(page last regenerated: 2 May 2009)
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.
| Writer/Director: Werner Nekes | |
| Type: Odd | Running Time: 89 mins |
| This film has no overall plot or any real comprehensible theme. It consists of a series of starkly staged dramatic pieces and experimental film inserts. The writing credits indicate it is based on Homer's poem The Odyssey, James Joyce's novel Ulysses and Neil Oram's play The Warp. But quite what the connections are gets rather lost in its sheer dullness. On-screen captions split the film up into 18 chapters - and within each chapter are between 1 and 6 unrelated pieces with each chapter lasting anywhere between 1 and 12 minutes. Chapters have headings like "Telemach"; "Kalypso"; "Nestor" An example of an 8-minute chapter called "Proteus" has dramatic pieces with:- "Two men talking about art; a man doing a stand-up and piano stage show; two men talking about Lord Byron; a man arguing with an official about an entry visa; three men around a table talking about Chinese poetry; a man getting a massage - overlaid with men talking across a table." An example of an experimental film piece in a different chapter has a man outdoors doing some surveying work but he is filmed twice so the second image of him overlays the first but not exactly - that's basically it. Don't get the wrong impression that these are meant to be comedy sketches - they are just dull and bizarre dramatic sketches with seemingly no point to them. | |
| Featuring: | Jim Broadbent, Ken Campbell, Suzan Crowley, Neil Cunningham, Bob Flag, Joolia Cappleman, Richard Howard, Annie Hulley, John Joyce, Werner Nekes, Bunny Reed, Simon Watkins |
| Also: | (other female cast) Tabea Blumenschein, Wanda Goodenufski, Sarah Antill, Maria Moustaka, Jacqueline da Costa, Anabel Temple, Dore O. |
| NOTES: | |
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This is a West German production but mentioned here because of the participation of many British actors. It is largely spoken in English with a few bits in German. |
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The credits are about as incoherent as the film with all the actors names written as one long paragraph on a single caption page in tiny hand-written longhand so as to render it all but unreadable. Fortunately someone has previously deciphered them or obtained some alternate source of information because they are listed on the Internet Movie Database and when you know what is supposed to be written there it's possible to just about recognise some of the names as word-patterns - but they remain otherwise unreadable to properly verify the list. |
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There is some female nudity in some of the pieces but quite who out of the list of participants is seen performing in these parts is very hard to say. |
| Under Milk Wood (1972) | Previous Next |
| Play: Dylan Thomas / Writer/Director: Andrew Sinclair / Executive Producers: Jules Buck, Hugh French | |
| Type: Comedy | Running Time: 88 mins |
| Glimpses into the lives of the idiosyncratic inhabitants of a small Welsh harbour town are seen as two strangers wander aimlessly around the town lyrically enthusing about what they see (in poetic voiceover). | |
| Comment: This work probably comes across better when read on the page because as a film it is very dull indeed. There is no story to follow - it is just full of tiny peeks into the lives of the strange village folk, most of whom have amusingly apt names for their personality or profession. But with a cast of over 60 names most of them appear for what in any other film would be a cameo role only. Richard Burton is the stranger who wanders around with no apparent purpose - he never speaks on-camera but provides regular voiceover descriptions of the goings-on. The only other main character is Peter O'Toole as a blind retired sea captain who listens to the world going by from his open window recognising the distinctive sounds all the different townsfolk make. | |
| Starring: | Richard Burton (as The Stranger), Peter O'Toole (as Captain Cat), Ryan Davies (as The Stranger's friend) |
| Featuring: | Glynis Johns, Victor Spinetti, Siân Phillips, Michael Forrest, Meg Wynn Owen, Talfryn Thomas, Ann Beach, Ruth Madoc, David Jason, Glynn Edwards, Angharad Rees, Susan Penhaligon |
| Star-Turns: | Elizabeth Taylor (brief appearance only) |
| Under the Doctor (1976) | Previous Next |
| Writer/Producer: Ron Bareham / Director: Gerry Poulson | |
| Type: Comedy / Anthology | Running Time: 81 mins |
| A psychiatrist has consultations with three different women patients who tell him about their sexual experiences which all feature someone who looks like him.
