a serious opposition. Cassidy soon decides to leave figuring they are not going to make any serious impact on the English. The ICA mount a riot but this is quickly quelled and the malcontents are rounded up. Cassidy meets a young woman called Nora who runs a bookshop and they begin a relationship. Cassidy begins to get articles printed in newspapers and eventually has a book about the Irish Citizen Army published. He has a bad period when his mother dies after which he moves in with Mick and begins work on a play called The Shadow of a Gunman which after several rewrites is accepted by Dublin's Abbey Theatre. The theatre owners, Lady Gregory and WB Yeats, realise that Cassidy's work is special and is saying something important about the political situation in Ireland. Yeats (who is himself a well-regarded and Nobel Prize winning playwright) nurtures Cassidy as a great emerging talent and encourages him to write more. Cassidy's bold and challenging writing about Irish society is hard for audiences to take and criticisms are sometimes scathing - but Yeats and Nora help Cassidy overcome these discouragements. A few years later when his play The Plough and the Stars opens, the audience riot finding the subject matter too raw to accept. Yeats knows that Cassidy has outgrown his small playhouse and is destined to become one of the greats of literature and all of the world's theatre houses now belong to him and his prodigious talent. With this endorsement Cassidy decides to leave Ireland. He wants to marry his sweetheart Nora and have her come with him on the his life-journey - but although Nora dearly loves him she knows she is just a simple girl who would not be able to adapt to the lofty world of fame he is destined for and she does not want him to limit himself for her sake. So she declines and Cassidy leaves Ireland alone to find his place in the world.
Comment: This film depicts the early life of the real playwright Sean O'Casey (1880-1964) who was a highly regarded Irish playwright. It is not clear why the film changes his name but the other factual content (such as the names of the plays he wrote) seem to tally. The above description reflects a broad sweep of what goes on in the film rather than a potted-biography of the actual playwright's life. The film does not signpost any dates and the lead actor Rod Taylor looks the same throughout so it is not clear how young he is supposed to be when the film begins. Time moves on during the film considerably but the only anchor is the opening date of his first play which is seen on a billboard poster (April 9th 1923). The end of the film shows Cassidy leaving Ireland which would have been 1926 when the real O'Casey left for England. O'Casey went on to have a distinguished career writing many more plays over the next few decades.

Writer/Producer: Carl Foreman / Director: Richard Attenborough
Type: Drama	Running Time: 136 mins
Young Winston Churchill (born 1874) is the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and his American wife Lady Jennie. His father is a politician and his mother is dedicated to helping her husband fulfil his ambitions to rise to the very top. Consequently Winston feels neglected and this feeling is augmented when he is 7 and packed off to a harsh boarding school. Winston has a tough time and struggles academically finding examinations particularly difficult. His father rises to become Chancellor of the Exchequer but then later resigns on a matter of high principal when he feels the government is spending too much on the military. His political career is effectively over and his former friends shun him. By now Winston is aged 13 and due to his poor academic record his father decides his only course is to join the army. Winston finds the entrance exams to Sandhurst difficult and only makes sufficient grade to become a cavalryman. When his father dies young at the age of 46 of a degenerative brain disease Winston decides to buckle down and achieve something to vindicate his father's memory. Winston has discovered he has a talent for writing and becomes an army correspondent while attached to a unit in a war in India. Despite his status as an onlooker he nevertheless becomes involved in the fighting and is mentioned in despatches for an act of bravery. He returns to England and decides to run for parliament as candidate for Oldham but is beaten in the election. He therefore goes to South Africa to work as a correspondent reporting on the Boer war. His newspaper reports make his a well-known name. He is then captured and becomes a POW in Pretoria and subsequently escapes and goes on the run and his exploits become a worldwide news story giving him a celebrity status. When he returns to England he once again runs for parliament and this time he wins the seat and become a Conservative MP. He builds up a reputation for making well-reasoned speeches. After a year (and 15 years after his father's resignation on the same issue) Winston makes a speech revisiting his father's strong held views about Britain's over-militarisation even though he knows it will make an enemy out of the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury. His speech about Britain's responsibility as a moral force who should not pursue warfare is well argued but unwelcome. He is good friends with the leader of the Liberal party Lloyd George who tells him that his party will always welcome him should the Conservative party turn against him. This is about where the film ends in the very early 1900s with Winston in his mid-20s and does not explore any more of the ups-and-downs of his long distinguished career to come.

