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SPOILER WARNING
The reviews on this page are typically of the type that
describe the plot in detail. So if you don't want to know then best avoid looking.
| Take a Girl Like You (1970) | Previous Next |
| Writer: George Melly / Director: Jonathan Miller / Producer: Hal E. Chester | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 94 mins |
| Set in the present day, young northern girl Jenny Bunn arrives in the South of England to take up a post as a primary school teacher. She lodges with Dick and Martha Thompson. Dick is a Labour councillor running for re-election and a bit of a lecher when it comes to his young female lodgers which his wife uncomfortably tolerates as long as he doesn't go to far.
Jenny meets Patrick Standish who is a fellow teacher at a nearby polytechnic. Patrick is a serial womaniser and immediately sets his sights on Jenny. But he finds his task complicated by her innocence and inexperience - he is astounded to learn she is still a virgin and would prefer to stay that way until she is in a committed relationship. He tries to convince her that in this day-and-age no one cares about that anymore. His attempts to placate her concerns about him fail and as she is introduced to a wider circle of his friends he finds he has serious competition for her affections in the person of rich playboy Julian Ormerod. Patrick's casual gallivanting behaviour with other women does nothing to convince her that he is committed to her but she eventually decides to fully commit herself to him and they arrange a date for the big moment. But his idle chit-chat to others of their plans reaches her ears and she believes this means he is just after her as another conquest and turns to Julian instead for her coming of age experience. | |
| Starring: | Hayley Mills (as Jenny Bunn), Oliver Reed (as Patrick Standish), Noel Harrison (as Julian Ormerod), John Bird (as Dick Thompson), Sheila Hancock (as Martha Thompson) |
| Familiar Faces: | John Fortune, Penelope Keith, Nicholas Courtney, Nerys Hughes |
| Starlets: | Aimi MacDonald, Geraldine Sherman, Imogen Hassall, Pippa Steel |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the novel by Kingsley Amis. |
| Take an Easy Ride (1976) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Derrick Slater / Director: Kenneth Rowles / Producers: Christopher Rowles, Kenneth Rowles | |
| Type: Drama / Sex | Running Time: 38 mins |
| The stated intention of this film is to warn of the perils of hitchhiking both from the motorist and passengers point of view and it tells the stories of several hitchhikers. The narratives are intercut but not interrelated in any way and the following summaries therefore describe each segment separately.
A) Anne and Mary are teenage girls who want to go to a Pop Festival. Mary's mother is reluctant to let her go but her father says she is old enough and gives her some money for the train fare. But Anne thinks it would be just as quick to hitchhike and then they can use the train fare as spending money. They get a lift from a man in an open top car who is a bit weird giving them porn mags to look at on the trip. When they get to the countryside he drives down a narrow lane and they realise they are in trouble and flee but he catches and brutally rapes them leaving Anne dead and Mary blinded. B) Suzanne is a Scandinavian girl travelling to see her soldier boyfriend at his base. She finds it easy to get lifts so prefers to be choosy, waiting for the right type of person who is not going to turn out to be a nutter. She accepts a lift from a married couple in their Rolls Royce and they seem very pleasant and personable and even treat her to a meal along the way. It is getting late and so the husband suggests they stop off at a hotel and continue on in the morning - all at his expense of course. Suzanne is in no special hurry so she agrees. But once in the room she discovers that the couple have planned this all along and want her to have sex with them both which she reluctantly goes along with. C) In a shorter piece, Pam and Ruth are bored and unprincipled young women who rob and take drugs. They hitch a lift from a male motorist and when they get to an isolated spot they stab him and steal his wallet. D) To balance things up and show that hitchhiking doesn't always end in tragedy or upset there is another story where a lorry driver gives a lift to two attractive young girls also heading off to a pop festival and they all get along fine and he drops them off where they want to go without incident. | |
| Featuring: | A) Helen Bernat (as Anne), Margaret Heald (as Mary), Derrick Slater (as Mary's father), Jeanne Field (as Mary's mother) B) Ina Skriver (as Suzanne), Alan Bone (as the Husband), Tara Lynn (as the Wife) C) Jenny Nevinson (as Pam), Stella Coley (as Ruth), Terry Francis (as their victim) D) Pauline Bates, Christianne (as the two Hitch Hikers), Charles Erskine (as Lorry Driver) |
| Tales From The Crypt (1972) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Various / Director: Freddie Francis / Producer: Max Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky | |
| Type: Horror / Anthology | Running Time: 90 mins |
| A tour guide is showing a group around some catacombs when five of the party become lost and find themselves in a crypt. A mysterious stranger asks them why they came to this place but they can't remember so he tells each in turn their story:-
Story 1 - "And All Through The House" - Joan Collins On Christmas Eve a wife murders her husband for his insurance policy payoff. But a dangerous escaped lunatic dressed as Santa Claus has ended up at her house and is trying to get in but she cannot call the police because of her husband's body. Eventually her young daughter lets "Santa" in and he proceeds to kill the wife. Story 2 - "Reflection of Death" - Ian Hendry A man and his mistress are both deserting their respective lives and running off to start a new life together. On the way they have a car accident and he seems to have survived but when he goes to his wife's house he finds that two years have passed and people have moved on thinking him dead - then he wakes in the car and it was a dream - and then the car crashes for real and he dies. Story 3 - "Poetic Justice" - Robin Phillips A man takes a dislike to his elderly neighbour who he believes is lowering the tone on the area - so he sets about ruining the man and hounds him into suicide. A year later the neighbour rises from his grave and kills him. Story 4 - "Wish You Were Here" - Richard Greene A couple in financial difficulties decide to sell their collection of antiques when they notice some strange markings on one old statuette which gives the owner three wishes. The wife tries and remarkably the first one comes true as she wishes for lots of money - but only via the death of her husband and receipt of his Assurance money. Devastated she tries to correct the situation with the other two wishes and bring him back to life but each wish is taken literally and lead to more tragedy. Story 5 - "Blind Alleys" - Nigel Patrick A heartless ex-army major takes over the running of a home for the blind and turns the lives of the residents hellish as he economises without any thought for their well-being. When one resident dies the residents take matters into their own hands and give the major a lesson in suffering. The five lost souls now realise they are dead and the crypt keeper opens another door leading them to hell where people who die without repentance are consigned for all eternity. | |
| Starring: | Ralph Richardson (as The Crypt Keeper), Joan Collins, Ian Hendry, Robin Phillips, Richard Greene, Nigel Patrick (as the Lost Souls) |
| Featuring: | (story 2) Angela Grant (Mistress), Susan Denny (Wife) (story 3) Peter Cushing (Neighbour), David Markham (story 4) Roy Dotrice (Solicitor), Barbara Murray (Wife) (story 5) Patrick Magee (Blind Man) |
| Familiar Faces: | Geoffrey Balydon (as The Tour Guide) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the comic book stories written by Johnny Craig, Al Feldstein, Bill Gaines, Milton Subotsky in the American comic books Tales From The Crypt and Vault of Horror |
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Ralph Richardson is credited as Sir Ralph Richardson |
| Writer: Jay Fairbank / Director: Freddie Francis / Producer: Norman Priggen | |
| Type: Horror / Anthology | Running Time: 89 mins |
| At the Department of Psychiatric Medicine within HM Prison commission, a visitor arrives to make an evaluation of the studies made of four special prisoner inmates whose bizarre cases have been thoroughly assessed by Dr Tremayne, the resident psychiatrist. Dr Tremayne believes he has made a remarkable breakthrough and that all the inmates stories are completely true and he has proof. First he introduces the four patients to his visitor and takes him through the details of their stories... (We then see each story - the first named character in these summaries is the patient)
Story 1 - Mr Tiger Paul Patterson is a young boy whose parents are constantly having arguments usually revolving around him and their differing views on his upbringing. His mother doesn't want Paul spoiled and keeps him at home to be home-tutored. But without friends Paul has invented an imaginary friend that he says is an actual tiger. Although they humour him at first, his mother is becoming ever more fraught that Paul keeps the pretence up to such an extent that he even steals meat from the fridge to feed his friend. Paul talks to his unseen pal when alone and gathers that the tiger doesn't like the parents much because of their continual bickering. When the parents have finally had enough they go to Paul's bedroom to try and make him understand that he can't possibly have a real tiger in his room - until it attacks them and mauls them both to death. And Paul appears not to be at all concerned as he carries on playing while all the bloodshed is going on around him. Story 2 - Penny Farthing Timothy is the owner of an antique shop who has just taken in a some Victorian belongings of an old uncle called Albert who was a distant relative of his. This includes a photo portrait which he hangs on the wall and a penny-farthing bicycle on its stand. Unseen by him the image in the photo appears to be alive and watching him. Suddenly Tim feels compelled to mount the bike and pedal and finds himself back in the past living the young life of Uncle Albert. Tim finds this a frightening experience and when he returns to the present he attempts to destroy the bike and photo but a fire starts and he still goes back into the past and his past self is horribly burnt leading the locals to think he was struck by lightening. And in the present Tim has gone mad thinking it was he who caused the death of Albert. Story 3 - Mel Brian is out jogging when he comes across part of a fallen tree that he thinks has great ornamental potential and much to his wife Bella's dismay brings it home and installs it in the living room. The tree section's trunk and various branches and offshoots give it an approximation of a human form and Brian names it "Mel" according to a carved inscription he finds on the side. He pays great attention to his acquisition and cleans it up and sands off the bark to give it a smooth skin-like appearance. When not observed the tree shows signs of being alive being able to move its "arms" which possess unsuspected retractable thorns - and it exhibits signs of bristling hostility when Bella gets too close to it. Bella hates the monstrosity that has invaded her room and becomes jealous of the attention her husband is paying to it like she might if he had a mistress. Bella decides Mel has to go and gets a machete and raises it to strike at the tree. We don't see the results of the encounter but Brian does when he comes in and directs a mild rebuke about why she had to go and do that - and he cleans up the mess and dumps it in the forest and then returns and goes to the bedroom - but in bed is not his wife waiting for him but the tree. Story 4 - Luau Auriol Pageant is a literary agent who is eagerly anticipating the arrival from Hawaii of a new client called Mr Kimo and his male assistant Keoki. She persuades her teenage daughter Ginny to help her make a good impression. We are aware that Kimo has made a promise to his elderly mother to help her spirit rest in peace by carrying out a certain unspecified ritual. When Kimo arrives Auriol finds him an attractive man but becomes displeased when he shows greater interest in Ginny and she is pleased that her daughter is off on holiday the next day. But Ginny has fallen for Kimo and before leaving he persuades her to make a secret rendezvous with him in the pool house. We discover Kimo's ritual requires the sacrifice of a maiden and he puts Ginny into a trance and kills her. Then Keoki uses butchery skills to prepare her as meat for a Hawaiian themed party that evening. And at the party amid much genuine ritualising that Auriol believes is just traditional playacting Kimo feeds her with the specially prepared meat of her own daughter whom she thinks is safely away on her holidays. Back to Link Story After relating the details of each case to his visitor Tremayne now is ready to offer up his proof that each story is true and not just the raving inventions of unbalanced minds. He assembles the four patients into a room and watches as they all go into a room to collect an item relating to their case. But his visitor sees nothing happening and regrettably concludes that Tremayne has also gone mad and has him carted away. He then wanders into the next room and is attacked by young Paul's tiger! | |
| Starring: | Link Scenes: Donald Pleasence (as Dr Tremayne), Jack Hawkins (as Dr Nicholas, the visitor) Story 1: Georgia Brown (as Fay Patterson, mother), Donald Houston (as Sam Patterson, father), Russell Lewis (as Paul Patterson, young son), David Wood (as Paul's home tutor) Story 2: Peter McEnery (as Timothy), Suzy Kendall (as Ann/Beatrice, present and past girlfriend), Frank Forsyth (as Uncle Albert photo) Story 3: Joan Collins (as Bella), Michael Jayston (as Brian) Story 4: Kim Novak (as Auriol Pageant), Michael Petrovitch (as Kimo), Mary Tamm (as Ginny, Auriol's daughter), Leon Lissek (as Keoki, Kimo's assistant) |
| Writer: Gerard Vaughan-Hughes / Director: Roddy McDowall / Producers: Alan Ladd Jr, Stanley Mann | |
| Type: Chiller | Running Time: 103 mins |
| A very rich woman in her late 40s called Mrs Michaela Cazaret lives in a country mansion near London where she surrounds herself with a group of young people who want to live a happy uncomplicated lifestyle. Michaela's immense wealth allows her to live her dreams which she shares and enjoys with the young people and is rewarded with the feeling of recapturing her youth amongst them. All her guests feel great feelings of loyalty, warmth and devotion towards her especially Tom Lynn who is her special favourite and shares her bed. Tom genuinely loves her and is not concerned that she is so much older than himself. Occasionally a guest might anger or disappoint Michaela and she will tell them they have to leave which devastates them as they tend to become emotionally dependant on her support.
A girl from the village called Janet Ainsley comes to the mansion to deliver a puppy that has been requested and is bewildered by the array of carefree fun-loving young people she sees. She wonders if the puppy will be properly looked after here or will just be treated as a passing novelty and with a change of heart she asks for a silly amount of money for it hoping for a refusal but Mrs Cazaret immediately agrees to pay what she is asking. Janet is a vicar's daughter who lives a quiet and modest life and finds Michaela to be an extraordinary woman who seems very kind and friendly. Later on in the village while out walking Janet bumps into Tom and something magical passes between them - a feeling of immense attraction which they both give into and they have sex right away outdoors in the countryside. Their activities are observed by Mrs Cazaret's severe and sinister accountant Elroy. Janet and Tom continue to see each other over the coming days and weeks and Tom falls in love with her. Elroy warns him that he ought to be careful because other young men in his favoured position with Mrs Cazaret have met with unfortunate ends in the past if they displease her. Tom tells Michaela that he wants to leave her group but he still feels such intense devotion to her that he requires her blessing to depart. As her special favourite Michaela is not inclined to grant him that emotional release and she questions why he needs to go as he is so happy here with her - but Tom has come to see that he is wasting his life away and begs her to let him go. Tom tells her he really needs to go away to think for a while and then Michaela suddenly turns venomous and tells him she gives him one week and if he hasn't returned she will hunt him down and kill him. Tom is quite taken aback by this sudden change in her but he takes his leave. Janet discovers she is pregnant from that first encounter she had with Tom and feels shame knowing that her father wouldn't understand and seeks help from a village woman who gives her an address in Edinburgh of a doctor she can visit to help her get rid of it. She wants to speak to Tom first but when she goes to the mansion he has already left and she confides her condition to Michaela before leaving. After she has left Michaela becomes angry and tells all her current resident guests she is fed up with them now and they all have to leave immediately. She then has Elroy replace them with a second group of young people who enjoy a different kind of thrill. Tom has been given a message by the lady from the village enabling him to track Janet down in Edinburgh before she has her abortion and they go to stay in a caravan he has by the river. After a few days he suddenly panics realising his week's grace is up and he packs up with the intention of racing back down to London - but Elroy has been following him and he is bundled into a car and forcibly taken back leaving Janet on her own to follow on in her own transport. At the mansion Michaela compels Tom to take a drugged drink which muddles his senses. Then her new group of friends set about a sinister game of "Murder". They give Tom a three minute start to flee outside and then they will all give chase intent on killing him. Michaela tells Tom he has a chance to survive but only a very slim one. As Tom runs away into the surrounding marshy land he is plagued by uncontrollable psychedelic visions of wild beasts attacking him and is not sure what is real or imagined. Janet arrives and tries to help him although he struggles with her too thinking she is an attacker and in the water she has to help him to stop him drowning. As the baying pack of young party guests catch up to him the leader questions Michaela on why the inevitable hasn't happened and it becomes clear that the game was to kill the quarry by means of his own drug induced fear. Janet's intervention and love got through to his addled hallucinating brain and saved him from himself. Michaela realises Tom has beaten the odds and calls off the eager blood-hungry pack thereby releasing Tom from his obligations to her. | |
| Starring: | Ava Gardner (as Michaela Cazaret), Ian McShane (as Tom Lynn), Stephanie Beacham (as Janet Ainsley) |
| Featuring: | Richard Wattis (as Elroy, Michaela's personal secretary), Cyril Cusack (as Vicar Julian Ainsley, Janet's father), David Whitman (as Oliver, group member), Fabia Drake (as Miss Gibson, arranger of abortions) |
| Familiar Faces: | (group members, small roles) Sinéad Cusack, Joanna Lumley, Jenny Hanley, Madeline Smith |
| Starlets: | Pamela Fairbrother, Rosemary Blake, Virginia Tingwell, Delia Lindsay, Linda Marlowe, Yvonne Quenel, Erika Raffael |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the ancient ballad of Tam Lin in which a young man is held in the thrall of the evil queen of the fairies. This modern day version uses a character with the similar sounding name of Tom Lynn. |
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Stephanie Beacham receives an "introducing" credit. |
| The Tamarind Seed (1974) | Previous Next |
| Writer/Director: Blake Edwards / Producer: Ken Wales | |
| Type: Spy Drama | Running Time: 119 mins |
| Judith Farrow is on a solo-holiday in Barbados to take her mind off some recent upset in her life. She lost her husband in a car accident and then embarked on an affair with a married man but found him unwilling to leave his wife and their relationship ended. She is not looking to begin another romance but she nevertheless strikes up a friendship with a charming and charismatic Russian staying at the same hotel. His name is Feodor Sverdlov and he is an attaché to the Russian embassy in Paris. Judith is personal assistant to an important man at the British Home Office and as such has access to confidential material - so she wonders if maybe the handsome Russian is trying to recruit her into passing secrets. However Feodor states his intentions are purely romantic in nature although realises how it might seem because of their occupational positions.
Their respective governments' security services become aware of the contact and begin to scrutinize their national's actions. The British are concerned that Judith may be undergoing a grooming process for passing state secrets; and the Russians are troubled that their man might be trying to defect. Judith and Feodor know how their friendship will be viewed by their political masters and that it cannot continue once they each return home. Back in Moscow Feodor reports his contact with Judith and his endeavours to recruit her through seduction into passing snippets of useful information to him. He persuades his leader to allow him to continue his efforts. Feodor meets up again with Judith in London and openly tells her he is only pretending to try and recruit her so that he can continue to see her. Their relationship becomes stronger and Judith feels she can trust him completely as he is always so honest and open with her. Eventually the situation worsens for Feodor and he is warned not to return to Moscow where he will face arrest for the suspicions he has raised. He requests asylum via Judith and promises the head of MI6, Jack Loder, that he will divulge the identity of a soviet mole within the British establishment who has the codename of Blue. Judith and Feodor return to Barbados to continue with their very real romance and from there Feodor will be flown to the safety of Canada and pass the "Blue" document. The soviet spy called Blue is in fact the British Ambassador in France and he gets wind of his imminent exposure and alerts the soviets. They send some assassins to Barbados to kill Feodor before he can pass over any secrets. The KGB agents firebomb the holiday villa where the lovers are staying. The newspapers report that a top Russian official was killed in a tragic accident and that Judith received some burns. Judith is heartbroken at Feodor's tragic death. Blue is relieved that his identity remains secret with the death of the "traitor". However Jack Loder had extracted Feodor prior to the attack and the Russian is actually now in Canada as planned but even safer than before because his leaders believe him to be dead. Loder now knows Blue's identity but has decided not to arrest him and will instead use him to unwittingly pass false or misleading information to his soviet paymasters. Judith is told that Feodor is still alive and when she has recovered from her injuries she joins him in Canada and they start a new life together. | |
| Comment: Until nearer the end the viewer is left wondering where Feodor's true loyalties lay. Is he playing a clever game trying to really recruit Judith as he is telling his leader; or is he just using that as an excuse to see her as he is telling Judith? The film is full of subterfuge and mistrust on both sides and delves into the personal life of Blue and his wife although for the above summary I've concentrated on the core story only. | |
| Starring: | Julie Andrews (as Judith Farrow), Omar Sharif (as Feodor Sverdlov), Anthony Quayle (as Jack Loder, Head of MI6), Daniel O'Herlihy (as Fergus Stephenson, ambassador), Sylvia Syms (as Margaret Stephenson, ambassador's wife) |
| Featuring: | Bryan Marshall (as George MacLeod, MI6 agent), Oskar Homolka (as General Golitsyn, head of Russian security services), David Baron (as Richard Paterson, security services agent), Celia Bannerman (as Rachel Paterson, Richard's wife), Sharon Duce (as Sandy Mitchell, girlfriend of a Russian ambassador), Kate O'Mara (as Anna Skriabina, Feodor's new secretary), Janet Henfrey (as KGB Embassy Section Head) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the novel by Evelyn Anthony |
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The Tamarind Seed after which the film is named is a Barbadian folk story about an unusually shaped seed that Judith and Feodor hear about while sightseeing and which she finds fascinating - but it is not a hugely significant aspect of the story. |
| Novel: Nicholas Luard / Writer: Michael Russell / Director: Michael E. Briant / Producer: Ron Jones | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 95 mins |
| Bob Steele is an ex-CIA man now living in England who is brought in for questioning on an immigration concern. He is told that certain felonies he committed in the States under orders have now been disavowed and he faces a trial and jail if he is returned to America which is something the British authorities won't hesitate to do if he doesn't assist them in an operation they have in mind for him - and so Bob has little choice but to co-operate. In Tangier, Morocco, a senior communication expert called Velatti in a monitoring station has absconded with certain secret tapes and information and it is believed he is planning on selling the intelligence to the Soviets - he has gone to ground and cannot be located. Bob Steele has been recruited because of his remarkable similarity to a former undercover agent at Tangier station called Ross Callum who was last seen nine years ago and was known to Velatti who has let it be known that Callum is someone that he would be willing to communicate with. Callum himself is dead but this is not publicly known.
Bob arrives in Tangier and soon finds his life threatened by people who held grudges against Callum. He meets head of Tangier section Wedderburn who is directing the efforts in the hunt for the traitor Velatti. Wedderburn tells him that he was not told the entire truth and actually Velatti has a bitter grudge against Callum and Bob is really here to lure him out of hiding when he tries to kill him. Callum's old transport vessel is still being maintained at the dockyard which is run by an old-timer called Donovan and his now-grown up daughter Beth who was fourteen when she last saw Ross and had a crush on him - she and Bob start an affair. Callum used this boat for gun-running and in his undercover role fed information back to the authorities on the smugglers involved. Bob also makes contact with Callum's former lover Louise who knows his true identity but is helping maintain appearances for the authorities. Events mull over for a time until things draw to a conclusion when another attempt is made to attack Bob in town and this time he is abducted and taken to a room where he finds he has been taken by Velatti. But Velatti has a different story entirely to the one told to Bob by the authorities:- in his role as a communication operative Velatti uncovered evidence that a high ranking officer was planing to sell sensitive information to the Soviets. But he did not know who to tell because he could be informing the traitor himself so he took the information and went into hiding and said he would talk to Callum because he had been out of the picture for so long that he couldn't be the traitor. He is now aware that Bob is not Callum but asks for his help in getting out of Tangier. Bob believes him and they make their way to Callum's vessel to transport him to Gibraltar. But at the dock they are attacked by snipers and only just make their getaway. Then in Gibraltar they find Wedderburn waiting for them and he is revealed as the traitor who wants Velatti dead. A final confrontation ensues and Wedderburn is killed while trying to escape. | |
| Starring: | Ronny Cox (as Bob Steele), Billie Whitelaw (as Louise Fraser), Glynis Barber (as Beth Donovan), Ronald Lacey (as Wedderburn, head of Tangier section), Oscar Quitak (as Velatti) |
| Featuring: | Jack Watson (as Donovan, boatyard owner and Beth's father), David Collings (as Major Greville, British officer), Ronald Fraser (as Jenkins, hotel guest) |
| Familiar Faces: | Jesse Birdsall (Naval Rating at Security Centre) |
| aka: Why Would Anyone Want to Kill a Nice Girl Like You? | |
| Writers: Brian Carton, Don Sharp / Director: Don Sharp / Producer: George Willoughby | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 93 mins |
| Jane Kerrell is a young woman from Switzerland on a European holiday. She is driving through France after travelling with her car from England on a cross channel ferry. She has been followed by a white Mercedes ever since she left Boulogne and when she comes to a stretch of mountainous road with a sheer drop along one side the other car attempts to run her off the road to her death. She manages to avert that disaster and makes a complaint to the local French police. She tells them she cannot think of any reason why someone would want to kill her. A psychiatrist called Dr Forla who overheard her complaint in the police station contacts her afterwards and tries to convince her she is imagining that someone is after her and that she is in fact suicidal. Certain odd events then occur that seem to only reinforce his theory - but she is quite certain she is not going mad.