First Patient: A young woman tells of sexual shenanigans with a boss in his office while she is being interviewed. Second Patient: A Lady tells of a fling with her butler - and in a secondary tale she relates her fantasy of past-times in which two men are duelling over her. Third Patient: A wife tells of how she tries to spice up her husband's interest in her. | |
| Starring: | Barry Evans (as the Doctor), Penny Spencer (first patient), Hilary Pritchard (second patient), Liz Fraser (third patient) |
| Featuring: | Jonathan Cecil, Peter Cleall (the Butler), Elizabeth Counsell |
| Underworld (1985) | Previous Next |
| Story: Barker / Writers: Clive Barker, James Caplin / Director: George Pavlou / Producer: Don Hawkins, Kevin Attew | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 87 mins |
| A young high-class prostitute called Nicole is abducted from her house by some masked intruders whose faces are covered because underneath they have grotesque deformities. This leads to a retired operative called Roy Bain being recalled by his former crime boss Hugo Motherskille who now claims to be working legitimately as an industrialist. Although Bain is reluctant to resume his former line of work, Nicole is a former friend of his and Motherskille uses this connection to persuade him to apply his considerable skills in trying and find her.
Bain checks the girl's bedroom and discovers a vial of white powder beneath her pillow - he follows a lead to a Doctor Savary but meets with a dead end when the doctor refuses to discuss the matter. Meanwhile we see Nicole has been captured by a group of people who all have facial abnormalities and among them is a scientist called Nygaard. They are all addicted to a drug they call "White Man" which gives one a euphoric feeling and provides incredible dreams but has the side effect of over time creating gruesome deformities. Nicole is also an addict and Nygaard is running tests on her to try and establish why she is uniquely immune to the ravages that the others have all fallen victim to. Bain sneaks into Savary's office at night and finds a file explaining more about the drug. Savary catches him at it and holds him at gunpoint while he explains that the drug called Lactrus Iozinine which he invented is powerfully hallucinogenic but is also highly addictive and has unpredictable side effects. By the time this deficiency was identified it was too late for those already addicted and they are now totally reliant on him for more supplies. He was obsessed by the prostitute Nicole who had the ability to make dreams seem real and so he made her an addict so she would become dependant on him but curiously she remained untouched by the side effects. Savary intends to now inject Bain to make him reliant on him too but Bain manages to get away. Bain sees one of the "creatures" flee down a manhole and follows discovering that they live underground - he is soon captured by the other Underworlders who are not pleased that their lair has been discovered - but Nicole speaks up for him and prevents him from harm although he remains as their prisoner. One of Motherskille's flunkeys called Fluke who was following Bain reports back to his boss that the lair has been found. Motherskille had not been interested in Nicole and had wanted Bain to find the Underworlders' lair for him so he could annihilate them. The Underworlders are running out of the drug and they go to Savary to get some more - but Motherskille's men are laying in wait to ambush them and a gunfight ensues. Bain manages to free himself and joins the fight on the side of the Underworlders. Motherskille and his villains are eventually all killed including Savary within whom Nicole induces a dream so powerful that it causes him to self-combust. Bain wants her to come with him back to the surface but she tells him her work here has only just begun and with one surviving Underworlder she takes her leave and returns into the maze of tunnels and Bain returns alone to the surface. | |
| Starring: | Larry Lamb (as Roy Bain), Denholm Elliott (as Doctor Savary), Steven Berkoff (as Hugo Motherskille), Nicola Cowper (as Nicole), Paul Bown (as Nygaard, Underworlder) |
| Featuring: | Art Malik (as Fluke, Motherskille's flunky), Brian Croucher (as Darling, Motherskille's flunky), Ingrid Pitt (as Pepperdine, Madame), Irina Brook (as Bianca, prostitute) (Underworlders) Miranda Richardson (as Oriel), Gary Olsen (as Red Dog), Philip Davis (as Lawrence Tyack), Paul Mari (as Dudu) |
| NOTES: | |
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It's a Thriller tinged with minor Horror/Sci-Fi elements but not enough to fairly categorise it within either of those two genres |
| Universal Soldier (1971) | Previous Next |
| Writer/Director: Cy Endfield / Producers: Frederick Schwartz, Donald Factor | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 86 mins |
| Ryker is a military consultant who in his recent past has worked as a mercenary in war torn trouble spots around the world and has seen a lot of action. Two years ago he retired from the profession but has been lured back for another job with the promise of a large pay-day by an exiled black African leader called Mbote living in the UK who wants to arm the revolutionaries in his county. Ryker's task will be to advise on the weaponry to buy and then go out and train Mbote's men in their use with his team of white mercenaries including his good friend Jesse Jones.