Coming Soon
The following is a list of films that are soon to be reviewed
Aces High (1976)
Adolf Hitler - My Part in His Downfall (1972)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972)
All the Way Up (1970)
The Americanization of Emily (1964)
And Now for Something Completely Different (1971)
Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
Are You Being Served? (1977)
Aria (1987)
The Beauty Jungle (1964)
Les Bicyclettes De Belsize (1969)
Black Christmas (1974)
The Blood of Hussain (1981)
Bloodstream (1985)
The Blue Max (1966)
The Body Beneath (1970)
Boom (1968)
Brannigan (1975)
Britannia Hospital (1982)
Brother Sun Sister Moon (1972)
Callan (1974)
Carry on Abroad (1972)
Carry on Henry (1971)
Carry on Loving (1970)
Carry on Matron (1972)
A Challenge for Robin Hood (1967)
Clash of the Titans (1981)
The Collector (1965)
Conduct Unbecoming (1975)
Crooks in Cloisters (1964)
Daddy (1973)
The Day of the Triffids (1962)
Darker Than Amber (1970)
Dark of the Sun (1968)
A Day at the Beach (1970)
Deadlier Than the Male (1966)
Death May Be Your Santa Claus (1969)
Deceptions (1985)
De Sade (1969)
Doctor In The House (1954)
Don't Open Till Christmas (1984)
Double Exposure (1976)
The Double Man (1967)
Dracula Prince of Darkness (1966)
Drum (1976)
During One Night (1961)
Dutch Girls (1985)
The Dwarf (1973) (aka Dværgen)
Dyn Amo (1972)
The Eagle Has Landed (1976)
Educating Rita (1983)
Endless Night (1971)
Escape To Athena (1979)
Every Afternoon (1972) (aka Swedish Wildcats)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)
The Fast Kill (1972)
Fear Is the Key (1972)
Fiend Without A Face (1958)
Find The Lady (1976)
The First Great Train Robbery (1979)
Flight of the Doves (1971)
The Four of the Apocalypse... (1975)
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
The Great Riviera Bank Robbery (1979) (aka Sewers of Gold)
The Guardian (1990)
Hammerhead (1968)
The Hand of Death (1988)
Hannie Caulder (1971)
Hell Boats (1970)
Hello-Goodbye (1970)
The Hireling (1973)
Hoffman (1970)
Hot Enough for June (1964)
Hot Millions (1968)
Hotel Paradiso (1966)
The House Where Evil Dwells (1982)
In Search of Gregory (1969)
Inspector Clouseau (1968)
The Internecine Project (1974)
Invasion (1966)
Invitation to Hell (1982)
Island of Death (1975)
Island of Terror (1966)
It Happened Here (1965)
Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
Kidnapped (1971)
The Killer's Playground (1976)
Krull (1983)
Lady Caroline Lamb (1972)
The Lady Vanishes (1979)
The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
The Last Grenade (1970)
The Last Night (1983)
Legend of a Hero (1986)
Legend of the Werewolf (1975)
Lifeforce (1985)
The Liquidator (1965)
Living Doll (1990)
Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971)
The London Nobody Knows (1967)
Loot (1970)
Lord of the Flies (1963)
Mahler (1974)
Mandingo (1975)
The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
Maniac (1963)
Mary Queen of Scots (1971)
A Matter of WHO (1961)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Molly Maguires (1970)
Monte Carlo Or Bust (1969)
The Nanny (1965)
Nearest and Dearest (1972)
Necromancy (1972) (aka The Witching)
Ned Kelly (1970)
Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (1960)
The Night Caller (1965)
Night of the Big Heat (1967)
A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (1979)
The Night Porter (1974)
Nothing But the Best (1964)
Nude... si muore (1968)
Oliver! (1968)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1970)
Only Two Can Play (1962)
The Orchard End Murder (1980)
Outland (1981)
Overlord (1975)
Paranoiac (1963)
The Party's Over (1965)
The Passage (1979)
The Passenger (1975)
Paul Raymond's Erotica (1981)
The Pink Panther (1963)
Play It Cool (1962)
The Pornbrokers (1973)
Power Play (1978)
The Pumpkin Eater (1964)
Radio On (1980)
Ransom (1975)
Rasputin The Mad Monk (1966)
Rawhead Rex (1986)
Rentadick (1972)
The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
The Riddle of the Sands (1979)
Run a Crooked Mile (1969)
Ryan's Daughter (1970)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)
Saturn 3 (1980)
Second Sight (1992)
The Secret of My Success (1965)
Secret Places (1984)
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)
Shout at the Devil (1976)
The Shuttered Room (1967)
Silver Bears (1977)
Some Girls Do (1969)
Spasmo (1974)
Spy Story (1976)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
Stevie (1978)
The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (1977)
Suffer Little Children (1983)
Summer Holiday (1963)
Swallows and Amazons (1974)
Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)
Symphony of Love (1978)
The Tempest (1979)
Tendre Dracula (1974)
The Terror of Dr. Hichcock (1962)
Theatre of Death (1966)
This Is My Street (1963)
This Sporting Life (1963)
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)
The Time Machine (1960)
Tom Jones (1963)
Too Late the Hero (1970)
Torment (1990)
Torso (1973)
To Sir with Love (1967)
The Trap (1966)
Three Dangerous Ladies (1977)
Tuxedo Warrior (1982)
12 + 1 (1969)
Two A Penny (1967)
A Walk with Love and Death (1969)
Warlords of Atlantis (1978)
The War Lover (1962)
West 11 (1963)
Where Eagles Dare (1968)
Where Has Poor Mickey Gone? (1964)
Wonderwall (1968)
X The Unknown (1956)
Zeppelin (1971)