Near her hotel Jane meets a charming British tourist called Paul Hedley who is an artist and is staying in a nearby hotel. He has an understanding nature and makes it his business to help her get to the truth. Jane is then contacted by officers from New Scotland Yard who have been sent to France to interview her. On the same ferry she travelled over on was a man called Maxwell Chalker who was murdered. And beside his body was found a note in which he names her as the person who should be contacted if he were to die with particular reference to her car. He had been a whistleblower employee on his way to deliver some vital information to NATO headquarters. Jane only barely recalls the man in question and tells the police he never told her anything. They search her car and find nothing. Chalker worked for a company that manufactured vital strategic technology which was being illegally leaked to hostile foreign powers and Chalker was going to reveal who the culprit was. The company in question is run by Hannes Josef Beiber who lives nearby and is just as worried about the leak as anyone. He is supported by his able and efficient secretary Miss Barrow and other staff including Dr Forla (the psychiatrist seen earlier). The killings continue as someone with ruthless intent tries to get hold of Jane to question her about what she knows. But the police provide her with security and Jane manages to relax and enjoy her holiday in the company of Paul as they start to get romantic. Eventually the security measures put in place fail and Jane is kidnapped and taken to Beiber's villa where she is questioned by Dr Forla using a truth drug. Beiber is an important man and the police are reluctant to search his villa without any direct proof of wrongdoing. Acting alone Paul Hedley has sudden inspiration and re-searches her car and finds hidden in her carburettor a letter which reveals to him the truth of whom Chalker was going to name. He breaks in to the Beiber estate alone to try to find Jane whom he is now sure must have been taken there. It transpires that Beiber is unaware of what is going on elsewhere in his villa, and the security leak turns out to be his secretary Miss Barrow working in cohorts with Dr Forla and another employee called Alfredo Guardi (who had been the driver of the Mercedes). Paul manages to rescue Jane and alert the police and all the villains are captured or killed. Jane has fallen for Paul during all the excitement of the last few days and even admitted she loves him while still under the influence of the truth drug. They make plans for a future together. | |
| Starring: | Eva Renzi (as Jane Kerrell), David Buck (as Paul Hedley) |
| Featuring: | Peter Vaughan (as Inspector Malling), Paul Hubschmid (as Herr Beiber), Kay Walsh (as Miss Barrow, Beiber's secretary), Francis Matthews (as Mr Breese, NATO investigator), George Pravda (as Dr Forla, psychiatrist), Peter Bowles (as Alfredo Guardi, Mercedes driver) |
| Starlets: | Sophie Hardy (as Michela, French girl at Paul's hotel), Catherine Berg (as Receptionist at Jane's hotel) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the novel Waiting For a Tiger by Ben Healey |
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The version reviewed carried the American title of Why Would Anyone Want to Kill a Nice Girl Like You? |
| Taste of Fear (1961) | Previous Next |
| aka: Scream of Fear | |
| Writer/Producer: Jimmy Sangster / Director: Seth Holt | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 77 mins |
| Penny Appleby arrives in France to come and live with her father and stepmother Jane. Penny has never met Jane and has not seen her father for ten years following her parents divorce after which she went to live with her mother in Italy. Her mother died a few years ago but she continued to live with her best friend Maggie Frencham until a few weeks ago when Maggie drowned in a lake.
Penny is wheelchair-bound following a horse-riding accident nine years beforehand and is very reliant on other people. But she finds Jane to be very friendly, welcoming and helpful giving her a downstairs bedroom and installing ramps into their large villa on the French Riviera. Jane explains that Penny's father is not there because he was suddenly called away on business. Jane finds the handsome chauffeur Bob very helpful and he becomes her confidant saying how odd he found her father's hasty departure in the middle of the night telling only Jane he was going. Penny finds Jane a bit evasive on the subject of when her father is going to return. During the night Penny sees a light on in the summer house and wheels over the courtyard from her bedroom to take a look - inside she sees her father sitting in an armchair dead! She screams and panics and on the way back she wheels into the deep pond and nearly drowns but is saved by Bob. She comes to later being cared for by her father's doctor and friend, Pierre Gerrard - when Penny explains what she was doing they all go to the summer house to take a look but there is no sign of a body. Dr Gerrard manages to persuade her that her recent traumas may have affected her mind and she should take steps to notice the signs and overcome them. Penny decides she does not like Gerrard much and thinks he may be up to something with Jane. Bob later remarks that it was odd that Gerrard was already here when Penny had her accident. Bob has become a dependable rock for Penny and is the only person in the household she feels she can trust and they begin to get romantically involved. The next night Penny sees her father's body again, this time in her own room - but when she goes to fetch Bob the body has gone when they return. Bob believes her because the chair he was supposedly sitting on is wet. Bob speculates that since Penny stands to inherit on her father's will then perhaps her father is already dead and that Jane, possibly with the help of Gerrard, have conspired to make it appear as if Penny is going mad so she will not be considered sound of mind enough to inherit and Jane will get everything instead. While Jane is out shopping Bob agrees to help Penny search the house for where her father's body is being stored so they have evidence to show to the police. They eventually discover his body is being kept at the bottom of the murky pond. Penny waits at the front of the house while Bob gets the car ready so they can go and fetch the police to come and take a look at their discovery. Along the way on a cliff top road Jane flags them down and Bob says he'll have to see what she wants and leaves Penny in the car. After he gets out the car starts rolling and as a panicked and helpless Penny looks over the front seat she finds her father's dead body laying on the front passenger seat as Bob and Jane watch the car go over the steep slope and into the sea below. We then discover that Bob and Jane are in league and this was all part of their plan - when the scheme to send Penny mad was clearly not working they decided she had to die in an accident at the same time as disposing of her father's body and explaining his death away in the same accident. Jane thought her husband had drowned by accident but Bob reveals that it was he who held him under and actually murdered him. Next day the police begin to recover the car from the sea and Bob is asked to attend to identify the car. Meanwhile Jane is visited by her late husband's solicitor to sign some paperwork. Jane asks if there are any legal difficulties involved due to both Penny and her father dying simultaneously in the same accident. The solicitor doesn’t understand what she means because Penny died three weeks before in Switzerland when she drowned herself in a lake! Then back at the accident site the police only find the body of a man - and no sign of a young woman's body. "Penny" returns to the house and reveals to Jane that she is in fact Penny's friend Maggie. After Penny died Maggie had spoken to Penny's father on the phone to tell him the sad news and he had decided not to tell Jane because he had been having marital problems with her. Then a couple of weeks later Maggie opened a letter sent to Penny which was supposedly from her father inviting her to come and live with himself and Jane. Maggie became very suspicions because she knew that Mr Appleby knew fully well his daughter was dead. Maggie contacted Mr Appleby's best friend Dr Gerrard and together they decided to engage in this impersonation to uncover the truth. Jane offers Maggie money to keep quiet but Maggie says she was well provided for in Penny's will and is off now to make a statement to the police. She gets up out of her wheelchair because she is not in fact crippled and that was how she was able to leap unseen to safety from the car before it went over the cliff - and Jane in despair sits on the wheelchair herself on the cliff edge weeping. Soon afterwards Bob returns in a rage that the girl he knows as Penny is still alive and when he sees a woman in a wheelchair on the cliff edge he rushes up and pushes her off not realising until it's too late that it is Jane and not Penny in the chair. Jane falls to her death and Bob is arrested. | |
| Comment: A good film with lots of plot twists and turns in which no one is on the level and is either keeping secrets or feigning identities or loyalties or has hidden nefarious agenda in mind. | |
| Starring: | Susan Strasberg (as Penny Appleby), Ronald Lewis (as Bob, chauffeur), Ann Todd (as Jane Appleby, stepmother), Christopher Lee (as Doctor Pierre Gerrard) |
| Featuring: | John Serret (as Inspector Legrand, French police), Leonard Sachs (as Spratt, solicitor from London), Anne Blake (as Marie, maid), Fred Johnson (as Penny's Father - seen as dead body only) |
| NOTES: | |
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Made in Black and White. |
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The title on the version reviewed was Scream of Fear. |
| A Taste of Honey (1961) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Shelagh Delaney, Tony Richardson / Director/Producer: Tony Richardson | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 96 mins |
| Jo is a teenage girl on the verge of school leaving age who lives with her single mother Helen in Liverpool. They are poor and live in a succession of rented accommodations which they regularly vacate on the sly without paying when the back-rent starts to mount up. Helen is on the look out for a man to marry and keep them in better circumstances. She socialises wildly leaving Jo alone each evening and the two of them are forever arguing and bitter towards one another.
Jo meets a young black sailor called Jimmy who works as a cook on one of the merchant ships at the docks. Over the coming days they get friendly and have a brief affair before his ship departs and he is gone. Helen meets a younger man called Peter who proposes marriage. Jo does not approve of him and makes it clear with her stubborn and truculent behaviour that she does not like him. Peter is equally negative towards Jo's attitude and tells Helen that if they marry then Jo is certainly not going to live with them. Helen has few options and marries Peter leaving Jo to fend for herself. Jo has now left school and found a job as a shopgirl. She rents a flat and soon meets kind and sensitive Geoffrey. He is gay and she gets on with him like he was a sister - and because he currently has nowhere to live she lets him stay with her. Jo soon discovers she is pregnant from her liaison with sailor Jimmy. She is very anxious about becoming a mother and not sure she'll be able to cope but Geoffrey helps her organise everything and make all the preparations and even offers to marry her if she wants and become the baby's father. Further into her pregnancy Helen comes back into her life having been unaware of her daughter's condition because Jo didn't want her to know. Helen and Peter's marriage did not last and he cast her off for a younger woman and so she has nowhere to go except stay with Jo. Helen moves in and immediately disapproves of the cosy relationship Jo has with Geoffrey and declares that now she is here he need not remain. Jo insists that he stay as well but Geoffrey realises he is no longer required and slinks off leaving mother and daughter to resume their bellicose life as before. | |
| Comment: The film ends before the baby is born. | |
| Starring: | Rita Tushingham (as Jo), Dora Bryan (as Helen, Jo's mother), Murray Melvin (as Geoffrey Ingham), Robert Stephens (as Peter Smith, Helen's fancy man) |
| Featuring: | Paul Danquah (as Jimmy, sailor) |
| NOTES: | |
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Made in Black and White |
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Adapted from the play by Shelagh Delaney |
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Rita Tushingham receives an "introducing" credit |
| Writer: John Elder / Director: Peter Sasdy / Producer: Aida Young | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 91 mins |
| Set in the early years of the 20th century. In a prologue set a few years before the film's main story we see a travelling English salesman called Weller as he journeys in Germany. One evening he finds himself in the middle of nowhere in a forest where he wanders as dusk approaches and hears some fearsomely ungodly moaning. Although terrified he follows it to its source and is confronted by the sight of Count Dracula on the verge of dying with a large crucifix piercing his body. As Weller watches aghast Dracula crumbles to dust and his blood oozes over a rock and turns into red powder. Weller collects the powder and the other relics of Dracula's existence:- his cape, ring, and broach. End of prologue.
In England in a small church-going community three respectable middle-aged family men called Hargood, Paxton and Secker have a dark secret. Once a month while claiming to be engaged in charitable work they get together and travel to an East End mission house. But this is actually a front for a high-class bordello where the men enjoy the company of exotic women and unusual entertainment. However the trio of thrill-seekers have begun to find the entertainment dull and they crave something new. On their latest visit to the bordello they meet the arrogant and haughty Lord Courtley who gets their measure and understands their need for exciting experiences and he suggests they participate in a black mass and sell their very souls to the devil. Although a bit cautious of the idea at first they are intrigued enough to agree. Courtley tells them they need to purchase some important relics for the ceremony he has in mind and takes them to salesman Weller's shop (the man in the prologue). For a large sum of money the three men pool together to buy Dracula's relics. Courtley arranges the black mass at a remote abandoned gothic crypt and gives each of them a goblet containing a dusting of Dracula's powdered blood. Courtley adds to this a drop of his own blood which causes the vessels to bubble up and fill to the brim with blood and then he tells the men to drink it for the ceremony. But the three men become too spooked and balk at the prospect and refuse. To show them what is required Courtley takes a drink himself but he almost immediately chokes and falls down dead. The three men flee leaving Courtley's body where it fell - and unseen by them after they have gone the body becomes cocooned by dust from which emerges the reborn Count Dracula! The evil vampire swears vengeance on the three men for causing the death of his servant Courtley. Each man has grown up children and Dracula targets these young adults to take his revenge. First Dracula uses his powers to mesmerise Hargood's daughter Alice and causes her to kill her father. In the events that follow Paxton's daughter Lucy and Secker's son Jeremy are turned into vampires and although the two remaining fathers seek to stop the evil that has been mounted against them they too are killed by the actions of their children. Finally Alice's boyfriend Paul mounts an effort to save her as she is still a mesmerised human and not vampirised. In the church crypt in a final battle with Dracula, and armed with religious artefacts, Paul manages to defeat the dark lord and Alice is released from her thrall as Dracula turns to dust once more. | |
| Starring: | Christopher Lee (as Count Dracula) (The three men) Geoffrey Keen (as William Hargood), Peter Sallis (as Samuel Paxton), John Carson (as Jonathon Secker) (The young adults) Linda Hayden (as Alice Hargood), Anthony Corlan (as Paul Paxton), Isla Blair (as Lucy Paxton), Martin Jarvis (as Jeremy Secker) |
| Featuring: | Ralph Bates (as Lord Courtley), Gwen Watford (as Martha Hargood, wife), Roy Kinnear (as Weller, salesman), Michael Ripper (as Inspector Cobb), Russell Hunter (as Felix, Bordello proprietor) |
| Starlets: | Shirley Jaffe (as Hargood's Maid) (Bordello girls) Madeline Smith (as Dolly - credited as Maddy Smith), Lai Ling (as Chinese girl), Malaika Martin (as Snake girl, dancer) - and uncredited:- June Palmer, Amber Blare, Vicky Gillespie |
| NOTES: | |
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Although Christopher Lee is listed as the top-billed star he actually only makes a few short appearances in the film and then in the final scene. So although he remains listed above as the star it is more of a star-turn role really. |
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This Hammer Horror follows on directly from Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968) with the death that the salesman witnesses in this film's prologue being the death scene from the previous film. The next film in the series was Scars of Dracula (1970). |
| Tell Me Lies (1968) | Previous Next |
| Writer/Director/Producer: Peter Brook | |
| Type: Documentary | Running Time: 109 mins |
| Mark Jones is a man who is horrified by the human suffering caused by the American war in Vietnam and sets about investigating for himself the issues surrounding the conflict by attending rallies and demonstrations and having debates with politicians; and audiences with Buddhist monks. He seeks to try to understand whether the suffering of others is justified for the greater long-term good in the battle against the rise of communism and whether he is normal to feel so appalled by the images of maimed locals he sees printed in magazines. | |
| Comment: This is essentially a documentary about how the Vietnam war is viewed by the British people and was made whilst the conflict was still being waged. Actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company play the parts of many of the speakers intermixed with some genuine documentary footage. There is no underlying story to accompany the examination of the issues and after a while it becomes rather dull to watch. Mark Jones is an actor playing "himself" as a character and using his own name in the film. | |
| Starring: | Mark Jones (as Mark Jones), Pauline Munro (as Mark's wife) |
| Featuring: | (The rest of the participants as listed in the opening credits have lesser roles - some are playing characters, others are themselves [as characters], and others are themselves [as themselves]. Here is a small selection picking out the more well-known names) Glenda Jackson (as anti-war speaker), Ian Hogg, Kingsley Amis, Peggy Ashcroft, Paul Scofield, Marjie Lawrence, Leon Lissek, Henry Woolf |
| NOTES: | |
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Although not a strict documentary it seems more applicable to classify it as that than a drama. |
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Based on the Aldwych Theatre Stage Production of "US" directed by Peter Brook with original text by Denis Cannan. Adaptation of documentary material by Michael Kustow and Michael Scott |
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Some (non-archive footage) scenes are in black and white and others in colour often with no seemingly good reason for the switch |
| The Tempter (1975) | Previous Next |
| aka: The Devil Is a Woman | |
| Writers: Damiano Damiani, Fabrizio Onofri, Audrey Nohra / Director: Damiano Damiani / Producer: Anis Nohra | |
| Type: European / Drama | Running Time: 101 mins |
| Rodolfo Solina is a writer specialising in historical events and whilst in Rome he is approached by a priest called Monsignor Badinsky who is impressed by his efficient and honest writing style that reads as if he were presenting a case in a courtroom. Badinsky has an important historical work he would like documented and is willing to pay Rodolfo well for his time. Rodolfo agrees to have a look and Badinsky takes him to a large convent that is used by the Vatican as a religious hostel for dignitaries who are visiting with the Pope as well as having a number of permanent residents of which Monsignor Badinsky is one.
Rodolfo is taken to meet the civilian administrator of the convent called Senorita Emilia Contrera who runs the clerical side of the establishment on behalf of its founder, Sister Geraldine. Emilia is efficient at her job but not very interested in engaging in small talk with Rodolfo. He notices she is a highly attractive woman but she goes to efforts to make herself look plain. Rodolfo is given a room at the hostel and expects to be there for a month. Badinsky explains that the job is to write his memoirs. He is Polish and was accused in the Second World War of being a Nazi collaborator and despite repeated applications to the Vatican for an audience with the Pope to explain his case he is forever being turned down and he now wants to document his version of events in a clear and accurate way so that it can be read as part of his next application. Rodolfo meets the other regular residents of the convent. They all have stories to tell and are in some way outcasts from society who have sought refuge from the world in this place although they are free to leave whenever they choose. Rodolfo meets Sister Geraldine who is in overall charge of the convent and of whom he has discovered everyone seems to be in awe. He finds her a coolly efficient woman who is very forceful in her views of what she thinks is best for the people in her care - although Rodolfo feels she is missing the point with a number of her charges who would be better served with a different approach. She finds his ideas unorthodox and hopes he won't try to interfere. Even Emilia has her special reasons for being there - she is half-English/Bolivian and the man she married was an officer in the Bolivian political police force whose job it was to torture prisoners. She had fallen in love with a revolutionary and when she discovered he was to be arrested she warned him and he managed to evade capture. She was arrested and sentenced to death but the church stepped in and gave her sanctuary here asking for nothing in return from her other than her repentance. Emilia is a highly sexual woman but maintains a self-disciplined abstinence although she is unable to prevent herself from self-gratification at times. Over the forthcoming days and weeks as Rodolfo works on the manuscript he becomes part of the social group and he and Emilia start to feel an attraction and fall into a sexual relationship and Emilia experiences great joy at having sex with a man again. She becomes rebellions towards Geraldine and voices her dislike of her and her controlling ways. Sister Geraldine behaves very harshly towards Emilia embarrassing her in a group counselling session and many of the regulars think Geraldine went too far and have come to the decision that they have had enough of this place and it is time for them to move on with their lives. Sister Geraldine begins to think that some terrible shadow has been cast that is determined to destroy them. The cosy safe unit of people to whom she has become so used is disintegrating with the leavers, an earlier death, and some changes of emphasis being imposed on her by the Vatican higher echelons who have expressed their dissatisfaction with the way she runs the hostel. She is mindful of the fact that it all started to go wrong since the arrival of Rodolfo and his unorthodox outside views. Rodolfo and Badinsky complete their work and the writer prepares to leave. Emilia decides it is time for her to go too and she leaves with him. They move into an apartment together where she finds Rodolfo's tolerance of all things perplexing and infectious which she says is destroying her faith. She has a need to punish herself and when one day he comes home he finds she has been having sex with the smelly caretaker so she can punish her body with his filth. Soon after that Emilia runs out on him and he is unable to find her. It is three months since his time in the convent and Rodolfo goes back to visit with Sister Geraldine to see if she has heard from Emilia. He is invited in to the convent and is amazed to find things back to normal just as they had been when he first arrived those months past. Other than the one who died, all the departed regulars who had seemed so adamant they were ready to move on with their lives have returned. And Emilia is there too back in her old job and seemingly content with her lot again. He doesn’t try to get her to leave with him as he can see she's back where she really belongs. Sister Geraldine tells him there is always a place here for him if he wants it and he leaves finding the whole situation highly amusing. | |
| Starring: | Claudio Cassinelli (as Rodolfo Solina), Glenda Jackson (as Sister Geraldine), Lisa Harrow (as Emilia), Arnoldo Foà (as Monsignor Badinsky) |
| Featuring: | Adolfo Celi (as Father Borelli), Francisco Rabal (as Bishop Marquez), Gabriele Lavia (as Prince Ottavio), Enrico Ribulsi (as Professor Villa) |
| Starlets: | Ely Galeani, Adele Sperati |
| NOTES: | |
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This Italian film has been reviewed here because of the involvement of British actresses Glenda Jackson and Lisa Harrow. Its Italian title is Il Sorriso del grande tentatore. The title on the version reviewed was The Tempter. |
| 10 Rillington Place (1971) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Clive Exton / Director: Richard Fleischer / Producers: Leslie Linder, Martin Ransohoff | |
| Type: Crime Drama | Running Time: 106 mins |
| In London's Notting Hill district in 1944 during the war John Christie works as a special constable and is considered as an upstanding citizen. But he secretly harbours a twisted compulsion to have sex with women he has just killed. He has a knack of gaining a woman's confidence claiming rudimentary medical knowledge that he says he was training for before the war. But under the guise of providing pain relief he gasses his victims and then strangles and has sex with them before hiding their bodies in his back yard at 10 Rillington Place.