Ryker completes the first part of his job as they visit the UK's largest arms manufacturer and purchase guns and military equipment. As for the export licence Mbote says he has that "in hand" and the lorry loads of arms are driven to the docks awaiting shipment. But the experience of being around and testing weaponry again has brought back deep scarred memories for Ryker and reminded him just why he retired in the first place - he no longer has the stomach for the butchery of war and the horrors that he's seen done on innocents in the pursuit of a war leader's political aims. So without telling anyone his plans Ryker departs the scene and rents a small suburban flat in London determined to live a normal life. He goes to a party with his landlady and there he meets a young girl called Chrissie and they start a relationship in which he begins to be content and happy and seems to have found the sort of life that he really wants. But his friend Jesse has no idea what's happened to him and is having problems with Mbote's people - they are demanding Ryker complete on the deal he agreed to and won't tolerate any excuses. Jesse manages to track down Ryker's whereabouts and warns him that Mbote's men will be able to do the same if he doesn't show up for a meeting the next day when the arms shipments are ready to leave. So that night Ryker and Jesse take pre-emptive action and hijack the lorries from the docks and hold them to ransom to firmly indicate to Mbote that they are no longer interested in dealing with him. Mbote "buys" back the arms for a ransom and the two friends depart. But Mbote's men have tracked them down and later as they are walking by a roadside a limousine pulls up and two shots are fired at them. (This is the final moment and the shots are heard over a freeze frame of the two men and then the end credits roll - so it is not clear if they are hit/killed or not). | |
| Starring: | George Lazenby (as Ryker), Benito Carruthers (as Jesse Jones) |
| Featuring: | Rudolph Walker (as Mbote, African leader), Robin Hunter (as Freddie Bradshaw, Ryker's team), Julian Barnes (as Temple Smith, eager young recruit to Ryker's team), Edward Judd (as Ben Rawlings, arms dealer), Germaine Greer (as Clara Bowden, landlady), Cy Endfield (as Derek Bowden, landlady's husband), Chrissie Shrimpton (as Chrissie?, uncredited but significant part) |
| Familiar Faces: | Lynda Baron (as Woman at party, Chrissie's mother, uncredited non-speaking bit part) |
| Starlets: | Maggie Wright (as Rawling's Secretary) |
| NOTES: | |
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The important role of "Chrissie" is uncredited even though she has a largish role in the latter part of the film and much more than some other next-to-nothing roles that do get credited. IMDB shows an uncredited part played by Chrissie Shrimpton although does not indicate a character name for her - so with the coincidence (?) of first names matching that is perhaps her. |
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Author and women's rights campaigner Germaine Greer appears, not as herself, but in an acting role as Ryker's landlady. |
| Writer: Simon Raven / Director: John Mackenzie / Producer: Gareth Wigan | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 101 mins |
| John Ebony is a young married man who has decided to change careers and become a schoolteacher. His first position is at the Chantry Boys Boarding School where he is filling in for the remainder of the current term following the tragic death of a schoolmaster called Mr Pellam. The school is situated near the sea and Mr Pellam had accidentally fallen down the cliff while out hill walking.
John moves into a nearby cottage with his wife Silvia as he prepares to take over Pellam's class of fifth form boys which he is told is one of the most difficult in the school. John is determined to make a good impression and bring them to order. However whilst being superficially good-mannered, the boys display a staunch group solidarity when he tries to lay down any new rules or punishments. Their defiance takes a sinister turn when they tell John that if he doesn't do things their way he will suffer a similar fate to the late Mr Pellam whom they claim to have murdered. John thinks they are making it up and are just wickedly exploiting an unfortunate accident to try and spook him - but the boys supply sufficient detail that he starts to believe them and he falls into line with how they want the lessons to be conducted along with other such requirements such as putting bets on for them at the bookmakers. However he is just playing along whilst he tries to find out who the ringleader was. He attempts to put pressure on individuals into telling him more but he finds it impossible to penetrate their inscrutability. When he is told by the headmaster that his contract won't be extended into the next term he decides they are not worth it and gives up on the boys completely letting them run riot during lessons as he reads his newspaper and refuses to do their errands. The boys decide to teach him a lesson by threatening his wife and they put her through a terrifying ordeal with the horrifying prospect of a gang rape which she only narrowly averts. Only one boy called Wittering seems appalled at what was being contemplated. He is the