RARE BRITISH FILM REVIEWS
A	B	C	D	E - F	G - H
I - L	M - N	O - R	S	T	U - Z

Starring:	Gene Wilder (as Sigerson Holmes), Marty Feldman (as Orville Sacker), Madeline Kahn (as Jenny Hill), Leo McKern (as Professor Moriarty)
Featuring:	Roy Kinnear (as Moriarty's Assistant), Douglas Wilmer (as Sherlock Holmes), Thorley Walters (as Dr Watson), Dom De Luise (as Eduardo Gambetti, blackmailer), John Le Mesurier (as Lord Redcliff, foreign secretary)
Familiar Faces:	Nicholas Smith (as Sigerson's butler), Julian Orchard (as Music hall actor), Albert Finney (as Man in audience, [cameo appearance])

Starring:	Vanessa Redgrave (as Agatha Christie), Dustin Hoffman (as Wally Stanton, American reporter), Timothy Dalton (as Colonel Archibald Christie, Agatha's husband), Helen Morse (as Evelyn Crawley, hotel guest), Celia Gregory (as Nancy Neele, Archie's secretary and mistress), Timothy West (as Deputy Chief Constable Kenward)
Featuring:	Carolyn Pickles (as Charlotte Fisher, Agatha's secretary), Paul Brooke (as John Foster, reporter), Yvonne Gilan (as Mrs Braithwaite, Royal Baths' therapist), Tony Britton (as William Collins, Agatha's book publisher)

Starring:	Warren Mitchell (as Alf Garnett), Dandy Nichols (as Else Garnett, his wife), Adrienne Posta (as Rita, his daughter), Paul Angelis (as Mike, Rita's husband), John Le Mesurier (as Ronald Frewin, Alf's neighbour)
Featuring:	Patsy Byrne (as Mrs Frewin, Ronald's wife), Tom Chadbon (as Jim, Mike's friend)
Familiar Faces:	(single scene appearances) Roy Kinnear (as Wally, Alf's workmate), John Bird (as Willis, Alf's neighbour), Roy Hudd (as Milkman), Joan Sims (as Gran, Else's mother), Derek Griffiths (as Rex, drug dealer)
Star-Turns:	(as themselves): Kenny Lynch , Eric Sykes, Arthur Askey, Max Bygraves, Bobby Moore, George Best
Starlets:	Margaret Heald and Patricia Quinn (as Mike and Jim's birds), Cleo Sylvestre (as Bus Conductress), Julie Ege (as Herself in Alf's drug-induced vision, [non-speaking cameo])

NOTES:
•	Based on the popular BBC sitcom entitled Till Death Us Do Part that was made and set in the 1960s and 1970s. There were 54 episodes from 1965 to 1975. The series came back on ITV for 6 episodes in 1981 entitled Till Death .... And then the characters were revived on the BBC again for a further 47 episodes in a series entitled In Sickness and in Health from 1985 to 1992.
•	This was the second spin-off film from the TV series - the first one was Till Death Us Do Part (1969). That first film used the full TV cast - however this second film recast the parts of Alf's daughter and son-in-law as originally played by Una Stubbs and Anthony Booth.
•	The celebrities featured are playing themselves and appear in acting roles interacting with Alf and co. Politicians Edward Heath and Harold Wilson are seen as well but those two are spliced in from archive footage.