After the war opportunities to act on his compulsion do not arise so easily and we next rejoin the story in 1949 when the upstairs flat at 10 Rillington Place is rented by a young couple called Timothy and Beryl Evans with their baby daughter Geraldine. Tim is not a bright man and he is forever inventing tall-tales for his mates in the pub. His temper is easily raised and he and Beryl are frequently heard having furious rows about the poor state of their finances. Beryl becomes pregnant again but they don't know how they'll be able to afford another baby and Beryl tries some drugs to make herself abort although these are ineffective. John Christie in the downstairs flat where he lives with his wife Ethel sees an opportunity and offers to help saying he has experience in such matters of terminating pregnancies - and such is their desperation that the Evanses put their trust in him since he sounds knowledgeable and is risking arrest on their behalf should he be discovered performing this illegal procedure. Tim goes to work as normal and Christie starts his procedure on Beryl - but his intention all along is to renew his compulsive desires to kill and have sex and he proceeds to gas and kill her - having to hit her hard several times to finally subdue her. When Tim gets home he is met by Christie giving him the shock news that Beryl did not survive the termination procedure and is dead. Tim wants to go to the police but Christie manipulates him to an extent that the distraught Tim believes he is complicit in the death because he knew that Christie was going to perform the procedure. He tells Tim that the police would believe Beryl's death was murder caused by Tim's known violent temper against her. Christie says he will however help Tim by quietly disposing of her body down a drain but Tim must immediately pack and leave town for a while so that Christie can tell everyone that he and Beryl have gone away on holiday. Christie says he knows a couple in East Acton who will look after the baby Geraldine for him while he's away. Tim leaves in the night as per the plan - then Christie goes upstairs and strangles the baby too and hides both bodies in his garden shed. After a few days Tim's conscience gets the better of him and he goes to the police saying he disposed of his wife's body down a drain thinking that's what Christie must have done by now and he has no idea his baby is dead - he leaves Christie's name out of it not wishing to implicate him. When the police cannot find a body in the drain he starts telling the truth about Christie. But he has changed his story too many times and is not found very credible. While searching around at Rillington Place the police easily find the (intentionally) not very well hidden body of Beryl and the baby in the shed and arrest Tim for murder. Tim is shocked to discover his baby is dead too and in his distraught state he agrees that he is responsible which is taken as a confession. At his trial Tim finds all the circumstances stacked against him by Christie's clever lies and manipulations and he is found guilty of murder and hanged shortly afterwards in March 1950. Christie hits hard times over the next few years unable to work through back problems. He continues killing several more times including his wife Ethel who had become too aware of what he had done during the Evans case. Eventually he moves out of Rillington Place and new tenants make the gruesome discoveries of the various dead bodies hidden around the house behind papered over wall cavities and under the floorboards. Christie is arrested and is himself hanged in 1953. | |
| Starring: | Richard Attenborough (as John Christie), John Hurt (as Timothy Evans), Judy Geeson (as Beryl Evans), Pat Heywood (as Ethel Christie) |
| Featuring: | Isobel Black (as Alice, Beryl's friend), Phyllis MacMahon (as Muriel Eady, victim), Gabrielle Daye (as Tim's Aunt), Jimmy Gardner (as Tim's uncle), Edward Evans (as Detective Inspector), Tenniel Evans (as Detective Sergeant), André Morell (as Judge), Robert Hardy (as Malcolm Morris, defence barrister), Geoffrey Chater (as Christmas Humphreys, prosecution barrister) |
| Familiar Faces: | Rudolph Walker (new tenant discovering bodies) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on Ludovic Kennedy's non-fiction book Ten Rillington Place describing these real-life events. The book which was published in 1961 raised serious doubts on the guilt of Timothy Evans and an ensuing official inquiry resulted in Evans receiving a posthumous pardon in 1966. |
| Writer: David McGillivray / Director: Norman J. Warren / Producers: Richard Crafter, Les Young | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 79 mins |
| Prologue. The story starts in the 17th century where a young woman is being hunted down by villagers for being a witch. When she is caught she is tied to a stake and set alight and she calls upon her master Satan to help her. The lord and lady of the manor witness her death and in particular Lady Garrick fixes her with a steely gaze as this thorn in her side is finally removed. But back at their house the spectre of the witch manifests and kills them both issuing a curse upon the Garrick family and all their descendants. Then THE END appears on the screen and we find that what we have actually been watching is a movie being shown in the present day.
The film's producer is James Garrick who has made a screen drama of his family history which he is giving a private viewing of to his friends at a party at his ancestral home. Also present is Ann Garrick, a cousin whom James has only recently met for the first time - they represent the last members of the Garrick line. During the party a light-hearted hypnotism stunt goes wrong when Ann volunteers to be the subject - but after she goes under she cannot be roused and in a trance-like state tries to kill James until she is jolted out of it. She had no idea what she was doing and can't explain it. From here on various violent murders occur of people Ann knows. She lives in a hostel for young actresses and they all begin to have scary encounters some of which turn out to be harmless and others murderous. James and his friend Phillip at their film studio also experience strange happenings and deaths. This pattern of events fills the rest of the movie with false-scares and violent killings until eventually back at the Garrick house James is killed in an accident and then the 17th century witch re-appears and murders Ann. Curse fulfilled! | |
| Comments: The story ultimately makes little sense and certain things are never explained. One glaring story anomaly is that the witch in "real life" is the same witch who was burnt at the stake in the movie that James made of his family history - even though that movie witch would have just been a present-day actress playing the part. And also despite the witch's curse of eliminating the Garrick family line she seems very free and easy of who else she kills including their friends and even a policeman investigating one of the deaths. | |
| Starring: | John Nolan (as James Garrick), Carolyn Courage (as Ann Garrick), James Aubrey (as Phillip, James' friend), Sarah Keller (Suzy, hostel actress), Tricia Walsh (Viv, hostel actress) |
| Featuring: | Glynis Barber (as Carol Tucker), Michael Craze (as Gary), Patti Love (as The Witch), Mary Maude (as Lady Garrick, prologue), William Russell (as Lord Garrick, prologue) |
| Starlets: | Rosie Collins (Diane, hostel actress), Tanya Ferowa (as Nightclub Stripper), Cleo Rocos (uncredited party guest) |
| NOTES: | |
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There is an in-joke name in the end-credits "L E Mack as Mad Dolly". This has led some to think that Mad Dolly is the name of the Witch whose name is never actually mentioned in the dialogue. In fact the witch is the actress Patti Love and is therefore called "Hannah" according to the credits. "Mad Dolly" refers to the camera dolly which gains a murderous life of its own in one scene - and LE Mack (or something pronounced like that) is the name such a dolly is given. |
| That Riviera Touch (1966) | Previous Next |
| Writers: S.C. Green, R.M. Hills (with Peter Blackmore) / Director: Cliff Owen / Producer: Hugh Stewart | |
| Type: Comedy | Running Time: 94 mins |
| Eric and Ernie are two hapless traffic wardens who decide to go on holiday to the South of France after a faux pas of trying to book the Queen's car. As they disembark the plane in France with their car they are unaware that a beautiful woman called Claudette has singled them out from the arrivals as the perfect candidates to exploit for her boss's villainous objectives. Eric and Ernie are soon approached by another gang member called Marcel posing as an official who says there is a problem with their booking but as compensation they are being offered gratis use of a villa.
Claudette's boss is a jewel thief known as Le Pirate who has carefully hidden the Latour Emeralds in the villa. He now wants to smuggle the jewels into the UK and plans to use Eric and Ernie as the unwitting couriers when they return home. Claudette's job is to keep the pair occupied on a night out while the villains hide the jewels in their car. Claudette has no problems attracting the attention of the lusty lads on the beach and arranges to meet them in town later. Both Eric and Ernie fancy their chances with Claudette but Ernie outwits Eric and sends him off to the casino where Eric accidentally wins a fortune. This raises complications when Claudette realises they might be planning on buying a new car and she has to arrange to have the money stolen. The lads eventually come to suspect Claudette of the theft and follow her and discover that she is up to no good. But Claudette has been having second thoughts about her harsh boss and warns the lads they are in danger. She goes back to the villa to recover the jewels from their hiding place and is attacked by members of a rival gang who are ransacking the villa searching for them. Eric and Ernie chivalrously help her out and the police arrest all the villains and recover the jewels. Eric's money is returned and they decide not to press charges against Claudette. At the end there is a wedding in which Claudette marries one of them with the other as best man but which was which is kept intentionally indefinite. | |
| Starring: | Eric Morecambe (as Eric Simpson), Ernie Wise (as Ernest Clark), Suzanne Lloyd (as Claudette) |
| Featuring: | Paul Stassino (as Le Pirate, Jewel thief), Armand Mestral (as Inspector Duval), Peter Jeffrey (as Detective Mauron), George Eugeniou (as Marcel, Pirate's henchman), Gerald Lawson (as Coco, Villa's caretaker) |
| Familiar Faces: | Francis Matthews (as Hotel Manager) |
| Starlets: | Alexandra Bastedo (as Casino hanger-on), Nicole Shelby (as Casino hanger-on), Sally Douglas (as French Girl at casino) |
| NOTES: | |
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This film was the second of three that Morecambe and Wise made in the 1960s. They were well known TV stars at the time because of their successful ITV series (1961 - 1968) - but still a few years away from the start of their "golden era" of BBC-made shows (1968 - 1977) when they really became the comedy legends they are now fondly remembered as being. The other two films were The Intelligence Men (1965) and The Magnificent Two (1967). |
| That Summer! (1979) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Janey Preger / Director: Harley Cokliss / Producers: Davina Belling, Clive Parsons | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 88 mins |
| Steve Brody is a cockney London youth who has just spent eight months in borstal for GBH where his strength as a swimmer was recognised by a coach. Cursed with a quick temper Steve is basically a decent sort of guy whose detention was brought about when he too vigorously intervened in a domestic dispute to save his lady neighbour being beaten up by her husband. Steve wishes to get out of London where he has a bad name and believes the police have it in for him. He decides to head down to Torquay on the Devon coast because the borstal coach had mentioned there was a swimming competition taking place there soon.
Elsewhere in London Jimmy Swales is a student and during the summer holidays decides he'd rather live and work on the coast than work at his father's butchers shop - he too heads for Torquay to get a job on the beach. And up in Leeds two young girls Carole and Angie decide they are fed up with working in a factory and head off to Torquay where they have taken jobs as hotel chambermaids. Steve gets a job at a pub with a lodgings thrown in and although he works in the evenings he has the days free to train in the sea for the 10th Annual Devon Long Distance Champion swim around the bay. On the beach he meets Jimmy who is working there hiring out boat-floats to the tourists. Jimmy offers to help Steve train. Also, after their morning's work at the hotel, the two girls relax on the beach and they meet the two boys. Carole is the less confident of the two and she favours Jimmy whilst headstrong Angie sees the somewhat aloof Steve as being the kind of challenge she is good at. The couples pair off and whilst Jimmy and Carole appear well suited, Angie and Steve soon come to blows when she feels he is more interested in training than going out with her. Steve also has to contend with a rival called Tam from Scotland who together with his two rowdy mates seems determined to make trouble for Steve whom the Scot sees as a serious rival. The lads all get into a fight when the Scots try and muscle in on the girls and in the scuffle Steve's wallet is taken. On the night before the big race the Scots break into a chemists to steal some drugs and leave Steve's wallet behind to incriminate him. On the day of the race just as the competitors are preparing to start, the police arrive to arrest Steve for the burglary. He misses the start but knows he has been set up and figures it must have been the Scottish lads. Steve breaks away from the policeman and dashes into the water starting the race 200 yards behind the other competitors. He swims so well that he soon catches up and has a mid-water fight with Tam who gets away but one of his non-swimmer mates in a boat falls in. Steve stops to save him but uses the fear of drowning to get him to confess to the burglary. This satisfies the police who have given chase in a launch and Steve is allowed to continue the race whilst Tam is picked up. Steve then goes on to win the race. | |
| Starring: | Ray Winstone (as Steve Brody), Julie Shipley (as Angie Nolan), Tony London (as Jimmy Swales), Emily Moore (as Carole Benson) |
| Featuring: | Jon Morrison (as Tam, rival swimmer), Andrew Byatt (as Georgie, Tam's friend), Ewan Stewart (as Stu, Tam's friend), David Daker (as Jack, pub landlord), Jo Rowbottom (as Doreen, pub landlady), John Junkin (as Mr Swales, Jimmy's father), Stephanie Cole (as Mrs Mainwaring, hotel head housekeeper), Nick Donnelly (as Torquay Detective) |
| NOTES: | |
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From a story by Tony Attard. |
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Ray Winstone, Julie Shipley, Tony London and Emily Moore all receive "introducing" credits. |
| That'll Be the Day (1973) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Ray Connolly / Director: Claude Whatham / Producers: David Puttnam, Sanford Lieberson | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 87 mins |
| When Jim MacLaine was a young boy just after the Second World War his soldier father came home and had a hard time readjusting to civilian life. He ran a local store for a while and tried to be a good father to Jim but became restless and one day just packed up and left the family home leaving his wife to cope with young Jim and his granddad alone.
It is now the late 1950s and Jim is in his final year at school. He is a bit of a dreamer appearing to pay scant attention in class but whenever put on the spot by a teacher in class he always knows the answers because actually he is extremely bright and just finds things dull and wants something more exciting out of life. His mother is very proud of her clever son and delighted that he will be off to university soon and well on his way to having a successful life ahead of him. But on the day of his final exams Jim decides he has had enough and on the way to school with his friend Terry decides to drop out and not take the exams. He goes home and packs a bag and hitches a ride to a seaside resort where he rents a room and takes a job as a deckchair attendant. He is very interested in girls but at first has no success with them and becomes a bit disillusioned and on a dull rainy day at the beach decides to move on again. He gets a job at a holiday camp working as a waiter in the night entertainment bar where the resident band sing Rock 'n' Roll covers which Jim enjoys but wonders why they don't write heir own material. Jim shares a chalet with co-worker Mike, a teddy-boy who knows the ropes and shows him how to chat up girls properly in a place where there is no end of opportunity to pull. Jim has his first sexual experience with a girl called Sandra but this proves quick and unsatisfactory for both of them. So he becomes determined to improve and throughout the rest of the summer perfects his technique with a string of girls. When the holiday camp season is over Mike returns to his other job working at a funfair and Jim decides to go with him and they share a caravan and Jim continues bedding as many girls as he can. He becomes so insatiable that even Mike gets annoyed at his friend's compulsion. When Mike is hospitalised after being beaten up by some angry customers he short-changed Jim steps up to take over his duties on the more glamorous rides with more opportunities to chat up the girls. His friend from school Terry pays him a visit and he is doing well - he is at university now studying economic history and while he obviously cannot understand his friend's life-choice he doesn't dwell on their different fortunes as Jim tells him of the incredible success he has with the girls in his job. Terry takes Jim along to one of his own social events which is a jazz dance evening - but there Terry's friends demonstrate their unspoken uncomfortable embarrassment at having to find small talk with someone as lowly as a carnival worker and Jim knows it. It comes as a slap in the face to him and hurts his pride and he decides to return home. After two years away with barely any contact his mother is not too pleased to see him but he swears he has changed now and to show his commitment he helps by selling his motorbike to pay for a delivery van for the family grocery store. His mother was very disappointed in him dropping out as he was always much cleverer than Terry who is doing incredibly well for himself and so Jim agrees to go to night school. He renews his acquaintance with Terry's sister Jeannette and after a while of going out together he proposes and they make preparations to marry. Jeannette's mother is none to pleased thinking her daughter can do a lot better than someone like Jim. Even Terry, who is to be Jim's best man, warns his sister about the sort of restless type Jim is with an eye for the ladies but Jeannette is convinced Jim has decided to settle down - but even as they talk on the eve of the wedding Jim is having a last one-night stand with Terry's own girlfriend Jean. The wedding goes ahead and everything seems to be perfect - the couple have a child and Jim seems content at last. But he is skipping night school and instead visiting the local music hall to listen to the Rock and Roll group sing the same old tired cover versions and he knows he could do better and tries writing lyrics which he thinks are rather good although Jeannette doesn't understand what he's trying to say in them when she reads them. As he is walking his baby's pram sedately through the park he begins to get the overwhelming restless feeling again that he inherited from his father and knows he wants more excitement out of life and to get away from the feeling of being hemmed into the predictable life pattern that he's found himself within. So he goes home and packs his bags and announces he is leaving. And his first stop is to a music store where he buys himself an electric guitar .... The End. | |
| Links: Jim's story continues in the sequel Stardust (1974). | |
| Starring: | David Essex (as Jim MacLaine), Ringo Starr (as Mike Menari), Rosemary Leach (as Mrs MacLaine), Robert Lindsay (as Terry Sutcliffe) Rosalind Ayres (as Jeannette Sutcliffe, Terry's sister) |
| Featuring: | Beth Morris (as Jean, Terry's girlfriend), Deborah Watling (as Sandra), Billy Fury (as Stormy Tempest, holiday camp singer), James Ottaway (as Jim's Granddad), James Booth (as Young Jim's father), Karl Howman (as Johnny, a schoolfriend), Keith Moon (as J.D. Clover) |
| Starlets: | Sue Holderness (as Shirley, schoolgirl in Coffee Shop), Sally Watts (as Shirley's friend), Verna Harvey (Blonde girl on beach), Erin Geraghty (as Brunette girl on beach), Patti Love (as Sandra's Friend), Kim Braden (as Charlotte, Terry's college friend), Patsy Blower (as Young Girl at Fair), Sara Clee (as Girl with a baby), Vivian Stanshall |
| NOTES: | |
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Deborah Watling's nudity is best seen in the full screen version because some of it remains hidden below the frame in the widescreen version. |
| That's Your Funeral (1972) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Peter Lewis / Director: John Robins / Producer: Michael Carreras | |
| Type: Sitcom Spin-off | Running Time: 78 mins |
| Holroyds are a firm of traditional funeral directors run by Emmanuel Holroyd and his two associates Basil Bulstrode and Percy. They operate in a small town in which they have a healthy rivalry with their only competitor Grimthorpe's.
When Mr Grimthorpe dies with no heirs to continue his business Holroyds quietly celebrate that they will now be the only game in town and be in receipt of all the town's funereal requirements. However before long they are dismayed to find that Grimthorpe's establishment has been bought out as a going concern by a new operator who has renamed it as The Haven of Rest. It has been restyled to bring a new modernistic approach to the sorrow service providing grieving relatives with a gaudily dignified environment making it all seem much more accessible than the daunting formality of a traditional undertakers' solemnity. After a couple of months Holroyds find their business has all but dried up. However as we discover, The Haven, run by Roland Smallbody, is a front for a illegal drug-running operation which smuggles cannabis into the country inside coffins transported into town by British Rail freight services. Holroyds are pleased to get a high-profile job of providing funeral services for recently deceased local luminary Ezra Taylor, founder of a soft drinks empire, who died abroad. His returned body is arriving by train but unfortunately the name of "Taylor" is the name that The Haven's camouflaged drugs consignment is also travelling under and there is a mix-up with the wrong coffins being collected by each firm resulting in a series of farcical developments involving the real body, the drugs, and later a waxwork replica of Ezra Taylor made for a museum, as the two firms try to get things sorted out without the Taylor family realising that anything is amiss as they prepare for their loved-ones cremation service. | |
| Starring: | (TV series characters) Bill Fraser (as Basil Bulstrode), Raymond Huntley (as Emmanuel Holroyd), David Battley (as Percy) (The Haven of Rest) John Ronane (as Roland Smallbody, owner), Dennis Price (as Eugene Soul, beautician), Sue Lloyd (as Miss Peach, hostess) |
| Featuring: | Richard Wattis (as Simmonds, personal secretary to late Ezra Taylor), Roy Kinnear (as Purvis, proprietor of waxworks museum), Michael Ripper (as Arthur, Railway Porter), Ken Parry (as Second Railway Porter) |
| Familiar Faces: | Frank Thornton (as Town Clerk), Bob Todd (as Funeral Director at ball), Michael Robbins (as Funeral Director at ball) |
| NOTES: | |
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A spin-off film version of a barely remembered 1971 BBC sitcom that only lasted one series made in 1971 following a pilot edition made in 1970 totalling 7 episodes overall. The three main stars revived their roles for the film. |
| Theatre of Blood (1973) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Anthony Greville-Bell / Director: Douglas Hickox / Producers: John Kohn, Stanley Mann | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 99 mins |
| The police are investigating several bizarre murders in which the victims are all London theatre critics who were members of the same Critics Circle. Critic Peregrine Devlin observes to police Inspector Boot that the manner of the deaths seems to be based on incidents that occur in Shakespeare plays. The only person Devlin can think of that might hold a serious grudge against the critics is dead though - two years ago at the Critics Awards, one Edward Lionheart was bitterly resentful that he was overlooked as Best Actor. Considered by some as the greatest actor of his age but unwilling to perform anything but Shakespeare he had that year performed a massive season of the bard's plays, but the critics unanimously voted for a relative newcomer to win. Lionheart had confronted the critics later that evening in a penthouse suite and accused them of a determined and vindictive denial of his genius - their critiques of his performances were routinely scathing. He then threw himself off the high-balcony into the river Thames and was never heard from again and assumed to be dead.
Lionheart's loyal daughter Edwina is considered a possible suspect as maybe she is carrying out the murders in revenge at her father's treatment. We, however, know that Lionheart is alive and is behind the murders with the assistance of his daughter. We find out that Lionheart was saved from drowning by some down-and-outs and now he leads them as they assist with his elaborate revenge plans. He lures each unsuspecting critic on some pretext and confronts them with their vitriolic words against him before carrying out a death fitting to the play they reviewed. The police put guards on the remaining critics but Lionheart still manages to get to them. Eventually only Devlin remains alive and despite special protection Lionheart still manages to capture him and under threat of horrible death insists that he re-present the award to Lionheart in a mock-up of the contested award ceremony at an old theatre. Devlin refuses and is left to his fate in a timed death trap. Luckily the police arrive just in time to free him and Lionheart flees up into the upper floors of the now burning theatre building - he makes an impassioned speech and then falls to his death - and Devlin makes a final critique commenting that as usual he over-acted. | |
| Comment: This has a similar sort of plot structure to another Vincent Price film:-The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971). In that film Price's character was killing off all the medical personnel that had failed to save his wife's life during an operation. | |
| Starring: | Vincent Price (as Edward Lionheart), Diana Rigg (as Edwina Lionheart, daughter), Ian Hendry (as Peregrine Devlin, main critic) |
| Featuring: | Michael Hordern, Dennis Price, Arthur Lowe, Harry Andrews, Robert Coote, Jack Hawkins, Coral Browne, Robert Morley (as the unfortunate critics), Milo O'Shea (as Inspector Boot), Eric Sykes (as Sgt Dogge) |
| Familiar Faces: | Diana Dors, Joan Hickson (as critics' wives) |
| Starlets: | Madeline Smith, Brigid Erin Bates |
| NOTES: | |
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The nudity indicated for Diana Dors is a very marginal and partial nipple glimpse whilst she is being massaged by Vincent Price. |
| Writer: Terence Frisby (based on his own play) / Director: Roy Boulting / Producers: M.J. Frankovich, John Boulting | |
| Type: Romantic Comedy | Running Time: 95 mins |
| Robert Danvers is a forty-something TV celebrity famous for his cookery and food critique programmes where he specialises in the finer end of culinary tastes. His taste for the good life extends to his women and his fame, wealth and powers of seduction allow him any women he chooses. He relishes women, treats them with great respect and takes great pleasure in giving them sexual fulfilment - but he is merely a connoisseur of the initial pleasures of a relationship and is not interested in long-term partnerships.