weakest boy in the class who is a bit backward academically and subject to bullying by the other boys. The next day Wittering has gone missing and the remaining boys appeal to John to help them find him. John is furious at them for what they put his wife through but they seem to be so dolefully desperate for his help and full of concern that Wittering will tell someone about Pellam's murder that John agrees to help them search because he still wants to learn the truth of whose idea the murder was. Wittering's body is found at the foot of the cliffs with a suicide note explaining that it was he who had proposed the idea to kill the strict and sarcastic Mr Pellam. He did this as a way of impressing his classmates and gaining their respect and although they all carried it out he takes full responsibility for giving them the idea to do it. This is where the film ends with John finding that knowing who suggested the murder has actually gained him no greater understanding of what actually made them do it. | |
| Starring: | David Hemmings (as John Ebony), Carolyn Seymour (as Silvia Ebony, John's wife), Anthony Haygarth (as Cary Farthingale, schoolmaster) |
| Featuring: | Douglas Wilmer (as Headmaster), David Jackson (as Clackworth, schoolmaster) (Lower 5b class members) David Auker (as Aggeridge), Michael Kitchen (as Bungabine), Nicholas Hoye (as Cloistermouth), James Wardroper (as Lipstrob), Michael Cashman (as Terhew), Colin Barrie (as Wittering) |
| NOTES: | |
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This film was based on the first part of a trilogy of TV plays by Giles Cooper about the teacher John Ebony in the BBC's Theatre 625 series. Broadcast over three succesive weeks in June/July 1965, these were: Unman, Wittering and Zigo, Seek Her Out and The Long House . They starred Peter Blythe as John Ebony. I don't have any information on what the other stories were about (or whether it was one long 3-part story that the film wholly adapted). |
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There were sixteen credited Class 5b pupils - only the more prominent ones are listed above. Of those 16 only two names stand out as going on to become well known names:- David Auker and Michael Kitchen. |
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The title of the film comes from the final three names read out on the class register - although there seems to be no especially good reason to title the film like that as there is no particular prominence for those characters. In fact "Zigo" is never even seen as he is always on sick leave although this never becomes an important plot point. |
| Up Pompeii (1971) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Sid Colin / Director: Bob Kellett / Producer: Ned Sherrin | |
| Type: Sitcom Spin-off | Running Time: 86 mins |
| Lurcio is a slave in ancient Pompeii of 79AD who works in the household of Senator Ludicrus Sextus and his wife Ammonia. As the story begins Lurcio is at the market purchasing supplies for Ludicrus' orgy that evening when he has a run in with a newly arrived Roman centurion called Captain Bilius and certain belongings of the two men get mixed up. When Lurcio gets back to his kitchens he finds a scroll amongst his shopping and puts it to one side not knowing what it is.
Bilius is an emissary of Emperor Nero but is secretly plotting against him and meets with his ally, the pro-consul of Pompeii Prosperus Maximus. Bilius says he has a scroll containing a list of 100 important Romans who will support a revolt and proclaim Maximus as the new emperor once Nero is dead. But as Bilius gets out his scroll it turns out instead to be a cucumber! Bilius realises what happened and organises a hunt for the slave he bumped into in the market who must have the scroll which if it were to fall into the wrong hands would make all the conspirators' lives forfeit. Meanwhile Lurcio's master Ludicrous is to give an important speech at the senate and before leaving he comes to the kitchens to talk to his slave and puts down the scroll containing his speech and then inadvertently takes the unopened Bilius' scroll instead when he departs. Bilius soon tracks Lurcio down and recovers his scroll until he realises it is the wrong one. He hopes to get it back from Ludicrous but the senator has already read it and realises there is a conspiracy afoot involving the pro-consul. Ludicrous visits Maximus to insist he resign but the pro-consul has anticipated this move and has asked his glamorous wife to seduce Ludicrous when he arrives so that Maximus can catch them "at it" and kill Ludicrous on the pretext of protecting his wife's honour. But Lurcio has discovered this plan to kill his master and substitutes himself at the critical moment and the angry Maximus throws him into prison slated for execution. Emperor Nero arrives at Pompeii and for some entertainment suggests that Maximus pit a fighter against his ferocious champion, Gorgo. Not wishing to anger Nero by beating him Maximus selects the weedy condemned slave Lurcio to fight on his behalf. But against the odds Lurcio wins and becomes Nero's new champion. Nero sends Lurcio to some steam baths to pre-emptively assassinate Maximus whom he knows is plotting his downfall. At the same time Lurcio is told to assassinate Nero by Maximus on pain of death if he refuses. And both parties plan that their henchmen should murder Lurcio as a political assassin once he has done the deed. But the henchmen end up accidentally killing each other in the hazy obscurity of the steam room. Finally as Ludicrous is about to expose Maximus in a senate speech the nearby mount Vesuvius erupts and everyone in Pompeii is killed forever frozen by death in their final actions as witnessed many centuries later when a tour guide is showing some visitors around the historical site. | |