NOTES:
•	Agatha Christie really did go missing in 1926 for eleven days with no memory of her movements when she returned. However this film is a purely fictional imagining of what happened during those days. Agatha and her husband were divorced two years later and he married Nancy Neele.

Starring:	David Hemmings (as Alfred), Michael York (as Guthrum, leader of the Danish warriors), Prunella Ransome (as Aelhswith, Alfred's wife), Colin Blakely (as Asher, a monk), Ian McKellen (as Roger, leader of the bandits that Alfred joins)
Featuring:	Peter Vaughan (as Burrud, King of Mercia, father of Aelhswith), Sinéad Cusack (as Edith, Aelhswith's lady in waiting), Alan Dobie (as Ethelred, Alfred's elder brother), Julian Glover (as Shrdlu), Vivien Merchant (as Freda, Roger's woman), Julian Chagrin (as Ivar, Danish warrior)
Familiar Faces:	Christopher Timothy (Nobleman), Robin Askwith (Shepherd, [cameo non-speaking part, he sees the Danes arrive in opening scene])

Starring:	Christopher Lee (as Alquazar, evil wizard), Oliver Tobias (as Prince Hasan), Puneet Sira (as Majeed, young Arab boy), Emma Samms (as Princess Zuleira)
Featuring:	John Wyman (as Bahloul, Alquazar's guard), Mickey Rooney (as Daad El Shur, Keeper of the Rose), Milo O'Shea (as Khasim, Alquazar's assassin)
Star-Turns:	Peter Cushing (as Wazir Al Wuzara, former leader, [small role])
Starlets:	Capucine (as Vahishta, female genie of the jewel), Suzanne Danielle (as Eastern Dancer, [one scene, non-speaking cameo])

Starring:	Gillian Hills (as Jennifer Linden), David Farrar (as Paul Linden, Jennifer's father), Noëlle Adam (as Nichole, Paul's new wife), Christopher Lee (as Kenny King, strip club manager)
Featuring:	(Jennifer's beatnik friends) Adam Faith (as Dave), Shirley-Ann Field (as Dodo), Peter McEnery (as Tony), Delphi Lawrence (as Greta, Kenny's girlfriend, [Uncredited, although she has a featured role]), Nigel Green (as Strip Club stage manager), Norman Mitchell (as Strip Club Doorman)
Familiar Faces:	Oliver Reed (as Band member, [small role only])
Starlets:	Claire Gordon (as Honey, auditioning stripper, [role reduced to non-speaking in shorter version]), Pascaline (as Strip Club Dancer, [edited out of shorter version])

NOTES:
•	Made in Black and White
•	Gillian Hills receives an "introducing" credit
•	Two versions were reviewed - the full 88 minute version and an edited 78 minute version. The shorter version cuts out the racier scenes and dialogue - and with all nudity removed the editing of the climatic murder scene becomes a rushed muddle because it was originally intercut with a topless stripper who stops performing when she hears the screams coming from the back office - and so there is nothing to fill the "gaps" in the office action when these bits are expurgated.

Starring:	Christopher Lee (as Fu Manchu), Richard Greene (as Nayland Smith), Howard Marion Crawford (Dr Petrie, Smith's friend), Tsai Chin (as Lin Tang, daughter of Fu Manchu) Götz George (as Carl Jansen, explorer), Maria Rohm (as Ursula Wagner, doctor), Ricardo Palacios (as Sancho Lopez, bandit leader)
Featuring:	Marcelo Arroita-Jáuregui (as San Cristobel's Governor), Shirley Eaton (as Fu Manchu's London agent, [short one-scene cameo, although listed on credits as a Guest Star])
Starlets:	(Fu Manchu's female agents) Loni von Friedl (as Celeste, sent to infect Smith), Isaura de Oliveira (as Yuma, sent to lure Sancho Lopez), Frances Khan (as Carmen, tasked to kill Sancho Lopez)

NOTES:
•	Based on the characters created by Sax Rohmer
•	This was the fourth in a series of five 1960's Fu Manchu films starring Christopher Lee. Each also featured Tsai Chin as his daughter and Howard Marion Crawford as Dr Petrie the friend of Fu Manchu's greatest opponent Nayland Smith. The role of Smith himself was played by three different actors - Nigel Green played him in the first film, next Douglas Wilmer for two films and then Richard Greene for the final two. The sequence of the five films were as follows:- The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969).