Then he meets Marion, a bright, chirpy, nineteen-year-old American on the rebound from a failed relationship. She is at a low-ebb after her boyfriend Jimmy dumped her for another girl, but Robert finds her attractive and uses his charm to get her back to his place with the usual outcome on his mind. However Marion is different - for one thing she is not aware of his celebrity status and finds his seductive techniques amusing and old fashioned although she is more than up for sex with a forthright no-nonsense attitude to it all. However Robert finds this unnerving and feels like he's taking advantage of her in her depressed state and so ends up sleeping on the couch. Although the relationship between them seems set to end there, when he takes her home to the communal flat she shares with Jimmy and his new girl Caroline, Robert finds Jimmy's insinuations that he is too old and past-it to be an insufferable slight and he consequently takes Marion with him on a two-week holiday break to France. There they get romantic and he falls for her quirky, unconventional ways and when a journalist mistakenly believes them to have secretly married they arrive back in England to a barrage of press speculation. Marion enjoyed her two weeks immensely but when Jimmy chucks his new girl and wants her back she elects to return to him. Faced with the danger of losing her Robert realises he has genuinely come to care for her and impulsively asks her to marry him for real. However she declines his offer and departs leaving Robert in a highly dejected state feeling a great sense of loss. This period is short-lived however and as soon as the next bright young thing comes his way he is back to his old womanising ways with as much gusto as before. | |
| Starring: | Peter Sellers (as Robert Danvers), Goldie Hawn (as Marion), Tony Britton (as Andrew) |
| Featuring: | Nicky Henson (as Jimmy, Marion's student boyfriend), John Comer (as John the Porter), Diana Dors (as John's Wife), Nicola Pagett (as Clare, the Bride), Lance Percival (as Willie, the Groom), Judy Campbell (as Lady Heather, bride's mother), Gabrielle Drake (as Julia Halforde-Smythe, wedding guest), Ruth Trouncer (as Gilly, Andrew's wife), Thorley Walters (as Manager of Carlton Hotel in France), Tom Marshall (as Bryan, Jimmy's friend) |
| Starlets: | Françoise Pascal (as Paola, Andrew's Au-Pair), Geraldine Sherman (as Caroline, Jimmy's new girlfriend) |
| NOTES: | |
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Additional dialogue by Peter Kortner. |
| Writer: John Pinkney / Director: Rod Hardy / Producer: Antony I. Ginnane | |
| Type: Australian / Horror | Running Time: 91 mins |
| Kate Davis is a normal young businesswoman who is unaware that she has become subject to the close scrutiny of a group of mysterious individuals who are about to turn her life upside down. Kate has just begun a holiday break from work when she is rendered unconscious by an intruder and jetted across the country to a small isolated establishment named the Quasta Research Centre.
The Centre, which is headed by a hard-nosed woman called Mrs Barker, has a darkly sinister purpose unknown to the outside world. She and her kin are a breed of vampires who have set up this establishment as a "dairy farm" for blood. The farm is populated by hundreds of docile brainwashed humans who regularly give blood in a highly mechanised process backed by a large processing refinery designed to purify and package the blood into milk-like cartons which are then shipped around the world to their vampire brethren. Kate has been brought here, not to be a donor, but because she is one of them - but just does not know it yet. In the vampires' genealogy Kate is of noble birth being a descendant of the revered Countess Elizabeth Bathory. But once told of this lineage, far from embracing her birthright, Kate is appalled at the revelations and is sickened by the thought of drinking blood. So the brotherhood begin a programme of conditioning to try to break down her resilience and strength of will and have her accept her true heritage as one of their kind. Dr Fraser is responsible for managing the regimen of acceptance as Kate is put through a series of terrifying nightmare scenarios which due to some psychic engineering by Fraser seem so real that she sometimes cannot tell if she is back home or in some sort of dreamland (nor can the viewer). The final scenario is set up so that the only way she can escape it is to drink some blood as the lesser of the two terrors. She is then put through an initiation rite and after some initial misgivings she finally drinks eagerly from the sacrifice victim as a tell-tale red glow of hunger comes to her eyes. But when her boyfriend Derek is captured and brought to the farm to be her blood victim she balks at proving herself by killing him and begs Dr Fraser to help her and Derek escape. Dr Fraser appears to be acting out of compassion as he duly arranges for her to get off the grounds past security and takes her to a small safe house where he tells her he has previously taken Derek so they can be reunited. But there she finds Derek hooked to a machine being desanguinated and she can control herself no more as she drinks greedily from him - and back at the farm Dr Fraser is congratulated for successfully achieving the final part of Kate's full conditioning. | |
| Starring: | Chantal Contouri (as Kate Davis), David Hemmings (as Dr Fraser, conditioning specialist), Shirley Cameron (as Mrs Barker, person in charge of farm operations), Max Phipps (as Mr Hodge, her second in command) |
| Featuring: | Henry Silva (as Dr Gauss, doctor at farm), Rod Mullinar (as Derek Whitelaw, Kate's boyfriend), Rosie Sturgess (as Lori, Kate's housekeeper) |
| Starlets: | Amanda Muggleton (as Martha, Kate's secretary), Jacqui Gordon (Leah, docile prisoner cow) |
| Writers: Dudley Moore, Joseph McGrath, John Wells / Director: Joseph McGrath / Producer: Walter Shenson | |
| Type: Romantic Comedy | Running Time: 84 mins |
| Rupert Street is a composer who works as a resident pianist at a London nightclub. He is just six weeks away from his 30th birthday and has decided that he has accomplished little in his life and if he doesn't do something by the time he is 30 he probably never will. He therefore sets himself the goal of both writing a hit musical and getting married within the next six weeks.
Until three months ago Rupert had still been living with his parents and has now moved into a boarding house. He is rather shy and doesn't know how to go about meeting women but when he discovers that he is living next door to a beautiful young woman called Louise who has just broken up with her boyfriend he sets his sights on marrying her. Rupert and Louise share neighbourly chats and eventually he invites her to dinner and they become romantic - but her boyfriend returns and roughs Rupert up when he tries to intervene in their lover's tiff - and his arm is badly sprained. Unable to play at the club Rupert concentrates on his other goal of writing a hit musical but he can find nothing to inspire him and has only five weeks left. His friend Oscar suggests he goes away for a holiday to try and replenish his creative energies and so Rupert travels to Ireland. He has no luck until he hears a medieval Irish folktale about some young sweethearts whose love is broken by lies told by a wicked rival. This story fuels his imagination and he completes his musical in record time - calling it The Golden Legend of Erin which he posts off to his agent to put into immediate production. When he returns home to his London flat eager to pursue his other goal of marriage he discovers that Louise has left the boarding house and returned to Birmingham but left no forwarding address. Devastated Rupert heads off to Birmingham to search for her neglecting his responsibilities to the musical. Whilst Rupert searches, the musical's director and the company rehearse and prepare but eventually need Rupert to sign important legal documents. He cannot be contacted and so they hire a private detective to trace him. It takes a while but the detective finds both Rupert and Louise and reunites them and Louise agrees to marry him. It is that day of his 30th Birthday and they rush back to London so Rupert can sign the documents and the two of them get married in a registry office. Rupert's musical is a massive hit and he has successfully achieved both his goals. | |
| Comment: The "Cynthia" of the title is not a character in the film and the reason for its usage is not explained. | |
| Starring: | Dudley Moore (as Rupert Street), Suzy Kendall (as Louise Hammond), Eddie Foy Jr (as Oscar, Rupert's American friend) |
| Featuring: | Patricia Routledge (as Mrs Woolley, Rupert's landlady), John Bird (as Herbert Greenslade, private detective), Peter Bayliss (as Victor, Rupert's agent), Duncan Macrae (as Jock McCue, club owner), John Wells (as Honourable Gavin Hopton, money man backing Rupert's musical), Harry Towb (as Mr Woolley, Landlady's husband), Jonathan Routh (as Captain Gore-Taylor, choreographer), Ted Dicks Jr (as Horst Cohen jr, director), Micheál MacLiammóir (as Irish Story Teller) |
| Familiar Faces: | Clive Dunn (as Doctor), Frank Thornton (as Marriage Registrar), Nicky Henson (as Paul, Louise's boyfriend) |
| aka: A Promise of Bed | |
| Writers: Donald Ford, Derek Ford / Director: Derek Ford / Producer: Stanley Long | |
| Type: Sex Comedy / Anthology | Running Time: 78 mins |
| The film comprises of three completely separate comic tales:-.
Story 1: A 30-something actress called Susan Stress is auditioning for a part in a movie in a film producer's hotel apartment. The role requires her to seduce a young inexperienced virginal lad and the producer is not sure if she can carry that off. He goes into the next room to ask his camera-enthusiastic teenage son his opinion of her and is told she has no teen-appeal. Susan overhears this although she never meets the lad face-to-face. Later on back in her own hotel room down the hall she sees a young man leaving the producer's apartment carrying camera equipment and assumes it is the son and so leads him back into her suite and seduces him by posing for his camera and then taking him to bed. Then upon successful completion of her seduction she takes him back to the producer's room so he can tell his father how convincing she was. But it turns out that the photographer was not the son after all and just someone running an errand for him. Story 2: George Makepeace is a lonely middle-aged man who has decided to end his life. He has taped up the doors and windows and is in the process of gassing himself when the phone rings and someone asks about a party - a wrong number obviously. Next a young woman called Barbara arrives at the front door for the party. George realises that someone has given his address by mistake but lets her in for some much craved company although he has little in the way of food or drink in the house with which to entertain. She smells gas and sees the duct tape and he explains it away by saying it is the theme of the party - that everyone has to pretend to be a suicide case - as others arrive they are told and they all think it's a great idea and get into the swing of it. Eventually someone finds George's suicide note and reads it out but everyone thinks it's just a joke and his efforts to really get into the "part" - only Barbara sees the truth. When everyone has left George feels more depressed than ever and begins his suicide preparations again - but Barbara has remained behind and got ready for bed with him to show him someone cares. Story 3: A taxi driver has taken a break from work to see a porn movie. His first fare afterwards is a beautiful blonde and he has some fantasies about her. Then the taxi is involved in a collision and the girl runs out without paying her fare. The driver follows her into the woods wanting his money. He finds a futuristic house where girls in bikinis roam and strange erotic scenes play out before his very eyes. But is was all a dream as he sits concussed in his taxi from the collision. | |
| Comment: The stories might be titled "This", "That" and "The Other" - although there is nothing on-screen to indicate that this is the intention. There is a very minor segue between stories. Story 2 starts with Victor Spinetti looking out of his window and seeing Dennis Waterman walking down his street. And in story 3 the drunk who crashes into the taxi driver's cab is someone who was at the story 2 party. Other than that nothing connects them. | |
| Starring: | (Story 1) Vanda Hudson (as Susan Stress), Dennis Waterman (as the Photographer), Gordon Sterne (as the Producer) (Story 2) Victor Spinetti (as George), Vanessa Howard (as Barbara) (Story 3) John Bird (as the Taxi Driver), Yutte Stensgaard (as the passenger) |
| Starlets: | (Story 2) Valerie Leon, Heather Barber, Alexandra Bastedo, Sue Cole, Sheila Ruskin, Siobhan Taylor (Story 3) Angie Grant, Cleo Goldstein |
| This Sporting Life (1963) | Previous Next |
| Writer: David Storey (based on his own novel) / Director: Lindsay Anderson / Producer: Karel Reisz | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 128 mins |
| Frank Machin is a burly working class miner in Northern England who has ambitions to better himself and decides the best way to drastically improve his prospects is to become a member of the City's Rugby team. The City Rugby League Team are keenly followed and all its middle-class team members have local celebrity-status and impressive incomes. Frank boards with a young widow called Margaret Hammond who has two young children. Her husband died working in a factory owned by Gerald Weaver who also owns the rugby team. Margaret is very cool towards Frank always behaving in an offhand manner with no wish to get emotionally involved despite his attempts to be friendly with her.
Frank wangles a try-out with the City team and proves himself very able on the field. The committee realise his huge potential and want to sign him up and he manages to negotiate a large wage. Although he is socially a fish-out-of-water Frank quickly becomes the team's most important star player. He could now afford a place of his own but he continues to live with Margaret and try and melt her resistance because, despite her indifference, he has fallen in love with her. He buys her gifts and eventually she gives into his persistence and ends up sharing his bed as a kind of duty - but still does not show any actual emotional love for him. Margaret begins to be gossiped about as being a kept woman which she resents. She wants Frank to leave but he cannot understand her attitude - he wants to give her a better life and it is only her intransigence that is preventing their relationship from being formalised. She gets hysterical and throws him out and he goes through a bad patch of being depressed and living in a doss house. After a few days he goes back to try and talk sense into Margaret and discovers she has been rushed to hospital - apparently she has been very ill and is suffering from a brain haemorrhage and she soon dies. Frank goes back to the house and cries out in pain at his loss and despair. | |
| Comment: With her continual lack of warmth it is a bit difficult to understand quite what Frank sees in Margaret. Her sudden illness and death seems to come rather out of the blue at the end - unless the idea was that it had been something she had known about for a long time and was trying not to get involved with him because of it. | |
| Starring: | Richard Harris (as Frank Machin), Rachel Roberts (as Margaret Hammond), Alan Badel (as Gerald Weaver, club chairman), William Hartnell (as 'Dad' Johnson, Frank's old-timer friend), Colin Blakely (as Maurice Braithwaite, rugby player, Frank's friend) |
| Featuring: | Arthur Lowe (as Charles Slomer, Rugby committee member), Vanda Godsell (as Anne Weaver, Gerald's wife), Anne Cunningham (as Judith, Maurice's girlfriend), Jack Watson (as Len Miller, Rugby team captain), Harry Markham (as Wade, Rugby committee member) |
| Familiar Faces: | Leonard Rossiter (as Sports Journalist), Frank Windsor (as Dentist) |
| NOTES: | |
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Made in Black and White |
| Three for All (1974) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Tudor Gates / Director: Martin Campbell / Producers: Harold Shampan, Tudor Gates | |
| Type: Comedy | Running Time: 85 mins |
| Diane, Shelley and Pet are three girls whose boyfriends are in a struggling pop group called Billy Beethoven. The band are getting fed up with forever being the perennial support act whom the audience deride in their impatience to see the headline act. They urge their manager Jet Bone to do something about it and Jet responds by managing to strike a deal with a travel company who are willing to send the group on an exclusive tour of their Spanish holiday resorts and heavily promote them in the hope of selling more holidays. The promoter Eddie Boys decides they need an image overhaul to hook into the glitterama fad and the boys become glitter cowboys. The girlfriends are looking forward to going to Spain with their boyfriends and are therefore hugely crestfallen when Mr Boys decides that girlfriends would be bad thing and the group should have no distractions while away.
So the three girls are left at home to mope and become so bored that they decide to use their savings to go on holiday to Spain and have some fun by themselves. The girls book a package holiday and are soon off to Torremolinos to stay at the Playamar hotel complex. Unfortunately they keep getting into unfortunate scrapes which involve the police and have to be bailed out by the kindly ex-pat complex security manager Mr Gibbons. Meanwhile Billy Beethoven are making a name for themselves and their gigs are selling out as they start to become a hot property. Back in England their single is released which storms to the top of the hit parade. The girls eventually become such a nuisance to Mr Gibbons that he asks if they wouldn't mind leaving early and since they have found the holiday to be a bit dull anyway they duly go home. When the boys' tour is over they return home to England all thoroughly worn out and are reunited with their girlfriends who are delighted to have them back at last. Mr Boys wants to cash in on the group's new-found fame and send them on an immediate tour of the United States but considers it a nuisance for their fan appeal that they have girlfriends. So to get the girls discreetly out of the way he "rewards" them for their patience in (as he believes) staying at home while the boys were in Spain by giving them an all-expenses paid holiday to Torremolinos at the Playamar hotel! | |
| Starring: | Adrienne Posta (as Diane), Lesley North (as Shelley), Cheryl Hall (as Pet) (Billy Beethoven) Graham Bonnet (as Kook, lead singer), Robert Lindsay (as Tom, drummer) Paul Nicholas (as Gary, guitar), Christopher Neil (as Ricky, guitar) Richard Beckinsale (as Jet Bone, Billy Beethoven's manager), John Le Mesurier (as Mr Gibbons, head of security at Spanish hotel complex), George Baker (as Eddie Boys, promoter), Simon Williams (as Harry Bingley, Eddie's assistant) |
| Featuring: | Jonathan Adams (as Dr Sparks, holidaymaker), Arthur Mullard and Sheila Bernette (as Ben and Rhoda Williams, holidaymakers), Ian Lavender (as Spanish policeman), Roy Kinnear (as Joe Underwood, chat-up pest at night-club), Anna Quayle (as Miss La Pulle, Spanish celebrity), Nicholas Young (as Myron, man at night-club), Roy North (as Ralph, man at night-club) |
| Familiar Faces: | [Small cameo roles] Diana Dors (as Ricky's mother), Hattie Jacques (as Security Official at airport), Liz Fraser (as Airport Passenger), Dandy Nichols (as Lady at night-club), Edward Woodward (as Roadsweeper in London) |
| Also: | Showaddywaddy (guest performance) |
| NOTES: | |
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Although classed as a comedy it is not a joke-strewn sit-com affair played for obvious laughs - but it is far too light and fluffy to be considered as a drama. Also despite the track-record of usually more saucy material from director Martin Campbell and writer Tudor Gates, this one is strictly U certificate stuff. |
| Writer: Edna O'Brien / Director: Peter Hall / Producer: Julian Blaustein | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 89 mins |
| Steve Howard is a 43-year-old Assistant Sales Director working for a firm that sells domestic appliances. He is married to Frances although their relationship is a bit shaky and they have never been able to have children. They have just moved into a brand new home and everything is in a state of upheaval. Steve spends a lot of time away from home on the road as part of his job and he likes to pick up pretty girl hitchhikers for company and possibly a bit more besides if he gets lucky.
As the film begins he spots a pretty young girl thumbing for a lift. She is called Ella and is nineteen years old with an unconventional attitude almost making him think she is doing him a favour by accepting his offer of a lift. She is very independently minded but comes across as a bit of an enigma not giving much away about herself - she claims to be penniless and only does what gives her pleasure:- travel, conversation, food and sex. Steve buys her a meal which she ravenously consumes and afterwards they go to a hotel that he regularly stays at and they have sex. He discovers she has a notebook and obviously does this sort of thing a lot as she has given her previous conquests scores and comments. She tells him he will get a high score. Next morning she thinks nothing of making him squirm at the breakfast table by talking loudly about his infidelity to make him uncomfortable amongst the other guests nearby as she goads him on the condition of his marriage. Despite this she seems to have him hooked. She then tells him she is staying on at the hotel and has taken a job as a maid and Steve leaves her there and continues his journey home. At home his wife Frances is still unpacking following their recent move. Their marriage is cracking but Frances is convinced a child would fix things - she wants to adopt but Steve is unsupportive saying he doesn’t have the time to sort out the details and she should get on and look into it herself if that's what she wants. After a furious row he goes out again on pretence of another job related trip and goes back to the hotel to find Ella and they have sex again. He finds himself falling for her uninhibited impulsiveness and the inveigling sense of aloof mystery she presents. He then goes off on the road again. A few days later at home Frances has a visitor - it is Ella saying she is just calling on the off-chance that her husband, the nice Mr Howard, might be in because he kindly gave her a lift a while back and said she should look him up if she were ever in the area. She displays a far less self-assured facet to Frances as she gives her a sob story of how she was abused by the manager of the hotel she worked at and had to leave without any pay and has nowhere to go and thought of Mr Howard. Frances knows none of the true story and feels sorry for the girl and offers her a bed for the night. Back at the hotel all Steve knows from the hotel manager is that Ella left suddenly without notice taking her pay out of the till. He is shocked when he gets home to find his mistress in his house with his wife. Steve wants Ella to leave but can't push her too far lest she reveal what has gone on between them. Ella presenting a sweet helpless vulnerability, plays on Frances' compassionate side and manages to stay longer by saying she thinks she might be pregnant by the hotel manager as her period is late. But as a few days pass Frances becomes suspicious that her husband and Ella are the ones that have been carrying on and when the truth emerges and Ella admits the baby is Steve's, Frances suggests to her husband that maybe they could adopt her baby. However, Steve has already made alternate plans and has decided to leave his wife and set up home with Ella. With the marriage well and truly destroyed Ella changes her story and says she has now had her period and there is no baby after all. Frances leaves to go and stay with her mother and when Steve asks Ella why she came to visit his wife she replies she was just curious to see what would happen. Ella leaves with no sense of sorrow or remorse or even wicked pleasure at the havoc she has wreaked in this marriage and it is as though she has done it purely as an experiment. | |
| Starring: | Rod Steiger (as Steve Howard), Claire Bloom (as Frances Howard), Judy Geeson (as Ella Patterson) |
| Featuring: | Peggy Ashcroft (as Belle, Frances' mother), Paul Rogers (as Jack Roberts, hotel manager), Elizabeth Spriggs (as Marcia Hitchins, hotel maid) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on a novel by Andrea Newman. |
| Writer: Robert Westerby / Director: Don Chaffey | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 93 mins |
| It is 1912 and Andrew McDhui is a Scottish vet who has just moved to Argyllshire to set up a local practice in the small village of Inverloch. He is more used to the impersonal business approach of treating farm animals and finds that his brash practical manner does not go down well with the villagers wishing for compassion and understanding where their beloved pets are concerned. Andrew is a widower with a young daughter called Mary to care for - his nurse wife was taken five years ago while caring for the sick in an epidemic. Soon after they move in a ginger cat called Thomasina "adopts" them and soon makes herself one of the family becoming Mary's best friend and playmate.