Starring:	Virginia McKenna (as Joy Adamson), Bill Travers (as George Adamson)
Featuring:	Geoffrey Keen (as Kendall, District Commissioner), Peter Lukoye (as Nuru, houseman), Omar Chambati (as Makkede, game scout)

NOTES:
•	This was a true story based on the book by Joy Adamson
•	There was a follow-up film called Living Free (1972) which starred a recast Nigel Davenport and Susan Hampshire as the Adamsons. Geoffrey Keen and Peter Lukoye resumed their roles.
•	American television made a 13-episode adventure series based on the story of George and Joy Adamson - called "Born Free" in 1974 starring Gary Collins and Diana Muldaur as the Adamsons. Peter Lukoye continued to play the part of Nuru as he had in both films

Director/Producer: Ringo Starr
Type: Music	Running Time: 61 mins
A presentation of concert performances by top-selling glam rock pop group T-Rex fronted by lead singer Marc Bolan. The songs are played out in full without any frills and are often longer concert versions. There are also a couple of specially staged songs shot on location like pop videos - all interspersed with occasional light-hearted linking scenes. It is not a documentary with narration or interviews or attempts to chart the history of the band or portray any behind-the-scenes glimpses into the band's life of the road. It was made and released while T-Rex were still at the height of their fame and is not a retrospective release following Marc Bolan's death in 1977.

Starring:	Laurence Olivier (as Ezra Lieberman, Nazi hunter), Gregory Peck (as Dr Josef Mengele), James Mason (as Eduard Seibert, Nazi chief)
Featuring:	Lilli Palmer (as Esther Lieberman, Ezra's sister), Steven Guttenberg (as Barry Kohler, young journalist in Paraguay), John Rubinstein (as David Bennett, friend of Barry), Denholm Elliott (as Sidney Beynon, intelligence chief), Rosemary Harris (as Mrs Doring, clone mother), John Dehner (as Henry Wheelock, clone father), Anne Meara (Mrs Curry, clone mother), Michael Gough (as Mr Harrington, clone father), Richard Marner (as Mr Doring, clone father), Prunella Scales (as Mrs Harrington, clone mother), Jeremy Black (as Clones, [Same actor playing all the various clones seen]), Uta Hagen (as Frieda Maloney, adoption agent), Bruno Ganz (as Professor Bruckner, clone specialist)
Starlets:	Linda Hayden (as Nancy, lodger at Harrington house)

Starring:	Marc Bolan and T-Rex Ringo Starr (guest drummer), Elton John (guest pianist)
Familiar Faces:	Geoffrey Bayldon (as Waiter in location shoot)

NOTES:
•	Based on the novel by Ira Levin
•	Jeremy Black receives an "introducing" credit

Starring:	Christopher Lee (as Fu Manchu), Douglas Wilmer (as Nayland Smith), Howard Marion Crawford (as Dr Petrie, Smith's friend), Tsai Chin (as Lin Tang, daughter of Fu Manchu)
Featuring:	Heinz Drache (as Franz Baumer, German research chemist who aids Smith in investigations), Marie Versini (as Marie Lentz, fiancée of Franz, prisoner of Fu Manchu), Rupert Davies (as Jules Merlin, scientist, father of Michel), Kenneth Fortescue (as Sergeant Spicer, detective), Harald Leipnitz (as Nikki Sheldon, Fu Manchu's agent), Roger Hanin (as Inspector Pierre Grimaldi, French detective), Joseph Fürst (as Otto Lentz, engineer, father of Marie), Carole Gray (as Michel Merlin, daughter of Jules, prisoner of Fu Manchu), Burt Kwouk (as Feng, Fu Manchu's scientist)
Starlets:	Wendy Gifford (as Louise, Merlin's secretary), Danni Sheridan (as Shiva, prisoner who is killed by Fu Manchu as an example to the others)

NOTES:
•	Based on the characters created by Sax Rohmer
•	This was the second in a series of five 1960's Fu Manchu films starring Christopher Lee. Each also featured Tsai Chin as his daughter and Howard Marion Crawford as Dr Petrie the friend of Fu Manchu's greatest opponent Nayland Smith. The role of Smith himself was played by three different actors - Nigel Green played him in the first film, next Douglas Wilmer for two films and then Richard Greene for the final two. The sequence of the five films were as follows:- The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969).

Starring:	David Birney (as Bowman), Charlotte Rampling (as Lila), Michel Lonsdale (as Duc de Croyter), Michael Bryant (as Zuger, scientist)
Featuring:	Marcel Bozzuffi (as Henri Czerda, French ranch owner), Marianne Eggerickx (as Cecile, Croyter's daughter), Françoise Brion (as Stella, gypsy woman), Serge Marquand (as Ferenc, killer)

NOTES:
•	Based on the novel by Alistair MacLean; adapted by Joseph Forest
•	The version reviewed was an edited television daytime broadcast lasting 89 mins with the nudity removed and perhaps some violence - hence the approximation of running time. The scene that includes Charlotte Rampling's nudity has been viewed separately from a different source and would add less than a minute to the running time - it is not known how much may or may not have been excised for violence.

NOTES:
•	Based on the characters created by Sax Rohmer
•	The control room climax of this film when the equipment goes into overload and Fu Manchu and Lin Tang escape are scenes directly reused from The Brides of Fu Manchu. Burt Kwouk is seen in these shots as he was a featured actor in the earlier film although he is not credited for this film.
•	This was the last in a series of five 1960's Fu Manchu films starring Christopher Lee. Each also featured Tsai Chin as his daughter and Howard Marion Crawford as Dr Petrie the friend of Fu Manchu's greatest opponent Nayland Smith. The role of Smith himself was played by three different actors - Nigel Green played him in the first film, next Douglas Wilmer for two films and then Richard Greene for the final two. The sequence of the five films were as follows:- The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969).

Starring:	David Hemmings (as Charlie Muffin), Ian Richardson (as Sir Henry Cuthbertson), Sam Wanamaker (as Ruttgers, CIA's London chief), Pinkas Braun (as Valery Kalenin, KGB general)
Featuring:	Clive Revill (as Alexi Berenkov, imprisoned traitor), Jennie Linden (as Edith, Charlie's wife), Donald Churchill (as Wilberforce, Sir Henry's personal assistant), Rohan McCullough (as Janet, Sir Henry's secretary), Christopher Godwin (as Snare, MI6 agent), Tony Mathews (as Harrison, MI6 agent), Shane Rimmer (as Braley, CIA operative)
Star-Turns:	Ralph Richardson (as Sir Archibald Willoughby, retired spy, [one scene cameo])

NOTES:
•	Based on the novel by Brian Freemantle
•	This was a TV movie made by Euston Films

Writer: Bernie Friedburg / Director/Producer: Francis Searle
Type: Comedy	Running Time: 27 mins
While working in London as a barman Bernie Lewis witnesses his club manager being shot dead by a protection racketeer called Ronaldo. Bernie quickly scarpers and heads off to Manchester where his friend and agent Tim Baxter is based. Ronaldo and his henchman Max discover where Bernie has gone and follow. Bernie is in fear of his life and so Tim suggests that he "hide" by utilising his skills as a former drag-act artiste and pretend he is a woman. Bernie becomes "Bunny" and gets a job at a nightclub standing in for an absentee member of a group of all-girl musicians. He has to share a bedroom with two of the girls without them realising he is really a man and also contend with a over-amorous club manager who fancies his chances with "her". Eventually Ronaldo and Max realise how Bernie has eluded them and try to nab him at the club - but luckily an off-duty police inspector is on-hand and arrests the villains.

Starring:	Bunny Lewis (as Bernie Lewis), Tim Barrett (as Tim Baxter, Bernie's agent), James Beck (as Sidney, Manchester club manager), Pat Coombs (as Sidney's wife)
Featuring:	(characters not known) John Scarborough, Bill Pilkington, Rex Arundel, Robert Morton, Knox Crighton, Jackie Carlton, Tommy Mann, John Robbins, Allan Deutrom, Robert West, Norman McGlen
Familiar Faces:	Bernard Manning (as Himself/comedian, [cameo, billed as "Special Guest Star"]), also similarly billed was comedian Colin Crompton although he was not such an enduring personality
Starlets:	Valerie Leigh, Liz Lax, Beverley Stevens, Stephanie Waite, Sue Dexter (in any order:- London Waitress; Gloria, girl band manager; Joyce and Audrey, Bunny's girl band roommates; Jenny, Tim's secretary)