Elsewhere, in the nearby glen, a beautiful young woman called Lori MacGregor lives alone in a rented croft. She is a happy joyful soul who adores animals but her reclusive nature has given her a local reputation of being a witch and the children all fear her. Lori has a mischievous playful nature and doesn't mind the label she has been saddled with. She compassionately takes in sick and injured animals and nurses them back to health. She has such a natural affinity that even the wildest of animals seem to have an instinctive trust of her knowing they will be safe in her care. When Thomasina falls ill with tetanus after an accident Mary rushes to her father to save the cat. But Andrew is urgently saving the life of the much needed working-dog of a blind man and has no time to treat both and so he has to have Thomasina put down as a danger to health. Mary is so upset that she vows never to speak to her father again. Her child friends hold a funeral service for Thomasina and take her body to the glen for a burial service - but when they see Lori they run off in fear leaving Thomasina's body behind. When Lori examines the cat she is puzzled because Thomasina is not dead but is in a deep sleep with a very weak pulse. Lori takes the cat back to her croft to nurse her back to health. When Thomasina recovers she has forgotten her former life and lives now with Lori in her second life. Mary meanwhile remains unresponsive to her father still believing her beloved Thomasina to be dead. Andrew cannot get through to his daughter however much he tries. The children in the village start spreading stories about Andrew telling everyone how heartless he is that he would even kill his own daughter's pet and that people would be best advised not to take their own pets to him for he would rather kill them than cure them. Andrew's business soon starts to suffer and when he hears embroidered tales of the work Lori does on the glen he decides to go and see her and give her a piece of his mind about her mumbo-jumbo practices. He witnesses her taking an injured badger from a trap and urgently warns her that a wounded badger is dangerous - but in Lori's arms he is astonished to see the animal remains docile and trusting. Andrew helps treat the badger with medicines and Lori is just as impressed by his techniques as he is of her uncanny ability to gain an animal's trust. He decides he quite likes her after all and realises she is doing no harm. Back home Mary falls seriously ill and appears to have given up on life and Andrew thinks of Lori's gift for reaching out to hurt and lost creatures and decides to ask her to take a look at Mary. When he goes to her croft she is not there and he hears a noise from a nearby gypsy circus. Lori has gone there after reports of animal mistreatment and finds the uncaring owner none too fond of her interference as he orders her whipped. Andrew arrives and saves her - they then go to see Mary and it is clear how far gone the little girl is. Back at the croft alone in a thunderstorm Thomasina suddenly remembers her old home and the love she had with Mary and heads back. She meows at the window and Andrew brings her in and as soon as Mary sees that Thomasina has come back she miraculously recovers. Andrew and Lori have fallen for each other and they marry providing Mary with a much-needed mother figure. They become a new family with Thomasina a proud member of it as the cat enters its new third life. | |
| Starring: | Patrick McGoohan (as Andrew McDhui), Susan Hampshire (as Lori MacGregor), Jean Anderson (as Mrs MacKenzie, the McDhui housekeeper), Karen Dotrice (as Mary McDhui, Andrew's daughter) (Mary's child friends) Vincent Winter (as Hughie Stirling), Denis Gilmore (as Jamie McNab), Matthew Garber (as Geordie McNab) |
| Featuring: | Laurence Naismith (as Reverend Angus Peddie), Wilfrid Brambell (as Willie Bannock, veterinary assistant) |
| Also: | Elspeth March (as Narrative Voice of Thomasina) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the novel Thomasina by Paul Gallico. |
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Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber both receive "introducing" credits. |
| Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Gerry & Sylvia Anderson / Director: David Lane / Producer: Sylvia Anderson | |
| Type: Sci-Fi | Running Time: 89 mins |
| This very basic plot review assumes a pre-existing familiarity with the Thunderbirds characters. The launch of the first manned exploration vehicle to Mars is sabotaged by the Hood causing it to crash. Two years later when the planets are in ideal alignment for another launch the Space Exploration Centre asks International Rescue to oversee security and after foiling another sabotage attempt the launch is successfully made. On Mars the crew encounter a rock based life form which defend their territory and the explorers have to make a hasty getaway. On their return to Earth there is damage to the re-entry vehicle and International Rescue are called in to save the crew. | |
| Featuring: | (voices of) Peter Dyneley (Jeff Tracy) , Shane Rimmer (Scott Tracy), Jeremy Wilkin (Virgil Tracy), Matt Zimmerman (Alan Tracy), Sylvia Anderson (Lady Penelope), David Graham (Gordon Tracy/Brains/Parker), Ray Barrett (John Tracy/The Hood), Christine Finn (Tin-Tin) |
| Star-Turns: | (singing voice) Cliff Richard (as Cliff Richard Jr, puppet version singing with the Shadows) |
| NOTES: | |
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This film is a feature length spin-off from the popular TV classic Thunderbirds which ran for 32 episodes over two series from 1965-66. It was made just after the series ended using the same puppets, sets and models and with the same voice artists and stirring music. It very largely assumes an existing familiarity with the series, and whilst it doesn't do anything special with the characters or advance things in any way it does serve as a perfectly adequate extra episode of the series. There was a further feature film made two years later called Thunderbird 6 (1968). |
| Thunderbird 6 (1968) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Gerry & Sylvia Anderson / Director: David Lane / Producer: Sylvia Anderson | |
| Type: Sci-Fi | Running Time: 85 mins |
| This review assumes a pre-existing familiarity with the Thunderbirds characters. The Thunderbirds' engineer Brains has designed an airship for the New World Aircraft corporation using revolutionary anti-gravity compensators. The airship is a luxury craft that will float around the world providing luxury pleasure cruises. Lady Penelope, Parker, Alan and Tintin join the inaugural flight. Unbeknown to them the crew have been substituted by impostors working for the Hood and they record Lady Penelope's conversations to edit together a message that will lure International Rescue to a rendezvous where the Hood can take over their craft. The plan is foiled but in a gun battle the gravity compensators are damaged and the passengers on the airship have to be rescued by the International Rescue team using an unconventional craft. The title of this movie comes about because Jeff has asked Brains to design a new Thunderbird craft to complement the existing five but he has no idea of what type of vehicle it should be - Brains comes up with various designs that Jeff rejects. Meanwhile Alan travelled to England to join the cruise using an ancient bi-plane and when it comes to the airship rescue it is this plane that is used to rescue the passengers because Thunderbirds One and Two are creating too much turbulence to approach the stricken craft. With the rescue successfully made Brains declares that the bi-plane should be named the honorary Thunderbird 6. | |
| Featuring: | (voices of) Peter Dyneley (Jeff Tracy), Shane Rimmer (Scott Tracy), Jeremy Wilkin (Virgil Tracy), David Graham (Brains/Gordon/Parker), Matt Zimmerman (Alan Tracy), Sylvia Anderson (Lady Penelope), Keith Alexander (John Tracy), Christine Finn (Tin-Tin) |
| NOTES: | |
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This film is the second feature length spin-off from the popular TV classic Thunderbirds which ran for 32 episodes over two series from 1965-66. Although made a few years after the series ended everything is the same as before using the same puppets, sets and models and (with the exception of "John") the same voice artists and stirring music. This second film is in some ways more satisfactory than the first in that it concentrates more on the activities of the Tracy family rather than giving a lot of time over to new one-off unknown characters-in-peril as was the case in the first spin-off film Thunderbirds Are Go (1966). There's nothing remarkable about it as a film but it serves as a perfectly adequate extra episode of the series and was essentially its final ever outing. |
| Tiffany Jones (1973) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Alfred Shaugnessy / Director/Producer: Pete Walker | |
| Type: Comedy | Running Time: 87 mins |
| Tiffany Jones works as a photographic model and lives in a Chelsea flat with her friend Jo and has a brother called Guy who is a photographer. Tiffany is about to find herself caught up in a political struggle for control of an entire country...!
The story starts in Zirdana, a small East European country - a former monarchy whose king was overthrown five years previously by the republican party whose leader Boris Jabal is now the president running the country like a virtual dictatorship. Two Kylak revolutionaries have broken into the presidential palace to find out his plans for an imminent trade talks in London where they believe the president will be arranging for an arms delivery and in some secret files discover a photograph of a woman that they believe must be a secret contact. The photograph is of Tiffany Jones. In England Jabal arrives to conduct the trade talks with businessmen and government contacts but first he instructs his aide to find the woman in the photograph. The reason Jabal had her photo in his files is that he cut it from a newspaper a few years before and has yearned for her ever since. Tiffany is booked for a modelling session under a ruse so that the president can meet her and declare his love for her. She extricates herself from the awkward situation by promising to go to the opera with him the next evening. But a stranger has seen her arrive at the president's country retreat and the next day he books Tiffany for a modelling session so that he can find out more about her. The stranger turns out to be Prince Salvador, the handsome son of the late deposed Zirdanian king who wants to wrest back control of his country. He persuades Tiffany to help him and she says she will try and find out something useful during her date with the president later that day. After her opera date she discovers that the president has a meeting with some American businessmen the following day at 6pm at the Hilton hotel. On her way back home she is kidnapped by the Kylak revolutionaries who are in London posing as cooks and they question her on why her photo was in Jabal's files. She escapes their clutches and reports to the prince about the 6pm meeting who suggests that if the president could be impersonated at this meeting then they would be able to disrupt his plans. So Tiffany phones the president and invites him to be a guest at the garden party of her South London Photographic Model Girls Union earlier in the day. She then returns to the Kylak "cooks" and persuades them to help by impersonating the president and his aide while she keeps the president occupied elsewhere. At the garden party the president is amazed when all the girls start undressing on the pretext that it is too hot. He is persuaded to disrobe himself to go swimming. But when he is ready to leave his clothes mysteriously go "missing" and cause him to be late for his meeting. Tiffany's brother Guy is also there at her request to take candid compromising photos of the president. Meanwhile the cooks meet the American businessmen and arrange for the arms to be diverted to another port where their compatriots can intercept them instead of the president's men. In return the businessmen say they want some "bread" which puzzles the cooks but they agree. The finance minister will arrive at the airfield later that evening to arrange payment. All parties then converge at the airfield. The President, Kylak's, the Prince, Tiffany and Guy - and van loads of bread arrive. Then Prince Salvador armed with the compromising photos that Tiffany gives him takes a plane and flies off to Zirdana to retake his throne by using the photos to discredit the president. | |
| Starring: | Anouska Hempel (as Tiffany Jones) |
| Featuring: | Ray Brooks (as Guy), Susan Sheers (as Jo), Eric Pohlmann (as President Jabal), Damien Thomas (as Prince Salvador), Richard Marner (as President's Aide), Alan Curtis, John Clive, Geoffrey Hughes (as the cooks) |
| Familiar Faces: | Lynda Baron, Sam Kelly, Derek Royle, David Hamilton |
| Starlets: | Penny Irving (uncredited role) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the comic-strip characters created by Pat Tourett and Jenny Butterworth in the Daily Mail |
| Writer: Johnny Speight / Director: Norman Cohen / Producer: Jon Penington | |
| Type: Sitcom Spin-off | Running Time: 96 mins |
| The film begins just before the start of the Second World War. Alf Garnett is a highly opinionated and patriotic man who voices his low opinion of Hitler and the German people. Throughout the low points of the war Alf is there in the pub giving his particular stance on the developing events that prove Hitler is a coward and any British setbacks are all part of shrewd tactics by Churchill. For all his bluster Alf is frightened himself and is the first to the bomb shelters when the sirens sound and panics when he accidentally gets sent draft papers in an administration error.
Time moves on almost twenty years to the 1960s and the Garnetts are still living in the same house and Alf is still just as opinionated - although now without a sharp focus for his bigotry he rallies against any persuasion that is different to his own narrow definitions of acceptability, be that class, colour or political leanings. Against the likely odds for a working class man such as himself, Alf is a stanch Conservative supporter - unlike his grown up daughter Rita who is rooting for Labour in the upcoming general election. Rita is engaged to Mike whom Alf dislikes but tolerates. The family continue to squabble with Alf being at the centre of all disagreements and Rita and Mike often joining in just to taunt him when they find his extreme views incredulous. As events wrap up the street where they live is scheduled for demolition and all the neighbours move out except for the Garnetts because Alf refuses to be dictated to. Eventually left all alone with even his wife gone Alf comes to realise that as much as he dislikes other people he does need their company and cannot live alone and goes to join his family in their new high-rise flat. | |
| Starring: | Warren Mitchell (as Alf Garnett), Dandy Nichols (as Else Garnett), Una Stubbs (as Rita), Anthony Booth (as Mike) |
| Featuring: | Bill Maynard (as Bert, a neighbour), Kate Williams (as Sergeant's Girlfriend), Brian Blessed (as Army Sergeant) |
| Familiar Faces: | Frank Thornton (Valuation Officer), Michael Robbins (Pub Landlord), Geoffrey Hughes (Man in pub) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the popular BBC sitcom that was (initially) made and set in the 1960s. 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. |
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This film is basically a prequel to the series showing the lead characters' early life. |
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There was another spin-off film about the Garnett family entitled The Alf Garnett Saga (1972). |
| Writers: Christina Schuch, Ramón Bravo, René Cardona Jr / Director: René Cardona Jr / Producer: Gerald Green | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 84 mins |
| Rich American tourist Steven has arrived at a Mexican beach resort and is staying on a luxury yacht moored offshore. He is there to relax and party but becomes intrigued when he meets a shark fisherman and wants to discover more about it. Initially love-rivals for a beauty called Patricia, he and the Mexican fisherman Miguel soon become friends and the Mexican takes Steven with him and teaches him how to hunt small sharks underwater with spear guns although warns him to always be wary of the larger tiger sharks as with them you only get one chance for a kill before it gets you.
By day they hunt, but by night they party on Steven's boat with some holidaying sisters, Kelly and Cynthia Madison that they pick up on the beach. Later on they jointly meet a British tourist called Gabriella and the three of them hit it off and become inseparable - the two men share her affections and she loves them both equally in return. They involve her in their shark hunting trips and they are all happy in their idyllic if unconventional three-way relationship. But after a month or so of this way of life tragedy strikes when Miguel is killed by a tiger shark. Gabriella decides to leave as the relationship no longer works for her with just two of them. Steven vows to kill the tiger shark and organises the local fisherman to try and hunt it down by day. But at night he still parties and there is another shark-kill involving one of the Madison sisters as they swim out to Steven's boat. Steven is then determined to go down underwater alone to hunt down the killer shark which he successfully does using the skills and advice taught to him by Miguel. | |
| Comment: Although Susan George (as Gabriella) is the top billed star of this movie she is only actually in it for about 25 minutes in the middle portion. The real star in terms of screen time would be Hugo Stiglitz. | |
| Starring: | Hugo Stiglitz (as Steven), Andrés García (as Miguel), Susan George (as Gabriella) |
| Featuring: | Jennifer Ashley (as Kelly Madison), Laura Lyons (as Cynthia Madison), Fiona Lewis (as Patricia), Priscilla Barnes, Pamela Garner (as party girls) |
| NOTES: | |
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The full version of this film is about 40 minutes longer - but was edited down to a shorter version. The short version is the one reviewed here. The longer version tells more of Steven's back story showing the reason he came to Mexico; the Madison sisters are introduced earlier on as they make their way to the resort (as opposed to already being there when first seen in the shorter version); and there is an earlier romance between Miguel and another female character. |
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Although it might be presumed to be a horror/thriller Jaws rip-off kind of film it is actually more of a basic drama about two fisherman friends and the women they meet. The underwater shark fishing is done fairly matter-of-factly and the shark-attack and eventual killing of it is unsensationalised and really only a minor aspect of the movie. |
| Writers: Alfio Valdarini, Carlo Carunchio, Griffi / Director: Giuseppe Patroni Griffi / Producer: Silvio Clementelli | |
| Type: European / Period Drama | Running Time: 100 mins |
| In Renaissance Italy sister and brother Annabella and Giovanni are reunited as grown-ups after he has been far away on his studies. Giovanni has an intense passion for his sister that he has never dared voice to her and he believes that a blood tie is greater than any other bond there could be.
Annabella is beautiful and from a wealthy family and one of the best catches in Italy and has received dozens of offers of marriage from many suitors all of which she has turned down - for such gestures mean nothing to her and she secretly has a yearning for just one man - her brother. When the siblings realise that their feelings for each other are mutual they begin a love affair in secret and have sex and she becomes pregnant. Unaware of this development Annabella's father tells his daughter that since she has not been able to select a suitor for herself he has chosen a suitable husband for her. And when Giovanni makes a religious confession the church puts moral pressure on Annabella to repent for her sins by marrying the chosen man to allow the child to have a name. The man chosen by her father from amongst her suitors is Soranzo a rich landowner who can be harsh towards those who cross him but is caring and considerate towards his friends. He is delighted and happy to marry Annabella but is unaware of her condition as it is too early for anything to show. Soranzo is understanding when Annabella shows reluctance to consummate their marriage for he realises he has been foisted upon her by her father but he fervently hopes to grow into someone that Annabella can learn to love - he is unaware the real reason is that she is still brooding over her secret and forbidden love for her brother, the man she considers as her true husband. Some time later when Annabella appears to come over ill a doctor is sent for and Soranzo is told that his wife is pregnant. He knows it cannot be his and feels immense anger that Annabella's family have tried to use his name to cover her shame and dishonour - he calls her a whore and demands to know who the father is but even though he hurts her she declines to say. Soranzo vows to kill every member of her family in revenge. He sends out an invitation for all members of her family to come to his residence for a celebratory banquet. Giovanni arrives first and secretly meets up with his sister - she tells him what Soranzo has planned and regrets they can never be together again. But perhaps in heaven they can be reunited as lovers as they want. She willingly accepts death at his hands and Giovanni proceeds to cut out her heart and takes it to the banquet hall and before the attendant guests presents it to Soranzo telling him this is the only way he would ever possess her heart and reveals that it was he who was his sister's lover. Whether Soranzo had been intending to carry out his planned retribution or not, this news of further depravity settles it, and the incensed Soranzo proceeds to order his pre-primed servants to massacre all the guests - all men and women of this amoral family who so wickedly tried to ensnare him (although they had no inkling of Annabella's illicit pregnancy and were marrying her off in good faith for the noblest of reasons). And after a fight Soranzo personally kills Giovanni. | |
| Starring: | Oliver Tobias (as Giovanni), Charlotte Rampling (as Annabella), Fabio Testi (as Soranzo) |
| Featuring: | Antonio Falsi (as Bonaventura, Gionanni's monk friend), Rik Battaglia (as the Giovanni and Annabella's father), Angela Luce (as The Father's Woman), Rino Imperio (as Soranzo's manservant) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on a play by John Ford. |
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This Italian production which was in English for the version reviewed is listed here because of the starring roles for British actors Charlotte Rampling and Oliver Tobias. |
| Writer: Chris Wicking / Director: Peter Sykes / Producer: Roy Skeggs | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 89 mins |
| John Verney is an occult novelist and at a book launch in London he is approached by an anxious man called Henry Beddows who claims to be mixed up in a satanic cult and is in need of help. Beddows' daughter Catherine is a nun in a Bavarian church whom he is not allowed to see except once a year on her birthday when she comes to visit him. This year is her 18th and Beddows has reason to fear for her safety and thinks that Verney will be able to better protect her from the devilry that may befall her. Verney agrees to help thinking that just like most devil-cults it will turn out to be formed of hedonistic thrill seekers with nothing remotely supernatural or dangerous involved - but at the very least may provide him with material for another book.
Catherine's church is called "The Children of Our Lord" and is led by an excommunicated priest with incredible strength of will called Father Michael Rayner. The "Lord" they worship is named Asteroth (or The Devil) but its disciples are brought up to truly believe that they are worshiping a power for good - only Father Rayner and a few select disciples know their true objective. Eighteen years ago Catherine had been born and baptised in her dying mother's blood and then brought up in seclusion - her father Henry Beddows was warned of dire consequences if he ever tried to interfere. And now a new baby has been born - conceived during a Satanic rite nine-months previously - and when the innocently unaware Catherine is re-baptised in that slain baby's blood she will become an avatar for the devil to become incarnate on Earth. The ceremony must be carried out at a particular hilltop abbey in England held sacred because of the unique geology upon which it stands. Verney does as Beddows asks and takes Catherine into his care and his intervention causes immense irritation for Father Rayner who needs Catherine to fulfil the great destiny he has been planning for so many years. Rayner employs methods of the dark arts to exert his will and influence upon Catherine from afar to try to reclaim her. Catherine is an innocent who believes Father Rayner to be a great man and Verney has his work cut out trying to keep her from succumbing to his supernatural calls. Eventually Rayner succeeds in getting Catherine back under his direct purview and because of the warped teachings she received Catherine is willing to embrace her destiny without a proper understanding of the evil that would be unleashed. Rayner brings Catherine to the Abbey built upon a hill of flint where she is lain on an altar slab within a protective circle of blood. Rayner slays the baby and collects its blood and begins his incantations over Catherine's recumbent form but is stopped before concluding by the arrival of Verney determined to stop him and save Catherine. Rayner believes that the blood circle is impregnable but Verney has discovered a way to pass safely across by holding a blood-soaked flint stone. He then hurls this at Rayner who falls to the ground and vanishes as the devil's fury at being outwitted is unleashed. Verney struggles to carry Catherine from the circle - but once he gets outside the danger passes and she is safe. | |
| Comment: Two droplets of blood had accidentally spilt onto Catherine's forehead during the uncompleted "baptism" ceremony. As the film ends she shows no sign of being devil-possessed but the possibility is left open that maybe that token was enough... | |
| Starring: | Richard Widmark (as John Verney), Christopher Lee (as Father Michael Rayner), Nastassja Kinski (as Catherine Beddows), Denholm Elliott (as Henry Beddows, Catherine's father), Honor Blackman (as Anna Fountain, Verney's agent and friend), Anthony Valentine (as David Kennedy, Anna's boyfriend) |
| Featuring: | Michael Goodliffe (as George De Grass, disciple of Father Michael), Eva Maria Meineke (as Eveline De Grass, disciple of Father Michael), Derek Francis (as The Bishop), Isabella Telezynska (as Margaret, pregnant woman) |
| Familiar Faces: | Brian Wilde (as Librarian of Forbidden books), Frances de la Tour (as Salvation Army Woman, [one-scene cameo]) |
| Starlets: | Anna Bentinck (as Isabel, Henry's wife in flashback), Zoe Hendry, Lindy Benson, Jo Peters and Bobby Sparrow (as Girls in Satanic ceremony, [credited but hardly really seen on screen]) |
| NOTES: | |
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From the novel by Dennis Wheatley |
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This turned out to be the final Hammer horror film |
| The Tomb of Ligeia (1964) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Robert Towne / Director: Roger Corman / Producer: Pat Green | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 78 mins |
| It is 1821 and nobleman Verden Fell is burying his late wife Lady Ligeia in the grounds which were once an Abbey. A priest objects to this for the grounds are now unconsecrated, but Verden cares little - for to him his wife is not dead. Her strength of will had been so immense that even as the ravages of an illness took her weakening body she swore that she would not die and her will would live on. A glass panel is set into the coffin over her face so it can be verified up to the moment of burial that she has not returned to life. During the proceedings a stray black cat jumps onto the coffin and Ligeia's eyes spring open but this appears to be an involuntary contraction and not a sign of life. She is finally buried in a grave with a headstone that carries the message "Nor lie in death forever".
Some period of time later a foxhunt is underway and a young woman called Lady Rowena rides into the burial grounds and is thrown from her horse. She is found by Verden who carries her back to his Abbey and binds her leg. Verden is living as a recluse in his huge property with only a manservant called Kenrick for company. His morose state makes Rowena feel uneasy, and yet fascinated, and although he is subject to sustained periods of reverie she falls for him and they marry. (It should be pointed out that the redheaded Rowena and the dark-haired Ligeia are played by the same actress) They have a happy honeymoon but when they get back home to the Abbey, Verden returns to his old morose ways - he plans to sell the Abbey but a solicitor friend called Christopher Gough tells him that the deeds are all still in Ligeia's name and he can find no death certificate for her. Verden tells him this was an oversight. Christopher tells him that in order to get one drawn up now an inquest would need to be conducted and his wife's body disinterred. Verden refuses to allow that and so legally Ligeia is still alive and the sale of the Abbey cannot be effected. Verden and Rowena sleep in separate bedrooms and she has some nightmares involving a black cat which in her dreams and in reality keeps jumping out and frightening her. Several times Rowena visits Verden's bedroom at night looking for him and finds him absent or acting strangely and then the next day he has no memory of it. As things progress Rowena and Christopher discover that Ligeia's body has been replaced by a waxwork replica and Verden has her real perfectly persevered body in a secret shrine accessible via a passageway from his bedroom balcony - although he remains unaware of his nightly sojourns because his ex-wife had used her willpower to hypnotise him on her deathbed into these actions. Rowena poses as Ligeia in order to try and break the hypnotic orders. But this only partially works and Verden strangles Rowena seemingly to death believing her to really be Ligeia resurrected and only realises his mistake once it is too late. A fire starts and Christopher manages to get Rowena's body out to safety - but Verden is trapped and suddenly realises that it is that black cat which always seems be around which holds the key - Ligeia had transferred her will into the animal from her coffin. In his final act Verden kills the cat and then dies in the fire alongside the now truly dead body of Ligeia. And outside Rowena, thought to be dead by Christopher, regains her life. | |
| Starring: | Vincent Price (as Verden Fell), Elizabeth Shepherd (as Rowena and Ligeia), John Westbrook (as Christopher Gough) |
| Featuring: | Derek Francis (as Lord Trevanion, Rowena's father), Oliver Johnston (as Kenrick, Fell's manservant), Penelope Lee (as Rowena's maidservant) |
| Familiar Faces: | Richard Vernon (as Doctor), Frank Thornton (as Footman) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. |
| Tomorrow Never Comes (1978) | Previous Next |
| Writers: David Pursall, Jack Seddon, Sydney Banks / Director: Peter Collinson / Producers: Michael Klinger, J. Melzack | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 102 mins |
| Frank Capell comes back home to his small city district after a period working away to make money to go towards his marriage to nightclub singer Janie Morgan. But he finds their apartment has been rented out to new tenants and he has no idea where Janie has gone. He goes to her former workplace and is told she has left. Bar-room talk is that she has moved on to someone who can properly afford her and question is made of her loose morals. Frank is normally easy going and likeable but this talk of her upsets him and he gets into an all-out brawl and suffers a very sharp blow to his head.
Feeling woozy he discovers that Janie is now working at an up-market hotel complex and that she is living in an expensive beachside cabana and so he heads off there to talk to her. His post-brawl dishevelled and bloody appearance and threatening manner gives rise to a police report. When Frank gets to Janie's cabana he angrily wants to know from her what's going on and who the new man in her life is. A patrolman comes to check out the report and see if Janie needs assistance but Frank's threatening manner causes the cop to draw his gun. In a scuffle Franks gets hold of the gun which accidentally fires and the cop is badly wounded but manages to stagger out to his patrol car and radio in a report. The beachside cabana is soon the site of a major police incident to deal with an armed hostage situation. Frank discovers Janie's new man is the rich hotel owner Robert L. Lyne and realises that the job offer he took was all a set-up by Lyne to get him out of the way so that Lyne could move in on Janie. Frank refuses to give himself up and demands of the police that Robert Lyne be brought here to face him and threatens to kill Janie if his demands are not met. The hostage situation is being handled by Jim Wilson on his final day as a police commander prior to moving onto a new job. Wilson is tired of the high-level corruption in this city and refuses to toe the line his superiors want. Robert L. Lyne is a big-name in the city who has half-the police force in his pocket and orders from above are that his name should be kept out of it and the matter quickly resolved with a show of strength regardless of the consequences to the girl. But Wilson insists on handling matters his own way and slowly attempts to negotiate with Frank who is becoming increasingly stressed and unpredictable. A doctor tells Wilson that the type of head injury that Frank is reported to have sustained in the bar-room brawl might have led to some brain injury because it is known that Frank has always been a reasonable person and this action is totally out of character. After much convincing by Wilson, the owner Robert L. Lyne is persuaded to make an appearance to draw Frank out of the cabana. Wilson is intending to use this opportunity to talk Frank down calmly and rationally - but against his express wishes his superior gives the nod to a police marksman and just as Frank is about to hand his weapon over to Wilson and give himself up he is shot dead. | |
| Starring: | Oliver Reed (as Jim Wilson), Susan George (as Janie Morgan), Stephen McHattie (as Frank Capell) |
| Featuring: | Raymond Burr (as Burke, police chief), John Ireland (as Matt, police captain), Donald Pleasence (as Dr Todd), Paul Koslo (as Willy Graber, Wilson's deputy), John Osborne (as Robert L. Lyne), Richard Donat (as Ray, club barman and Frank's friend), Delores Etienne (Hilde, Janie's maid) |
| NOTES: | |
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Made in Canada as a Canadian/UK co-production and reviewed here because of the involvement of Oliver Reed and Susan George. The two British stars were playing their parts with local accents and not as English people. I couldn't work out if the story was actually set in Canada or in the States - but it seemed more like the latter. |
| Writer/Director: Val Guest / Producers: Harry Saltzman, Don Kirshner | |
| Type: Sci-Fi | Running Time: 93 mins |
| A race of advanced aliens called the Alphoids have been observing Earth society for 3000 years and their permanent Earth agent disguised as a human called John Williams makes his regular report to his mother ship. As usual his report is the same - nothing of interest - primitive technology such as nuclear power is about all these humans have managed to achieve. But the Alphoid mothership has monitored something that Williams has missed - some unusual "vibrations" have been detected in one specific part of England that have an extraordinary therapeutic effect on the Alphoids brainwaves. Alphoids thrive on computer-generated tones but have lately become unresponsive to them which is having a debilitating effect on their species. The vibrations coming from Earth have unimagined emotive qualities that are able to reverse the malady. Williams realises his leader means music and he is given the mission of capturing the earthlings responsible for creating these sounds so they can be studied.
The amazing sounds are being made by a pop combo calling themselves "Toomorrow". They are four music student friends from the London College of Arts:- Benny, Karl, Olivia and Victor and their unique sound comes from an electronic synthesiser built by keyboard player Victor which he calls his "Tonaliser". John Williams befriends them and offers the use of his mansion for them to rehearse in. Once there they are beamed up to the mothership and asked to come back to the Alphoid planet to help with the cure. The aliens assure them that they will be returned safely to Earth afterwards and hardly any time will have passed. But the students decline saying the rhythm of their beat cannot just be re-created in a clinical way - it needs the energy of an appreciative live audience to make it flow. So the aliens allow them to return to Earth where they are due to play in a pop festival later - their revised plan is to beam up the entire auditorium during their performance taking both the group and the audience back to their planet. The Alphoids plan works and the entire assemblage are whisked off into space while dancing to Toomorrow's groovy set - then suddenly it is morning and Olivia wakes up in her bed after having had what she says is a crazy dream! But a few things are strangely out of place - was it a dream or did it all really happen? | |
| Comment: The plot is fleshed out with girlfriend problems amongst the three male members of the group; a student protest at the college; and the aliens creation of a woman called "Johnson" to seduce Vic Cooper - only trouble being she has difficulty telling human men apart and tries to seduce everyone. | |
| Starring: | (The Group) Benny Thomas (as Benny), Karl Chambers (as Karl), Olivia Newton-John (as Olivia), Vic Cooper (as Vic) Roy Dotrice (as John Williams, human disguised alien on Earth) |
| Featuring: | Tracey Crisp (as Suzanne Gilmore, music teacher, Benny's girlfriend), Imogen Hassall (as Amy, dance student, Victor's girlfriend), Roy Marsden (as Alphoid Leader, [however he is always in alien make-up and unrecognisable]), Carl Rigg (as Matthew, leader of student action committee, Olivia's boyfriend) |
| Starlets: | Margaret Nolan (as Johnson, seductive woman created by the aliens), Maria O'Brien (as Françoise, dance student), Kubi Chaza (as Sylvanna, Art model, Karl's girlfriend) |
| NOTES: | |
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Benny Thomas, Karl Chambers, Olivia Newton-John and Vic Cooper all receive "introducing" credits. They were the four members of the pop group Toomorrow and their character names in the story (including where mentioned their surnames) are the same as their real names. |
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The nudity indicated is distant rear nudity in both cases - there are quite a few scenes of near nudity but they are always carefully shot to avoid anything revealing reaching the screen - the distinct impression was that the film wanted to show more but was forced to hold back - whether a racier version of some scenes were also filmed is not known (unless of course the version reviewed was an edited one) - none of those "nearly" scenes involve Olivia Newton-John. |
| A Touch of Love (1969) | Previous Next |
| aka: Thank You All Very Much | |
| Writer: Margaret Drabble / Director: Waris Hussein / Producers: Max J. Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 102 mins |
| Rosamund Stacey is a young woman working hard on a thesis for a PHD. But as we join the story she is feeling depressed because she has found out she is pregnant and is contemplating apocryphal remedial action to try to induce a miscarriage. She is jolted from her heavy mood when her friends come round unexpectedly and after they have left she has resolved herself to have the baby and keep it. Rosamund is a hesitant person who lacks social confidence - although once she makes her mind up about something she becomes steadfastly single-minded in her determination. Her friend Lydia cannot believe she wants to have the child and tries to remind her how a baby will change her life and prevent her from fulfilling her academic ambitions - not to mention the social stigma of single-motherhood. Rosamund declines to tell her friend who the father is - although she says it is not either of their two other friends Joe or Mike whose healthy interest in her she has been able to assuage by implying she is sleeping with the other. Nor is it her sometime boyfriend Roger whom she has never slept with - although when good-natured Roger discovers she is pregnant he offers to marry her but Rosamund decides she cannot burden him and they amicably split up.
All she will say is that the father is someone she hardly really knows. We discover in flashbacks that his name is George, a pleasant young man who works as a TV news announcer. They chanced to meet in a canteen and struck up a friendship which led to one night together and then they saw no more of each other. She decides not to tell even him that she is expecting. Rosamund is fortunate in that she has no real money worries - she lives for free in her parents' apartment while they are away on an extended humanitarian trip to Africa and she decides not to write and tell them about her condition knowing they would not approve. She continues her pregnancy to full term while carrying on with her studies and has a baby girl whom she names Octavia. She obstinately and forcefully withstands persistent badgering by the nursing authorities to have the baby adopted away and dismisses their suggestions that she would not be able to cope alone as a single mother. Rosamund is determined to prove everyone else wrong and brings up her baby while continuing to study. When Octavia is a little older a routine medical examination reveals that she has a congenital heart defect that must be operated upon immediately and Rosamund goes through an anxious period of waiting before Octavia pulls through safe and well. During her vigils at Octavia's hospital bedside Rosamund finds time to complete her thesis and months later is awarded a doctorate. Some time later, after Rosamund has found herself a good job writing articles which allows her to care for Octavia at home, she bumps into George again and invites him to see her baby girl. He is delighted for her and she is inwardly pleased that Octavia is being held by her father - but she keeps it a secret and does not tell George she is his little girl. He comments that she seems to have everything in life going for her and the only thing she appears to lack is a husband although he always got the distinct impression that that kind of dependence was not in her temperament. As he leaves she agrees that self-reliance is just her nature and there's nothing one can do about that. | |
| Starring: | Sandy Dennis (as Rosamund Stacey), Eleanor Bron (as Lydia Reynolds), Ian McKellen (as George Matthews) |
| Featuring: | John Standing (as Roger Henderson), Michael Coles (as Joe Hurt), Roger Hammond (as Mike), Maurice Denham (as Dr Dick Prothero, heart surgeon), Deborah Stanford (as Beatrice, Rosamund's elder sister), Kenneth Benda and Peggy Thorpe-Bates (as Mr and Mrs Stacey, Rosamund's parents), Rachel Kempson (as Nursing Sister) |
| NOTES: | |
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Adapted by Margaret Drabble from her own novel The Millstone. |
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The version reviewed carried the American title of Thank You All Very Much. |
| A Touch of the Other (1970) | Previous Next |
| aka: House of Hookers | |
| Writer: Frank Wyman / Director: Arnold Louis Miller / Producer: Arnold and Sheila Miller | |
| Type: Crime Drama | Running Time: 81 mins |
| Delger is happy-go-lucky sort of chap who helps out a casual friend called Ian Donaldson who is in need of some quick cash for undisclosed reasons and in return Donaldson allows Delger to use his office/apartment for the remaining six months of its lease. The office is based in the Soho district of London but Delger has no idea of what to do with it so he puts up some cards around town saying "Delger gets things done - If you're in a fix give me a call", and he waits to see what comes in. In the meantime Delger discovers that the other offices in the building are used by prostitutes under the fronts of being a masseuse service or giving language lessons. He strikes up a neighbourly rapport with Elaine the "French teacher".
There are no takers to Delger's adverts except for two police detectives who come round to see what line of business he is in - they seem most interested in what his links to Donaldson are but Delger cannot provide them with much help. But this interest quirks Delger's curiosity and with nothing else to do he decides to look into Donaldson's business contacts to see exactly what it was he did. He finds a phone number of a nearby strip-club amongst Donaldson's papers and then brashly barges into the club's back-offices to see the owner of the club to try and get information from him. But the owner knows nothing about Donaldson and Delger leaves none the wiser. Unfortunately this dead-end enquiry opens up a whole load of trouble for Delger when the club owner phones a crime boss called Traylor to whom he pays protection money and complains about Delger's unwanted intrusion. So Traylor sends his thugs to fetch Delger and he gives him a strong warning not to be so nosy and then has the thugs give him a working over back at his office. Wendy the masseuse hears all the noise and after the thugs have gone she soothes his bruises with some tender care which leads to sex. Later on Elaine also visits him and sleeps with him and she and Wendy are quite happy to share Delger liking his good natured wit. They warn him about their pimp boss Max Ronlow who they say is a nasty piece of work. Although when Delger later meets Max he doesn't appear that imposing - he is a slightly effeminate homosexual who seems undeserving of the reputation the girls have saddled him with. Max has a small job for Delger and asks him to courier an important envelope to a house in the suburbs for £50. Delger is suspicious but his curiosity is raging and so he agrees to do it. But when he arrives at the house it is a set-up - he is knocked out and when he regains consciousness he is alone in the house with a dead body and a gun - the body is that of Ian Donaldson and he realises that he is being framed for murder. Fortunately Wendy followed him and provides him with a quick getaway just before the police arrive. Delger goes round to Max's place and angrily demands more information while Wendy waits outside. Max is easily intimidated and tells what he knows:- Donaldson was involved in a jewel heist and kept the jewellery for himself and needed the money he had from Delger to leave the country while crime boss Traylor was looking for him. But Traylor caught him and held him prisoner and then after Delger started stirring things up Traylor decided it would be simpler to have Donaldson killed and neatly implicate Delger in the process. Max was just working under Traylor's instructions by setting Delger up. Then Traylor's thugs come round to dispose of Max in case he squeals and they try and abduct Delger to take him back to Traylor to be dealt with - but fortunately Wendy has called the police who arrive just in time to arrest the thugs. This ties things up nicely and Traylor too is arrested on murder charges leaving Delger and the two girls to share some quality time together in bed back at his apartment. | |
| Starring: | Kenneth Cope (as Delger), Shirley Anne Field (as Elaine), Helene Francoise (as Wendy) |
| Featuring: | Martin Wyldeck (as Traylor), Noel Davis (as Max Ronlow), Timothy Craven and Vasos Koulolia (as Traylor's thugs), Jon Laurimore (as Detective Masters), Paul Stassino (as Mike Connelly, strip-club owner) |
| Starlets: | Renny Lister (as Sheila, Traylor's girl), Gypsy Kemp (as Shirley, Traylor's girl), Brazil (as Black Stripper), Benita (as White Stripper) |
| NOTES: | |
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Helene Francoise receives an "introducing" credit. |
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Director Arnold Louis Miller credited as Arnold Miller. |
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Kenneth Cope sings the theme tune I Can Get Things Done. |
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House of Hookers was the title on the version reviewed. |
| The Touchables (1968) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Ian La Frenais* / Director: Robert Freeman / Producer: John Bryan | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 88 mins |
| Sadie, Melanie, Busbee and Samson are four lively and energetic girlfriends who get a buzz out of engaging in high-spirited hi-jinks. When we first see them they are stealing a statue of Michael Caine as Harry Palmer from a waxwork museum - for no other reason than they want to. It seems clear that this is a typical activity for the fun-loving foursome. Melanie's boyfriend is a rich white wrestler called Ricki whose sporting nemesis is a black wrestler called Lillywhite (who wrestles as The Hood). Lillywhite has a sideline as a gangster who runs a protection racket who has spotted a celebrity spectator called Christian at the latest wrestling tournament and decides to extort money from his manager Kasher to ensure his client's safety.
Christian is an actor who has become a youth icon and the four girls decide it would be a lark to kidnap him and make him their sex-slave. They dress as nuns and abduct him from the next wrestling bout and take him off to a large plastic domed arena in a remote country location near a lake. They keep him there for a couple of weeks initially tied up but then he is let loose and he stays with them reasonably willingly treating it all as an extended holiday as they toy with him. No one else knows where Christian has gone but when Melanie returns to London to get supplies she is followed back to the dome and they are all captured by Lillywhite's men who then demands a ransom from Kasher. Samson manages to escape the dome and tells Ricki that they need his help and he speeds off to rescue his girlfriend Melanie and the others. Lillywhite follows close behind and things climax with a big punch-up at the dome which the good guys win. | |
| Comment: A fairly strange film with a quartet of lead characters whose behaviour is never really explained. They just seem to act on whimsy with no criminal intent or attempt at financial gain. | |
| Starring: | Judy Huxtable (as Sadie), Ester Anderson (as Melanie), Marilyn Rickard (as Busbee), Kathy Simmonds (as Samson), David Anthony (as Christian) |
| Featuring: | Ricki Starr (as Ricki, white wrestler), Harry Baird (as Lillywhite, black wrestler), James Villiers (as Twyning, Lillywhite's assistant), John Ronane (as Kasher, Christian's manager) |
| Familiar Faces: | Joan Bakewell (as TV Interviewer) |
| NOTES: | |
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*Based on a script by David & Donald Cammell, from an original idea by Robert Freeman. |
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Marilyn Rickard is also known as Monika Ringwald. |
| Tower of Evil (1972) | Previous Next |
| aka: Horror on Snape Island | |
| Novel: George Baxt / Writer/Director: Jim O'Connolly / Producer: Richard Gordon | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 90 mins |
| A fisherman called Hamp Gurney and his father John have arrived on Snape Island to check on the whereabouts of some tourists. Snape Island is a small and remote isle far out at sea that houses a lighthouse which was abandoned thirty years previously due to subsidence and is now derelict. Four young American tourists were staying there but have not been heard from. The fishermen find horribly murdered bodies of three of them. The fourth, a girl called Penelope Reed, leaps out at the older fisherman and stabs him to death in a state of abject terror. Penelope is suspected of the other three murders as well but she is in no fit state to stand trial and is sent for psychiatric assessment. She is in a state of catatonic stupor due to the shocking events she has witnessed and the doctor attempts to release her memories hypnotically - we then see some flashbacks which show the four friends arriving on the island and being brutally murdered one-by one by someone unseen which Penny witnesses.
The aforementioned is mainly just a prelude to the main story which involves a team of four archaeologists attached to a museum who are travelling to Snape Island because an artefact has been found there which indicates that an ancient civilisation called the Phoenicians may have stopped off on the isle to bury a dead ruler along with hoards of treasure. The young archaeologists are Adam Masters, Rose Mason, Dan Winthrop and his wife Nora. They are accompanied by an investigator called Brent hired by the parents of Penny Reed to try and prove that their daughter was not responsible for the murders of her friends. Taking the scientists to the island are fisherman Hamp Gurney and his nephew Brom. Hamp tells the others that his brother Saul and Saul's wife Martha used to live on the island but died six months ago believed lost at sea - they once had a child called Michael who died many years ago. Events take a sinister turn that evening when their boat - the only way off the island - is blown up - and their only radio equipment smashed. When a rotting body is found Hamp agrees it is probably his sister-in-law Martha. The reason the couple were living in solitude was that Saul had gone mad and Martha was caring for him. The scientists suspect that Saul is not dead and is still living on the isle somewhere. They think he may be in a cave system somewhere under the lighthouse and split into groups to try and find the entrance. After a few more deaths they find the caves and in them the Phoenician treasures they had come to search for. They discover Saul who is a raging hermit-like incoherent madman There is a final showdown and Saul is killed. Believing it all to be over they feel safe but there is another attack at the lighthouse by a younger madman who is identified as the thought-to-be dead son Michael. He is killed in a fire but this ignites a paraffin reservoir tank and the whole lighthouse blows up as the survivors of the whole ordeal watch from a safe distance. | |
| Starring: | Bryant Haliday (as Brent, Investigator), Jill Haworth (as Rose Mason, Scientist), Mark Edwards (as Adam Masters, Scientist), Anna Palk (as Nora Winthrop, Scientist), Derek Fowlds (as Dan Winthrop, Scientist), Jack Watson (as Hamp Gurney, Fisherman), Gary Hamilton (Brom Gurney, Fisherman's nephew) |
| Featuring: | Candace Glendenning (as Penelope Reed, American), Robin Askwith (as Des, American), Seretta Wilson (Mae, American), John Hamill (as Gary, American) |
| Star-Turns: | Dennis Price, Anthony Valentine |
| NOTES: | |
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Gary Hamilton receives an "introducing" credit. |
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Robin Askwith and Candace Glendenning are playing Americans and both sound as if they are dubbed. |
| The Trespasser (1981) | Previous Next |
| Novel: D.H. Lawrence / Adaptation: Hugh Stoddart / Director/Producer: Colin Gregg | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 93 mins |
| Period drama set in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Helena is a young woman who has fallen in love with her violin tutor Siegmund after being his pupil for seven years ever since she was a young girl. Siegmund is a married man in his late 30s who has been with his wife Beatrice for twenty years - but now the marriage has grown stale and become loveless. He and Beatrice have three children but he does not feel they love him all that much and that he is tolerated as a member of the household only on the strength that he is the breadwinner. He is therefore an unhappy man and has found himself falling in love with his pupil Helena who offers him a pure love that he craves.
Sigmund is a member of an orchestra and at the end of the current season he tells his family he is going away alone for a rest - but actually he and Helena take a five-day holiday together on a secluded part of the Isle of Wight where they can be alone and properly enjoy each others company. They have a sexual relationship and both are incredibly happy and wish this idyllic time would never end. But as the final day draws closer a cloud looms over their happiness as Siegmund dreads the necessity of going back to his humdrum and loveless life and Helena resents that he has to. When Siegmund gets home nothing has changed and his family are barely speaking to him. He sees no escape from the situation and while in a severe state of depression he hangs himself. | |
| Comment: I'm not all that sure why it is called "The Trespasser". It has nothing to do with the typical meaning of the word - perhaps there's some vague relevance concerning the intrusion of the young woman on the older woman's marriage but it is certainly not a title that gives away much indication of what it is really about. | |
| Starring: | Alan Bates (as Siegmund), Pauline Moran (as Helena) |
| Featuring: | Dinah Stabb (as Louisa, Helena's friend), Margaret Whiting (as Beatrice, Siegmund's wife), Catherine Hall (as Vera, Siegmund's grown-up daughter), Leilah Flanagan (as Gwen, Siegmund's young daughter), Daniel Chasin (Frank, Siegmund's young son), Betty Hardy (as Mrs Curtis, holiday home landlady) |
| Trial by Combat (1976) | Previous Next |
| aka: A Choice of Weapons | |
| Writers: Julian Bond, Steven Rossen, Mitchell Smith / Director: Kevin Connor / Producers: Fred Weintraub, Paul Heller | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 85 mins |
| In a prologue we see a joust taking place in what seems to be medieval times: - A frightened and inexperienced knight is being forced to fight for his life against an experienced champion with victory his only chance of survival in a "trial" by combat. However once the novice has been slain we discover we are actually in modern times and the assembled knights are re-enacting long gone traditions. They are known as the Knights of Avalon formed as a noble order to uphold the spirit of a chivalrous age by their now elderly founder Sir Edward Gifford. But now that noble tradition is secretly being perverted by the order's grandmaster Sir Giles Marley to pursue his own views of justice. Sir Giles believes that the British legal system has gone soft and too many low-life criminals are getting away with their crimes on technicalities - therefore he and his loyal cronies from within the noble order have taken it upon themselves to capture these men and put them through a combat trial which to the accused means almost certain death. Their bodies are then wrapped in a red banner and dumped and these unsolved murders have been dubbed by the police as victims of the "Red Banner Butcher".
When honourable Sir Edward Gifford discovers what Sir Giles is up to and becomes morally outraged he is murdered and his death brings home his wayward son Sir John Gifford from America. John was brought up to be an English gentleman by his father but disliked the lifestyle and fled to America in his teenage years to live with his mother. John has now returned to try and get to the bottom of his father's murder. He is assisted in this by his father's friend Colonel Bertie Cook, a former Commissioner of Police at New Scotland Yard who still has sufficient clout there to be allowed access to the ongoing investigation. Bertie is also privately interested in solving the Red Banner Butcher Murders which the police are getting nowhere with. Bertie has an ebullient personality that endears him to most but annoys his successor in the post Oliver Griggs who would rather he didn't interfere. Sir Edward's murder is being blamed upon Ben Willoughby the gamekeeper who discovered his body but went on the run shortly afterwards when he became chief suspect. As the "Red Banner" murders continue Bertie decides to tail a particular gangland villain called Sidney Gore whom he feels sure will be the next target. Sure enough Gore is abducted and Bertie follows them back to Mordred Castle, home of Sir Giles. Bertie phones Oliver Griggs to let him know and send reinforcements. Bertie is captured by Sir Giles men but is confident that the police are on their way - until Griggs arrives alone and is revealed to be an Avalon Knight himself loyal to Sir Giles and Bertie is imprisoned in the dungeons. Meanwhile John locates the fugitive Ben Willoughby who is in hiding for fear his story won't be believed. Ben tells John about seeing Sir Edward being murdered by Sir Giles' men. John goes to Mordred castle to confront Sir Giles but is captured himself. John demands a Trial by Combat in return for the release of Bertie which Sir Giles cannot refuse and he gives his word to release Bertie if John proves victorious. John's combat training in his younger years serves him well and he proves an able fighter against the best Sir Giles' fighters have to offer and he defeats the champion. But Sir Giles fails to keep his word to John and decides to personally try to kill him - but in his rage Sir Giles becomes impaled on the drawbridge portcullis which is suddenly lowered by the vengeful Ben as Sir Giles is galloping through on his horse. | |
| Comment: Also becoming embroiled in the story is a plucky young American architectural student called Marion Evans who works at Mordred Castle and tries to help Bertie but ends up being imprisoned with him - and she also provides a love-interest for John. | |
| Starring: | John Mills (as Colonel Bertie Cook), Donald Pleasence (as Sir Giles Marley), David Birney (as Sir John Gifford, son of Sir Edward), Barbara Hershey (as Marion Evans, American student) |
| Featuring: | Brian Glover (as Sidney Gore, underworld gangster), Margaret Leighton (as Sidney Gore's mother), John Savident (as Oliver Griggs, Police Commissioner), Neil McCarthy (as Ben Willoughby, gamekeeper), Roy Holder (as William Renfield, first victim), Diane Langton (as Barmaid), Bernard Hill (as 'blind' Freddie, beggar) |
| Star-Turns: | Peter Cushing (as Sir Edward Gifford, [short appearance only]) |
| NOTES: | |
• |
Story by Fred Weintraub and Paul Heller |
• |
The version reviewed carried the title A Choice of Weapons. |
| The Triple Echo (1972) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Robin Chapman / Director: Michael Apted / Producer: Graham Cottle | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 88 mins |
| Set in the Wiltshire countryside during the early 1940s wartime years. Mrs Alice Charlesworth keeps her farmlands ticking over in the absence of her husband Jack who went off to fight in the war and is now a prisoner of the Japanese. Alice manages to cope quite well and is handy with a shotgun which she uses to control pests.