NOTES:
•	It is a slight crime drama with a few comedic elements, but I have classed it as a "Comedy" rather than a "Crime Drama" so as not to lend it too much gravitas

Starring:	Laurence Harvey (as Alexander Eberlin), Tom Courtenay (as Gatiss, British agent), Mia Farrow (as Caroline, Eberlin's girlfriend), Lionel Stander (as Sobakevich, Russian spymaster), Peter Cook (as Prentiss, British operative in West Berlin)
Featuring:	Per Oscarsson (as Pavel, Eberlin's Russian handler in London), Harry Andrews (as Fraser, MI5 boss), John Bird (as Henderson, Russian operative in Berlin), Norman Bird (as Copperfield, British operative), Richard O'Sullivan (as Nevil, Caroline's assistant), Barbara Murray (as Miss Vogler, Eberlin's secretary), Elspeth March (as Lady Hetherington, Caroline's mother)
Familiar Faces:	(in small roles) Geoffrey Bayldon (as Lake, private secretary/butler at MI5 HQ), Mike Pratt (as Russian man)

Starring:	Richard Johnson (as Jonas Wilde, British agent), Carol Lynley (as Jocelyn, Wilde's girlfriend), Barbara Bouchet (as Mari, Ravenspur's assistant), Sylvia Syms (as Barbara Canning, wife of Wilde's boss), Gordon Jackson (as Brian Stern, Wilde's associate and business partner), Sam Wanamaker (as 'Lucinda', CIA agent)
Featuring:	Maurice Denham (as Peter Ravenspur, Wilde's associate in Jersey), Diana Dors (as Rhoda Goodrich, mansion housekeeper), Harry Andrews (as Tony Canning, Wilde's boss), Robin Bailey (as Parsons, mansion butler), Julian Chagrin (as Jack Matsys, Brian's accomplice)

NOTES:
•	Additional material by Robert Stewart; from the novel The Eliminator by Andrew York

Starring:	James Mason (as Charles Dobbs), Harry Andrews (as Inspector Mendel, CID), Simone Signoret (as Elsa Fennan, widow of suspected traitor), Harriet Andersson (as Ann Dobbs, Charles' wife)
Featuring:	Maximilian Schell (as Dieter Frey, Russian friend of Dobbs), Kenneth Haigh (as Bill Appleby, Dobbs' office colleague), Roy Kinnear (as Adam Scarr, garage owner), Max Adrian (as Adviser, Dobbs' boss, nickname 'Marlene Dietrich'), Lynn Redgrave (as 'Virgin', theatre stagehand), Robert Flemyng (as Samuel Fennan, suspected traitor)

NOTES:
•	This film was based on a novel by John Le Carré titled Call For The Dead. The book's main protagonist was Le Carré's regular character George Smiley, but the name had to be changed for this film because the rights to use it were still tied up with another production company from when they had produced The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965).

Starring:	Mark Burns (as Dennis Parbury), Patsy Ann Noble (as Francesca), Shaun Curry (as Joe, Francesca's associate), Wanda Ventham (as Priscilla Blunstone-Smythe, Parbury's colleague)
Featuring:	Mark Singleton (as Costello, local head of police), William Dexter (as Malo, casino manager), Terence de Marney (as Jacomini, informant)
Familiar Faces:	Anita Harris (as Singer at casino, [one scene, no acting role])
Starlets:	Caron Gardner (as Mary, Joe's girlfriend)

NOTES:
•	Patsy Ann Noble receives an "introducing" credit

Starring:	William Sylvester (as Paul Baxter), Hubert Noël (as Count Sinistre), Diana Decker (as Madeleine Braun, cult follower), Tracy Reed (as Karen Steele, artist's model), Carole Gray (as Tania, Sinistre's wife)
Featuring:	Victor Brooks (as Inspector Hardwick, Scotland Yard), Rona Anderson (as Anne Forrest, Paul's girlfriend in France), Eddie Byrne (as Dr Robert Kelsey, Paul's scientist friend), Peter Illing (as French Police Inspector), Gerard Heinz (as French hotel manager), Geoffrey Kenion (as Keith Forrest, Anne's brother)