One day she comes across a young soldier wandering across her fields looking for a shortcut to the main road. They get chatting and he seems a nice enough young lad so she invites him back to her farmhouse for some tea. His name is Gunner JL Barton from the Royal Artillery stationed at a nearby camp to provide support for a second front. He is very bored with all the routine soldiering and thinks he's wasting his time. In civilian life he works on his father's farm in Oxfordshire and thinks he would be far more useful working there. After tea he goes on his way but not before promising to come back the next day to help her fix her tractor which packed up on her the previous year. Barton comes as promised and fixes the tractor and soon his visits become a regular thing. He has leave due but instead of going home he spends his time with her on the farm and although she is somewhat older than him before long they have begun a love affair. At the end of his leave period he tells her he's not going back - he has had enough of pointless square-bashing and fatigue washing. She tells him he's taking a big risk becoming a deserter but when he seems determined she agrees to help. The first thing that needs to be done is to decide who they shall say he is - because he'll be noticed by local people who will talk. A young man would need a good reason not to be in the forces so she suggests he dress up in women's clothing so he can be passed off as her sister on an extended visit. Barton bristles at this idea but goes along with it and takes to wearing make-up and feminine attire whenever he is out working the farm. Some soldiers from the nearby base come by the farm and the officer in charge stops to ask Alice for some directions. The sergeant accompanying him is a gruff, vulgar man with an uncouthly arrogant manner and when he sees Alice's "sister" in the distance he becomes very interested at the discovery of two unattached women living so relatively near to the base. Alice is as stand-offish as she can be in order that the soldiers will move on as quickly as possible since wants to avoid them having any close contact with Barton. The sergeant eventually leaves thwarted by Alice's doggedness but it is clear that he has not given up and considers it a challenge to break down the resistance she is displaying for both herself and her sister. As the weeks go by the sergeant and his corporal friend Stan, whom the sergeant has let in on his "secret", pay more visits to ask the women to the camp dance. The sergeant is persistent but Alice manages to avoid him meeting Barton whom Alice claims is unwell. Months go by and the pressure of it all gets to Alice and she and Barton begin to have rows and grow tired of each others company - he starts to think that he has become a prisoner who is not allowed to have any fun. He has had brief chats with the sergeant acting in a shy demure way and the sergeant didn't suspect a thing as he plied her with his particular brand of brutish "charm". Barton was actually flattered by the attention and is considering going to the dance with him because he thinks his disguise is good enough and doesn't see why he shouldn't have some fun for a change. Alice is incredulous that Barton could think that a man like the sergeant only wants to dance and has nothing else in mind but Barton is convinced he can handle the sergeant. So Barton dresses up in a posh frock and is escorted to the dance by the sergeant. Once there Barton soon realises Alice was right and he cannot handle things. The sergeant gets very fresh and refuses to take no for an answer and drags "her" into a side room for some nooky and Barton can think of nothing to stop him. But as the sergeant's ardour increases and he starts groping around towards Barton's nether regions he is stunned into inaction by what he finds. Barton uses that moment to flatten him and flee from the base. The sergeant is furious at having been so humiliated and wants to give immediate chase but Stan says they should do it by the book and see if he's an AWOL soldier. They check the files and a photograph of Barton confirms who he is. The next morning a unit of military police are despatched to mount a search of the area surrounding Alice's farm. Barton has made his way back to the farm and Alice says she will protect him and he should flee to the hills and hide. But he is soon caught and dragged back to the farm to be arrested by the sergeant and taken for court martial and likely execution. But Alice who cannot bear to see the boy suffer chooses to make it quick for him and from her farmhouse top window shoots Barton dead with her rifle. | |
| Comment: Although the film ends at the shooting and we don't find out any more - presumably Alice would have then been arrested for murder. | |
| Starring: | Glenda Jackson (as Alice Charlesworth), Oliver Reed (as Sergeant), Brian Deacon (as Gunner Barton) |
| Featuring: | Gavin Richards (as Stan, corporal friend of sergeant), Anthony May (as Tank Officer) |
| Starlets: | Jenny Lee Wright (as Christine, Stan's girlfriend at the dance) |
| NOTES: | |
• |
Based on the story of the same name by H.E. Bates. |
• |
The reason for the story's title isn't explained in the film and I can't divine any relevance it may have to the plot that unfolds. |
• |
The sergeant's first name is revealed as "Arthur" in the dialogue but his surname is not used. |
| Writer: Aben Kandel / Director: Freddie Francis / Producer: Herman Cohen | |
| Type: Sci-Fi | Running Time: 87 mins |
| Student Malcolm Travers and his two friends Cliff and Bill are pot-holing in the Derbyshire Peak District when they come across a newly opened fissure leading to a previously undiscovered cave system. Bill goes on ahead alone and is ferociously killed by some sort of man-like creature. Cliff sees it too and manages to escape but goes into shock and Malcolm takes him to a nearby medical research clinic for treatment.
The Brockton Research Centre is run by anthropologist Dr Brockton and she is intrigued by the tales of a man-like creature in the caves and believes it could be the scientific discovery of the age - the evolutionary missing link between ape and man that has somehow survived for untold millennia. She persuades Malcolm to take her into the caves and she manages to get a photograph. It is a Neanderthal-like creature with a primate face and chest and a hairless body. Dr Brockton dubs the primitive cave dwelling creature "Trog" (for troglodyte) and theorises that it survived in suspended animation entombed in ice from the last ice age and in the cool underground conditions has only recently thawed out. The police want to kill it as a dangerous creature that has already killed but Brockton persuades them to let her tranquillise it and take it back to her centre for study. Still dangerously savage and immensely strong Trog is kept locked in a cage but Brockton manages to tame him by appealing to his curiosity. Trog shows signs of intelligence and ability to learn and overcome his savage impulses if handled correctly with no hostility. There is intense media interest in the discovery which has rocked the scientific community - but locally, a landowner called Sam Murdock is appalled at the development on both religious and business grounds - he does not believe in evolution and is angered that the find is preventing him selling his nearby land to a developer. Murdock whips up local disapproval and a court hearing is convened to decide if Trog should be classed as a dangerous wild animal and destroyed. Brockton manages to convince the magistrate that Trog is a sentient being and she is allowed to continue to study him providing she guarantees he will be locked up and guarded at all times. Murdock is angered at this decision and at night he breaks into the clinic, disables the guard and lets Trog loose. Trog becomes enraged and kills Murdock and then flees into the outside world. He sleeps in the forest and then next day comes upon a children's play area and takes a little girl who reminds him of a doll that Brockton was using to teach him with. Trog is gentle and does not harm her but takes her back to his cave system. The police and army are called in and surround the cave entrance with the objective of rescuing the child and killing the creature although they are unclear how to proceed without endangering the girl. Dr Brockton goes into the cave alone and using soothing words manages to persuade Trog to give her the girl. Dr Brockton hopes that this will show that Trog is not a danger unless provoked but the authorities are no longer interested in her appeals and proceed with their plans - the army storm the caves and shoot Trog to death. | |
| Starring: | Joan Crawford (as Dr Brockton), Michael Gough (as Sam Murdock, disgruntled local man), Kim Braden (as Anne, Dr Brockton's daughter and clinic assistant), David Griffin (as Malcolm Travers, student pot holer), Joe Cornelius (as Trog) |
| Featuring: | Bernard Kay (as Police Inspector Greenham), John Hamill (as Cliff, pot-holer), Geoffrey Case (as Bill, pot-holer), Thorley Walters (as Local Magistrate), Jack May (as Dr Selbourne, Dr Brockton's disgruntled employee), Robert Hutton (as Dr Richard Warren, visiting American surgeon), David Warbeck (as Alan Davis, TV Presenter), Chloe Franks (as Little Girl that Trog abducts) |
| Starlets: | Rona Newton-John (as Lady Reporter), Cleo Sylvestre (as Clinic Nurse) |
| NOTES: | |
• |
Original story by Peter Bryan and John Gilling |
• |
The Peak District location is not mentioned but is an assumption based on a local TV station covering Trog's discovery being named "Peak Television". |
| Writers: Alan Hopgood, Richard Franklin / Director: Richard Franklin / Producers: Richard Franklin, Ron Baneth | |
| Type: Australian / Comedy | Running Time: 98 mins |
| It is Australia* in the 1800s where American cowboy-ing is the way of life. Dead Eye Dick is a lowly would-be bandit down on his luck but with a particular ambition he is actively pursuing. For weeks he been secretly following around a Casanova cowboy called Mexico Pete and observing his dalliances with prostitutes and lonely housewives. When Pete falls foul of a returning husband Dick saves his life and they go on the run together.
Pete is grateful to Dick for saving him but rather disgruntled that his bedroom activities have been under observation. Dick shows him a photo of his dream woman - a slender beauty called Eskimo Nell from Alaska whom Dick describes as a "Womper" which is a word for a woman who can provide the ultimate sexual experience a man can enjoy. Dick has been assessing Pete for his prowess for he hopes he will accompany him in his search for Nell and be able to use his sweet talking ways to help him win her over. They head off for the colder regions relating reminiscences of past encounters and having several new adventures along the way until at last they reach the snowy lands and find the Eskimo Nell hotel. This is the source of the photograph and the barman confirms that Nell will arrive later and Dick is eager with anticipation and Pete is quite keen to see what this wondrous "womper" woman looks like in the flesh. But when she arrives Nell is a chubby whore whom the local men pay to have sex with in her upstairs boudoir. Pete looks at her aghast for she is nothing like the woman in the photograph and he cannot understand why Dick does not think similarly. But Dick has become so blinded by the quest for which he has been saving himself for so long that he sees Nell as the woman from the photo. Pete declines his turn with Nell and when it is Dick's opportunity to go with her he hands over his money but then gets so nervous that he turns away and can't go through with it. He gets into a fight with other men queuing and is badly hurt. As Dick lays weakly dying Pete promises to take Dick's turn and overcomes his revulsion to have sex with the unappealing woman while Dick looks in through the window still seeing Nell in the way he has always pictured her. After Pete has finished he tells Dick it was fantastic just like he said it would be and Dick dies of his injuries a happy man. | |
| Comments: *It's not entirely clear where the story is really set. It seems to be some sort of amalgam of Australia and the American Wild West where they have Australian and American references mixed together as if it is all one big country. | |
| Starring: | Max Gillies (as Deadeye Dick), Serge Lazareff (as Mexico Pete) |
| Featuring: | Grahame Bond (as Bogger, gold mine worker), Anthony Bazell (as Prof Brayshaw, barber), Ernie Bourne (as The Barman), Paddy Madden (as Real Eskimo Nell), Paul Vachon (as The Alaskan Kid) |
| Starlets: | Elli Maclure (as Elly, prostitute), Kris McQuade (as Lil, prostitite), Abigail (as Esmerelda, magician's assistant), Victoria Anoux (as Dream Eskimo Nell), Elke Neidhart (as unfaithful wife) |
| The Trygon Factor (1966) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Derry Quinn, Stanley Munro / Director: Cyril Frankel / Producer: Brian Taylor | |
| Type: Crime Drama | Running Time: 83 mins |
| A spate of daring jewel thefts have been taking place and Scotland Yard's Superintendent Cooper-Smith has personally taken on the case following up on a lead started by one of his men who has mysteriously gone missing. This lead takes him to the stately home of Emberday Hall part of which houses a priory of nuns called the Sisters of Vigilance. The sisters have their own cottage industry making their own brand of pottery using the Trygon symbol of the Emberday family. Cooper-Smith is shown around and everything appears to be above board. But Cooper-Smith still has nagging doubts and so he books in at the local hotel where he flirts outrageously with the young French receptionist Sophie who in turn takes quite a shine to him and becomes keen to help with his investigations.
Matriarch of the Emberday family is Livia who has granted the nuns the use of her priory. The Emberdays are preparing for an upcoming funeral of a remote uncle whose body is arriving soon in a coffin from abroad. It quickly becomes clear (to the viewer) that the nuns are phoneys and merely a cover for a criminal operation masterminded by Livia and the head "nun" Naomi Hamlyn. The stolen jewels are being embedded in the nuns' pottery products and smuggled away out of the country using the export business of Naomi's husband Hubert. The upcoming funeral is another sham and the coffin has been used to smuggle in a very much alive body of expert safecracker Emil Clossen. The gang have an ambitious plan to steal vast quantities of gold from a bank vault and melt it down and smuggle it out piecemeal in the pottery. The gang are entirely ruthless and kill all the bank staff with gas and then after a successful robbery the unsuspecting henchmen all get the same treatment - even Emil is disposed of once he has done his job. Cooper-Smith has had his suspicions about the priory but without any actual evidence he has been unable to get a search warrant signed off by his boss out of respect for the religious sanctity of the priory. But when receptionist Sophie goes to the priory alone to try and find some evidence she is captured and Cooper-Smith uses that as an excuse to snoop around for himself. He uncovers the entire operation in progress and after a brief setback manages to put a stop to the criminal goings-on and rescue Sophie. | |
| Starring: | Stewart Granger (as Superintendent Cooper-Smith), Cathleen Nesbitt (as Livia Emberday), Susan Hampshire (as Trudy Emberday, Livia's daughter), James Culliford (as Luke Emberday, Livia's son), Brigitte Horney (as Sister General/Mrs Naomi Hamlyn), Robert Morley (as Hubert Hamlyn, Naomi's husband), Sophie Hardy (as Sophie, Hotel Receptionist), Colin Gordon (as Dice, Cooper-Smith's colleague) |
| Featuring: | Caroline Blakiston (as White Nun), Richardina Jackson (as Black Nun), Eddi Arent (as Emil Clossen, jewel thief), Diane Clare (as Clare O'Connor), Allan Cuthbertson (as Detective Thompson), Yuri Borienko (as Nailer, nun's main henchman) |
| Star-Turns: | James Robertson Justice (as Sir John, Cooper-Smith's boss) |
| Starlets: | Carmen Dene, Monika Dietrich, Carol Dilworth and Karen Young (as Photographic Models) |
| NOTES: | |
• |
Based on an original story by Derry Quinn |
• |
Looking at the IMDB credits there must have been a simultaneous German version of this West German/UK Co-production. In that version it would seem that a German actor called Siegfried Schürenberg took on the role played in the English version by James Robertson Justice - this would have been fairly straightforward as he only appears in two scenes. It is unclear if the rest of the film was reshot in German by the British cast, or dubbed later, or left as is with subtitles added - nor if there were any other substantive differences in the way any of the other scenes were shot or edited together. |
| Turkey Shoot (1982) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Jon George, Neill Hicks / Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith / Producers: Antony I. Ginnane, William Fayman | |
| Type: Australian / Thriller | Running Time: 83 mins |
| Set in the near future or alternate-present of Australia where a radical political regime has seized power and is clamping down hard on any who oppose its ideology. Protestors, rioters or anyone remotely associated with them are labelled as traitors and sent to brutal concentration camps to receive corrective re-education on their deviant attitude.
One such behaviour modification centre is Camp 47 situated somewhere remote and run by Charles Thatcher and his team of sadistic guards. The camp's three latest arrivals are Paul Anders (a freedom fighter who refuses to buckle to the system); Chris Walters (an innocent and scared young woman who was arrested merely because a known rebel randomly ran into her shop to hide), and Rita Daniels (an attractive young woman falsely accused of being too promiscuous). Inmates are told they must obey all the rules without question or face severe punishment and then maybe at the end of their detention they will be deemed fit to re-enter society if they have demonstrated appropriate attitude readjustment. Most detention camps around the country are severely overcrowded with all those citizens whom the totalitarian regime regards as misfits and troublemakers - except for Camp 47 which has solved its overcrowding issue in a unique way. For society's rich and privileged elite, Charles Thatcher arranges regular gatherings for those interested in the thrill of unusual bloodsports. Thatcher allows his amoral guests to pick a quarry from his phalanx of inmates according to their particular "tastes" and he also picks out a troublesome one for himself that needs extreme sanction. Then those chosen inmates are issued with Freedom Identity Passes and told they will be allowed to leave if they participate in a chase and make it through one day without being caught. Paul, Chris and Rita are amongst those selected for the latest hunt and they quickly realise that the hunters will be trying to kill them not just catch them. The hunted inmates are given a few hours head start and make for the surrounding countryside of forests and mountainous terrain. They have no weapons or provisions and must survive on their wits. Thatcher and the three hunters are equipped with any weapons they choose and fair-play is not a word in their vocabularies - all they are interested in is the perverse thrill of stalking down their live human targets and making a kill in this ultimate "Turkey Shoot". The hunt starts off as expected with Thatcher tracking down and killing his chosen troublemaking quarry and Rita too is mercilessly killed by her stalker - but Paul Anders proves to be a challenge and achieves something never managed before - he kills his pursuer and armed with the man's weapon sets about in a pre-emptive hunt of the other hunters. He saves Chris from death at the hands of her depraved pursuer and together they use a bulldozer car to crash back into the camp compound and release all the other detainees. A pitched battle between guards and prisoners ensues which the desperate detainees seem to be winning. The enraged Thatcher is killed in the exchange of fire. The alarm is raised and the national government become alerted that law and order has broken down in Camp 47. So an uncompromisingly drastic standing procedure is instituted to deal with the situation and warplanes are scrambled to carpet bomb the camp and eradicate all resistance irrespective of any staff or guards who will also die. The camp is destroyed by the jets but fortunately many of the detainees have made it to a safe distance including Paul and Chris who both survive and are in possession of their freedom identity passes. | |
| Starring: | (Prisoners) Steve Railsback (as Paul Anders), Olivia Hussey (as Chris Walters), Lynda Stoner (as Rita Daniels) (Hunters) Michael Craig (as Charles Thatcher, camp master), Carmen Duncan (as Jennifer), Noel Ferrier (as Secretary Mallory), Michael Petrovitch (as Tito) |
| Featuring: | (Guards) Roger Ward (as Ritter, chief guard), Gus Mercurio (as Red) (Other Prisoners) John Ley (as Dodge), Bill Young (as Griff) |
| NOTES: | |
• |
Based on a story by George Schenck, Robert Williams and David Lawrence |
• |
Olivia Hussey's topless nudity is seen as a close-up and so may or may not be a body double. There are several versions of this film - two have been seen:- one of which had the Olivia Hussey nudity removed (although retained the rest). |
| aka: Lola | |
| Writer: Norman Thaddeus Vane / Director: Richard Donner / Producer: Clive Sharp | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 88 mins |
| Sixteen-year-old British schoolgirl Lola Londonderry is head over heels in love with her much older boyfriend Scott Wardman. Scott is a 38-year-old American writer of erotic fiction who is over in England to write his next novel. His books are considered so shocking that they are banned in the UK and when Lola's father catches her reading one at the breakfast table hidden behind a school textbook the details of the relationship come out.
Later Lola diverts from her journey to school to be with Scott. Lola is deeply in love with Scott with a girlishly innocent enthusiasm for romance wrapped up in an incredibly optimistic charm that shines through her every word and action brightening up even the dullest of moods. Scott finds her an incredible boundless force and is swept up by the love she shows for him. He is not so pleased however when he finds out that her well-connected father has discovered their affair and although she is of legal age in England the age difference is something he is all to aware might raise the wrong eyebrows. And as he expected he is soon visited by the police who have had reported to them by the home office an irregularity in his visa and he is given 24-hours to leave the country. Lola leaves in floods of tears vowing she won't let them take him away from her. Next day she has done her research and tells him they should get married. 21 is the legal age for this in England, but in Scotland she can marry at 16 without parental consent. So they head up to Glasgow and register their marriage. Because of Scott's notoriety as an author their situation becomes a national story and the age difference a butt of many a comedians' joke. She returns to school a married woman and all her friends are jealous but very excited for her. Scott then takes her home with him to New York to live. His parents are crestfallen when they see how young his new British bride is and one of the first things he has to do under state law is enrol her in school which she must attend until 18. His lawyer is dismayed that he hasn't finished his new novel and points out the shaky state of his current finances with which he can barely support himself let alone a young bride. But he believes that with her in his life he will now have the motivation to buckle down and get the novel completed. At school Lola gets swept up in the jolly thrill of a demonstration march without really understanding any of the issues. The situation seems to be turning ugly and Scott wades in to pull her out but accidentally strikes a policeman and ends up with thirty days state detention. Left to her own devices Lola rents a grand apartment for a knock down price from a landlord who thinks his luck is in with this flighty young chick living alone in his apartment - she, in complete naivety of what he was thinking he might get in return, effectively completely cons him and has signed the lease for a fraction of its worth before she casually mentions she is married. She decorates it and buys a cat and gets it all ready for Scott's release. She is so ecstatic with delight when he is released early with remission and shows him round. He likes it and they start living there together and he resumes work on his novel. But although he has the days to himself while she is at school once she is home he begins to find her continual craving for his attention an annoyance when he needs peace and quiet to write in - he cannot get her to understand he needs to work to pay their bills and her always-on personality and petulant displays of disappointment begin to wear on him. They start to have arguments and he shouts at her and she suddenly realises with heartbroken eyes that they are going to be divorced and all the people who had said it'll never last were right. She leaves in the night with just a note asking him to look after her cat since American cats aren't allowed in England - and she symbolically disconnects herself from him with her own private ritual by uttering "I divorce thee" three times - and then she heads home to England and resumes her life. | |
| Starring: | Charles Bronson (as Scott Wardman), Susan George (as Lola Londenderry), Orson Bean (as Hal, Scott's friend and lawyer) |
| Featuring: | Honor Blackman (as Lola's mother), Michael Craig (as Lola's father), Trevor Howard (as Lola's Grandfather), Paul Ford (as Scott's Father), Kay Medford (as Scott's Mother), Jack Somack (as New York Landlord) |
| Familiar Faces: | Sue Lloyd (as Ursula, Scott's old girlfriend, cameo), Jimmy Tarbuck (himself), Norman Vaughan (himself) |
| Star-Turns: | Jack Hawkins (Judge), Robert Morley (Judge), Lionel Jeffries (Family Solicitor) |
| Starlets: | Marcia Garton, Cathy Jose, Nina Monique, Anne Sheward, Stephanie White, Sheila Dunion, Doy Young (as Lola's British school chums), Annette Montgomery, Debbie Slater (as Grandpa's two Au Pairs) |
| NOTES: | |
• |
The version reviewed carried the title of Lola |
| Twins of Evil (1971) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Tudor Gates / Director: John Hough / Producers: Harry Fine, Michael Style | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 83 mins |
| Set in Europe in the nineteenth century in Karnstein which is a town that has a history of being beset by evil. The locals are currently experiencing a series of hideous deaths of some local men whose bodies bear what they believe to be the mark of the devil on their necks. Gustav Weil is a devoutly religious man who wants to rid his town of evil and has formed a brotherhood whose mission it is to stamp out incidents of evil. But he and his puritan followers have a misguided understanding of the problem they face and believe witchcraft is involved and suspect any young girl who is unmarried and possibly a bit free with her favours to be a witch who they summarily burn at the stake. This fervent endeavour causes just as much fear among the townsfolk for the safety of their kin as does the evil which the brotherhood are attempting to eliminate. Weil's nemesis in the town is the arrogant Count Karnstein who lives in Karnstein castle and whose debauched behaviour offends the sensibilities of the townsfolk but they cannot rid themselves of him for he is under the protection of the emperor himself.
Amid this climate of general fear arrive twin girls Maria and Frieda Gellhorn who are the young nieces of Gustav Weil. They have been recently bereaved of their parents and have come to live under the guardianship of their uncle Gustav and his wife Kathy. Although they look identical their personalities differ markedly. Maria with her trusting unsuspicious nature is content to follow rules, accept restrictions, and to fit in. Frieda however has a fiery anger in her spirit and is impatient to try new adventurous things, but has an uncaring attitude about other people's feelings, and a callous determination to be free of the stifling situation she finds herself in as soon as an opportunity arises. Gustav Weil has returned home after just having had a run-in with Count Karnstein who was visiting a village prostitute called Gerta whom the brotherhood had been planning on burning that evening. The Count had laughed in their faces making fun of Weil's ridiculous religious beliefs knowing that Weil dare not touch him lest the emperor send his men to burn down the village in vengeance. Downstairs Weil is with his wife venting his annoyance at Karnstein and reiterating the type of man he is and the debauched gatherings he holds at his castle, painting him as the very epitome of moral corruption - and upstairs Frieda is overhearing his tirade and her eyes light up because what is being described as being so bad sounds like just the sort of thing she craves and so she resolves to meet Count Karnstein for herself. At the castle the Count is being entertained by a charlatan show of devil worshipers but he grows weary of the playacting and dismisses all the actors except the girl playing the sacrifice victim. He is after something new and the petty pleasures of the flesh are no longer satisfying him. So he calls upon the devil himself offering his soul if he is given the power to do true evil and he stabs and kills the girl laying on a central tombstone as a gesture of his commitment. Nothing appears to happen at first but as the girl's blood seeps into the tomb upon which she lays a ghostly presence arises and the spirit of the vampiric Mircalla Karnstein is temporarily reborn and in return for his soul she converts him into a vampire. The twins are enrolled at the local school for young ladies and they meet Anton the choirmaster who immediately likes Frieda's spirit which marks her out as different although he is unaware of the malice that underpins her individualistic views. Anton is an expert on local history and has made a study of supernatural folklore and is continually dismayed by the methods Gustav uses to combat evil which he knows would be ineffective anyway if he was burning the correct victims. But his voice is never listened to by the village elders when he speaks of vampires and not witchcraft being the evil at work in these parts. That night Frieda sneaks out of the house - she has a dominance over the meeker Maria and is not above bullying her sister into submitting to her demands to cover for her should their aunt or uncle discover her missing. Frieda is in luck because the Count has heard about the twins arrival in town and is keen to meet one or both of them himself and his mute manservant Joachim discovers her walking in the woods and brings her to the castle. Frieda has dinner with the Count and his faithful servant Dietrich and also Gerta the prostitute. The Count spots in Frieda an evil streak similar to his own and when he suggests they "punish" Gerta she is eager to help because she experiences a deep pleasure in seeing others suffer. But the Count tells Frieda that pleasure must be paid for and she tells him she will do anything - and so he bites her and turns her into a vampire too. She revels in it and as her first victim she kills Gerta. Frieda continues to reside at her uncle's house and although Maria notices a change in her attitude, almost like she's a different person, she doesn't know why. Maria is becoming fed up with continually having to pretend to be her sister to cover for her absences but Frieda finds it easy to force her timid sister into continuing to be her unwitting ally. Frieda goes out every night to feed and be with the Count - until one night while out drinking the blood of a victim Frieda is caught in the act by the brotherhood and captured and put in a dungeon. Gustav is shattered to think he had been sheltering in his home the very evil he despises and the brotherhood arrange a gathering to decide on his niece's fate. But the Count is not about to idly sit by and watch his new beloved be slain so he abducts the sleeping Maria from her bedroom and substitutes her for her evil twin in the dungeon leaving Frieda free again to pose at being sweet innocent Maria whilst Maria herself is left to suffer whatever fate is going to be in store for Frieda. The brotherhood find Frieda guilty and decide to burn her immediately. Meanwhile Anton has gone to Gustav's house to see the girl he thinks is Maria to check up on how she is coping with the news of her sister's evil. But to his surprise "Maria" seems more intense than he remembers and she seduces him - but while he is holding her close he glances in a mirror and sees only himself and realises that she is Frieda the vampire twin and not Maria. They fight but he manages to escape her bite and rides as fast as he can to the site of the burning to try and stop Maria from being executed. He arrives just in time and convinces Gustav of the substitution by using a crucifix from which Maria remains unflinching. Now Anton is listened to and he explains that a vampire cannot be killed by being burnt but need to be staked through the heart or beheaded. He convinces them to go after Count Karnstein and rid themselves of his evil and the brotherhood are now angered enough at the Count's continued evil practices that they are prepared to defy the will of the emperor. The puritans storm the castle to which Frieda has also now fled. Frieda is beheaded by Gustav leaving the Count to stand alone using Maria as a hostage. Gustav challenges the Count to fight him but Karnstein is too powerful and Gustav is killed - but just as the Count is about to kill Maria, Anton impales him with a thrown spear-stake and Count Karnstein dies. | |
| Comment: The one part of the plot that doesn't quite hang together is the identity of the vampire who committed the initial murders. The viewer's assumption from the start is that Count Karnstein is a vampire from the outset and so it must be him - but as we later find out this assumption is wrong because this Count is not yet a vampire and only becomes one part way into the film so it could not have been him responsible for the earlier vampire-like deaths. And so the original killer that the puritans were after is never revealed or resolved. | |
| Starring: | Peter Cushing (as Gustav Weil), Madelaine Collinson (as Frieda Gellhorn, evil twin), Mary Collinson (as Maria Gellhorn, good twin), Damien Thomas (as Count Karnstein), David Warbeck (as Anton Hoffer, schoolteacher) |
| Featuring: | Dennis Price (as Dietrich, the count's servant), Isobel Black (as Ingrid Hoffer, schooteacher, Anton's sister), Kathleen Byron (as Kathy Weil, Gustav's wife and the twin's Aunt) |
| Starlets: | Katya Wyeth (as Countess Mircalla), Judy Matheson (as Woodman's Daughter), Luan Peters (as Gerta), Kirsten Lindholm (Young girl burnt as witch), Maxine Casson, Vivienne Chandler, Doreen Chanter, Irene Chanter, Jackie Leapman, Annette Roberts (as six schoolgirls), Cathy Howard (as Girl on tomb), ?Maggie Wright? (as Alexa) |
| NOTES: | |
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In The Vampire Lovers Mircalla's tombstone indicated she dies in 1545 - but in this film a bust of the countess has a plaque stating she died in 1547 |
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It's not entirely clear how old the twins are meant to be. They appear to be young adult women and yet they are enrolled in a school upon arrival in town although it may be some sort of finishing school perhaps. The choirmaster Anton certainly seems free to have romantic notions about his pupils which his schoolmistress sister finds nothing wrong with when she notices his interest in Frieda. |
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Maggie Wright is listed on the credits as playing "Alexa". However there is no one in the film who is heard being called Alexa. But since the end credits are helpfully in appearance order her contribution to the film appeared to be that of the girl laying on the tomb being toyed with by Count Karnstein. This seemed plain because her indicated appearance position is book-ended by other character's first appearances making the tomb girl the only possibility for being "Alexa". However this girl has now been identified as an uncredited role for starlet Cathy Howard and she has been visually identified as such through a credited appearance in another film. Maggie Wright's role in this film is therefore unaccounted for and possibly is missing altogether - she is fairly familiar from various other films of this period but cannot be spotted anywhere else in this film. So either there is another version of Twins of Evil in which she does appear or her filmed part was cut late in the day and the credits never readjusted. |
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This film is the third in Hammer's trilogy of films about the Karnstein family. The first two films were The Vampire Lovers (1970) and Lust For a Vampire (1971) which were mainly about Mircalla Karnstein, the female vampire who makes a brief appearance in this film. The Karnstein family are also referred to in Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974). |
| Twinsanity (1970) | Previous Next |
| aka: Goodbye Gemini | |
| Writer: Edmund Ward / Director: Alan Gibson / Producer: Peter Snell | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 89 mins |
| Jacki and Julian are girl-boy twins now into young adulthood who have just arrived in London to live in a large town house. They are playful and fun-loving and are incredibly closely bonded to each other. Of the two Julian is more insular and would be content to spend all his time alone in her exclusive company whereas she is a bit more adventurous and doesn't mind meeting other people as well.
They go out to a pub and meet a man called Clive who takes a fancy to the outgoing and charming Jacki. Clive introduces his friend Denise to Julian to make up a foursome. Julian is very protective of his sister and feels jealousy when she is with other people especially men whilst he is fairly offhand and dismissive with Denise and becomes rather morose with anyone but his sister. Nevertheless the four of them form a friendship of sorts mainly held together at Clive and Jacki's end and attend a party or two as Clive's guests. It emerges that Clive is in trouble and owes gambling money to an east-end hard man called Rod Barstowe. Unable to raise the money himself Clive turns to desperate measures. He invites Julian out on the promise of a good time and takes him back to a hotel room where he has a couple of prostitutes waiting who lavish attention on Julian until he realises that they are actually transvestite men. Clive then tries to blackmail Julian with photos of the incident - on shame of having Jacki find out about it. But Jacki finds out anyway and the twins, whose first loyalty is always to each other, decide to pretend they are going to help Clive but need him to play a game with them first. They bet he cannot tell them apart and they cover themselves in white sheets and blindfold Clive. During the game one of the twins stabs Clive to death. Jacki flees the scene traumatised and is found by a kindly man called James Harrington-Smith who takes her back to his flat believing she is a straightforward damsel-in-distress. He is the local MP and had previously met her at one of the parties she attended with her brother. But when he hears on the news that the police are looking for the twins on a charge of murder he realises his political future is at stake if it is revealed that he has been harbouring a wanted murderesses. Jacki had thought they were only going to frighten Clive and it was Julian who actually stabbed him. She wants to find Julian but doesn’t know where he is. She eventually tracks him down to a grimy hotel room where she tries to calm him down and plan their next course of action. But he has gone mad and tries to make her promise to do whatever he says forever more and he wants no one in her life but him - then in his mad possessiveness he strangles her. Then he turns on the room's gas fire unlit and gasses himself to death as he cradles her dead body. The End. | |
| Comments: It is not totally clear what the domestic arrangements of the twins are. Very little of their back-story is revealed. At the start when they arrive in London they make a comment that suggests they have been living in Mexico with their father and London is a big-adventure for them as if they have never been there before or not for a long time. But who owns the London house they are living in is not clear. | |
| Starring: | Judy Geeson (as Jacki), Martin Potter (as Julian) |
| Featuring: | Alexis Kanner (as Clive), Marion Diamond (as Denise), Michael Redgrave (as James Harrington-Smith MP), Mike Pratt (as Rod Barstowe) |
| Familiar Faces: | Brian Wilde (from Porridge) |
| Starlets: | Carolyn Jones (uncredited girl in bed at party) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the novel Ask Agamemnon by Jenni Hall. Agamemnon was the name of Jacki's black teddy bear. |
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Carolyn Jones's identification is based on probable recognition - it looks very much like her. This is of course the British actress with that name who appeared in Crossroads, and not the American actress who was in The Addams Family. |
| Twisted Nerve (1968) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Leo Marks, Roy Boulting / Director: Roy Boulting / Producers: George W. George, Frank Granat | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 112 mins |
| Susan Harper is a young woman studying to be a teacher and while she is out shopping she smiles at a young pleasant looking man. She is unaware that he has pocketed a toy duck without paying and as she leaves the store he follows close behind and store detectives apprehend them both thinking they are working as a team. In the manager's office it becomes clear that the man is a bit simple and exudes a sweet childlike innocence referring to himself in the third-person as "Georgie". The manager realises Susan has been involved by mistake and she gives him her name and address for future reference and even buys the toy duck for Georgie feeling sorry for the poor unfortunate man who is obviously quite harmless and uncomprehending that he has done anything wrong - then she leaves thinking no more of it. However, prior to this we have seen "Georgie" while he was visiting his disabled Mongoloid brother in an institution. His name is actually Martin and he has a quite normal level of intelligence and so we are aware that he is merely affecting this simpleton act.
At home Martin Durnley is a 22-year-old loner who lives with his mother and his stepfather Henry Durnley who has no time for the lad whom he feels keeps spurning any opportunities put his way. Henry knows Martin is a highly intelligent young man but he prefers to sit alone in his bedroom and has no friends. Alone in his room Martin thinks about the girl who was nice to him and makes some plans to meet up with her again. Susan lives with her mother Joan during her college holidays. They live in a large house and take in paying guests. Susan works in the local library and she is quite surprised but delighted to have a visit from "Georgie". He tells her he remembered her address when she gave it to the shop manager and has followed her here to repay her for the toy. Susan finds "Georgie" ever so sweet and in need of looking out for. She talks to him as if he were a well behaved child and in the course of their chat she mentions her mother takes in paying guests and he tells her he lives with his Daddy in a hotel. Back at the Durnley home Henry decides to give his step-son Martin an ultimatum. He sets Martin up with a wonderful job opportunity in Australia but when it is rejected he tells Martin that in that case he can leave home and try and make it on his own. Martin formulates a clever plan to both get closer to Susan and deal with the step-father he hates. He books in at a hotel and writes a letter to his mother saying he is writing from Paris - then he pays the concierge to have the letter posted in Paris giving a plausible reason why he needs it done. Then he turns up at the Harper guest house as the childlike "Georgie" with a letter from Georgie's "father" (that he wrote himself) asking if his son can stay there for a week while he is away on a business trip. Joan Harper is a bit reluctant at this strange request thinking she doesn't want to be burdened with such a responsibility but her daughter Susan convinces her that Georgie is really quite sweet and will be no trouble. And Martin as "Georgie" is the perfect guest - he is polite and helpful in his childlike way and Joan starts to really take to him. All the while Martin is revelling in the close proximity he is able to get to Susan as she mothers him taking him completely at face value - Martin secretly smirks to himself at how well he has taken them all in. One night after allowing his Paris posted letter time to get home to his parents' house he sneaks out of the guest house and travels back home on a night he knows his stepfather will be arriving home late after a work's dinner function. Martin murders Henry in the garage as he's putting away his car and then he sneaks back into the guest house and resumes his role as Georgie - knowing that his mother will tell the police what she believes - that he is away in Paris. Next day "Georgie" and Susan go for a swim in a river and he tries to kiss her. She finds this repulsive and has no such feelings for him whom she thinks of as a child - but she forgives him for he can't have known that what he tried to do was bad. However she has now become acutely aware that although he is childlike in manner he has the normal bodily urges of a man and so she tells her mother that it's probably best if he leaves their house now. Joan isn't so sure though - she has become quite fond of Georgie and has taken a fancy to the muscular body that he displays with a childlike lack of inhibition. While tidying up Georgie's room Susan finds things which cause her suspicion and she discovers a link to someone called Durnley whom she recalls was the murdered man on the news recently - and Martin has books which are far beyond his reading comprehension level. She visits Mrs Durnley to see if she knows anything about "Georgie" and discovers through family photographs that Georgie is in fact her quite normal son Martin. Mrs Durnley's first son was Mongoloid and she had been warned not to have another child but went ahead anyway and was so relieved when Martin turned out to be normal. Susan's doctor friend who is another paying guest tells her that Martin is possibly autistic and was over-mothered by the relieved Mrs Durnley giving Martin a wish to remain childlike with an inability to accept that he is now a grown man - and he warns her that Martin could potentially be very dangerous. Back at the guest house Joan makes a play at seducing the vulnerable lad Georgie while he is chopping her some wood in the shed not realising that she is talking to a man of quite normal intelligence who is perfectly aware of what she's doing. When Joan mentions that Susan had been talking earlier about someone called Durnley, Martin snaps and kills Joan with the axe. Then when Susan comes home he corners her in her bedroom dropping all pretence of his "Georgie" persona and says he wants to marry her and that he loves her. He presses her against the wall and forces his kisses on her but suddenly when he sees she is petrified of him he falls down into a state of mental collapse and cries pitifulingly at her feet. And as the police arrive to take him away for the murders of his stepfather and Susan's mother he is gibbering incoherently and appears to have regressed for real into his childlike Georgie persona. | |
| Starring: | Hayley Mills (as Susan Harper), Hywel Bennett (as Martin Durnley and 'Georgie'), Billie Whitelaw (as Joan Harper, Susan's mother) |
| Featuring: | Phyllis Calvert (as Enid Durnley Martin's mother), Frank Finlay (as Henry Durnley, Martin's step-father), Barry Foster (as Gerry Henderson, paying guest), Salmaan Peer (as Shashie Kadir, paying guest), Timothy West (as Superintendent Dakin), Gretchen Franklin (as Clarkie, the cleaner), Richard Davies ('Taffy' Evans, detective), Timothy Bateson (as Mr Groom, Library manager), Robin Parkinson (as Shop Manager) |
| NOTES: | |
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Adapted from a screen story by Roger Marshall. |
| Two Left Feet (1963) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Roy Ward Baker, John Hopkins / Director: Roy Ward Baker / Producer: Leslie Gilliat | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 89 mins |
| Alan Crabbe is a 19-year-old working for a small removals firm. He is somewhat inexperienced with girls although he puts on a front of being one of the lads when he is with his older workmates. A new glamorous waitress called Eileen starts work at their local café and Alan gets ribbed by his mates into asking her out. She's a bit older than him and well used to deflecting good-natured laddish behaviour but she sees Alan is a bit different from the rest and agrees to go out with him.
Whilst Alan is normally able to handle himself well enough he remains a bit unsure of himself in unfamiliar situations and lets Eileen make the decision of where to go. She suggests a dancing venue called the Floride Club and Alan finds himself hit for a hefty membership fee to get in. Once inside his dancing skills prove lacking and Eileen is soon off dancing with another couple of guys they meet there called Brian and Ronnie. Alan is a bit irked at this development and picks out a pretty girl to dance with to try and make Eileen jealous in return - although she barely notices. Alan soon comes to realise, as he walks Eileen home, that he is not on a promise with her as he had thought and all she seems to be after is someone to pay her way - their relationship becomes acrimonious and she starts going steady with Ronnie instead. As chance would have it Alan meets the pretty girl he danced with again when his job takes him to her house to do some removal work. Her name is Beth Crowley and her father is in the news after committing suicide due to a scandal that has brought shame on her family. Alan feels sympathy for the sad and demure young girl and asks her out to try and cheer her up. They get along well and soon become a couple. Since Alan is now a member of the Floride Club they continue to frequent it where they remain loose friends with Brian and his girlfriend Mavis, and Ronnie and the redoubtably predatory Eileen. Quick-tempered Ronnie becomes very jealous when Eileen starts coming on to Alan again and threatens violence which Alan is able to assuage on this occasion as he is no pushover and can handle himself well enough when tempers flare. Alan and Beth's relationship continues to flourish and they seem well suited. They attend Brian and Mavis' wedding and during an overnight stay at Mavis' uncle's house Eileen entices Alan into her bedroom and seduces him with a hard-luck story of unfulfilled showbiz ambitions that appeals to his sympathetic nature. Ronnie catches them kissing causing a fight to break out. Beth is appalled at Alan's disloyalty to her and they split up. Alan is at home feeling down in the dumps and his policeman father has a chat with him saying that in his day life's choices were few and mostly made for him - but now for Alan's generation those choices are many and left up to the individual to make for themselves and things are therefore ironically a lot tougher. After this pep talk Alan goes to visit Beth to apologise and see if they can try again and as the film ends they seem to be making tentative steps towards a romantic reconciliation. | |
| Starring: | Michael Crawford (as Alan Crabbe), Nyree Dawn Porter (as Eileen), Julia Foster (as Beth Crowley), David Hemmings (as Brian), Michael Craze (as Ronnie) |
| Featuring: | Dilys Watling (as Mavis, Brian's girlfriend), Michael Ripper (as Uncle Reg, Mavis' uncle), David Lodge (as Bill, Alan's workmate) |
| Star-Turns: | Bernard Lee (as Mr Crabbe, Alan's father - only appears for a few minutes near end but in a large role in that scene) |
| NOTES: | |
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Made in Black & White |
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The director and co-writer is credited as Roy Baker before he adopted usage of the middle name "Ward". |
| Writers: Corrado R. Boccia, Kitty Aldridge, Neal Sundström / Director: Neal Sundström / Producer: Ronnie Isaacs | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 102 mins |
| Tamsin Blake is a jet-setting fun-loving young woman with an artistic temperament who has a journalistic background and her latest venture is a series of documentaries. She has been receiving hassle about her latest project and feels the need to get away from it all for a while. Her only remaining family connections are her late mother's sister Gelda and Gelda's husband Robert who live in Botswana in South Africa - so she decides to pay them an extended visit.
Gelda and Robert Hemming live a quiet remote life since they emigrated 35 years before and haven't seen Tamsin since she was a precocious whirlwind of a child 15 years beforehand who earned herself the nickname of "Tyger". Gelda is rather set in her ways and somewhat dreads the coming intrusion but Robert remembers the girl fondly and looks forward to her arrival. Tamsin arrives and is soon firm friends again with Robert whom she admired when she was a young girl visiting with her mother so long ago. Tamsin's outspoken views and carefree attitude disturb Gelda's serene and ordered normality. She reminds Gelda too much of her sister Elizabeth (Tamsin's mother) at that age - Elizabeth had been an outrageous party-girl but her personality had become self-destructive and she took delight in belittling and humiliating everyone with her clever raucous observations and views as if she were the only person in the world capable of intelligent thought. Gelda sees the same sort of personality-type emergent in Tamsin when she meets Gelda's pastoral friend Father Clive and expounds her strong atheistic views to him over dinner just for the fun of it to kick up a bit of dust. But Robert finds Tamsin a delightful breath of fresh-air in his uneventful but happy life - they have deep conversations of introspective mutual self-analysis and discover things about themselves. When Tamsin is ready to leave even Gelda has been charmed by her and is somewhat sorry to see her go - the world has moved on since her sister's youth and women can be more individualistic now - something Gelda reined in and kept reined in because she was once like that too she admits to Tamsin. And after Tamsin has gone Gelda and Robert find themselves re-invigorated by her visit and less inhibited in their ways as they recapture their long-suppressed excitement and passion for each other. | |
| Starring: | Kitty Aldridge (as Tamsin), Michael McCabe (as Robert), Lynn White (as Gelda) |
| Featuring: | James White (as Father Clive), Candice Hillebrand (as Young Tamsin) |
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