| Starring: | Frankie Howerd (as Lurcio), Michael Hordern (as Ludicrus Sextus), Barbara Murray (as Ammonia), Patrick Cargill (as Emporer Nero), Lance Percival (as Captain Bilius), Bill Fraser (as Prosperus Maximus) |
| Featuring: | Julie Ege (as Voluptua, Maximus wife), Rita Webb (as Cassandra, soothsayer), Bernard Bresslaw (as Gorgo, Nero's champion), Adrienne Posta (as Scrubba, kitchen slave), Madeline Smith (as Erotica, Ludicrus' daughter), Royce Mills (as Nausius, Ludicrus' son), Laraine Humphrys (as Flavia, Nausius' girlfriend) |
| Familiar Faces: | Roy Hudd, Kenneth Cranham, Derek Griffiths, David Prowse |
| Starlets: | Veronica Clifford, Gaye Brown, Irlin Hall (and in uncredited minor parts:-) Ann Collins, Lynn Marshall, Patsy Snell, Sally Douglas, Laura Marshall, Valerie Stanton, Nicola Austin, Corinne Skinner-Carter, Carol Hawkins, Sammie Winmill |
| NOTES: | |
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This was a film spin-off from the 1969-70 BBC sitcom of the same name which ran for 14 episodes. Two sequels followed this film starring Frankie Howerd as essentially the same character but set in different eras:- Up the Chastity Belt (1971) and Up the Front (1972). |
| Up the Front (1972) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Sid Colin, Eddie Braben / Director: Bob Kellett / Producers: Ned Sherrin, Terry Glinwood | |
| Type: Sitcom Spin-off | Running Time: 85 mins |
| It is 1914 and Lurk is an underfootman in the household of Lord and Lady Twithampton. Lurk comes from a long line of cowards and he is disliked and picked upon by the butler Groping who lives up to his name by his pursuit of the glamorous young maid Fanny.
When war is declared Lurk is determined not to enlist even though Fanny shows her displeasure at his brazen cowardice. When Lurk goes to an entertainment show featuring a somewhat sozzled stage hypnotist he is picked from the audience as a reluctant volunteer and is made to believe he is incredibly brave re-enacting the personas of great war leaders. At the end of the act the hypnotist collapses before he can remove the hypnotic suggestion and Lurk is left with a great patriotic urge to "Save England" and he immediately enlists. Lurk arrives in France with great heroic ambitions but these are initially quelled when his Sergeant Major turns out to be Groper who continues his grudge against Lurk by giving him the most menial jobs he can find. Groper then stations Lurk in the low life-expectancy post of a lookout in No Man's Land. While on duty Lurk is contacted by a British spy called Nigel Phipps-Fortescue who has just stolen the secret German battle plans and needs Lurk's help to get them back to Army HQ. Together they flee into a nearby town hotly pursued by German troops who want the plans back. They hide in a tattoo parlour and to save the plans from re-capture Nigel tattoos a copy onto Lurk's backside and then sends him on alone to contact the British General. Lurk has great difficulties convincing the General's men that he needs to see him and then gets waylaid by the beautiful German spy Mata Hari who has been ordered by German intelligence officer Von Gutz to discover what he knows. He outwits her and eventually manages to see the General and show him the plans and Lurk is promoted for his bravery. | |
| Starring: | Frankie Howerd (as Lurk), Bill Fraser (as Mr Groping, Butler and Sgt Major), Zsa Zsa Gabor (as Mata Hari), Jonathan Cecil (as Nigel Phipps-Fortescue), Madeline Smith (as Fanny, Maid and Nurse) |
| Featuring: | Lance Percival (as Von Gutz, German intelligence officer), Robert Coote (as General Burke), Stanley Holloway (as Stage Hypnotist), Kenneth Fortescue (as General Burke's aide), Dora Bryan (as Cora Crumpington, singer/dancer), William Mervyn and Linda Gray (as Lord and Lady Twithampton), Percy Herbert (as Corporal Lovechild), David Battley (as Army Cook), Hermione Baddeley (as Brothel Madame) |
| Familiar Faces: | Bob Hoskins (as Recruiting Sergeant), Derek Griffiths (as Cabaret Knife Thrower) |
| Starlets: | Patricia Quinn (as Mata Hari's maid), Bozena (as Brothel Girl), Leena Skoog (as Nurse), Nicola Rowley (as French Girl) Toni Palmer, Delia Sainsbury, Lesley Anderson, Judy Gridley, Maggie Vincent and Wendy Lukins (as Cabaret dancing girls) |
| NOTES: | |
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Additional script material by: Roy Tuvey & Maurice Sellar and Peter Vincent & Bob Hedley |
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This film is a second follow-up to Up Pompeii (1971) although like its predecessor Up the Chastity Belt (1971) it uses a different historical era for the (ostensibly same) character to engage with. This film does not utilise the device of having Frankie Howerd continually addressing the camera directly which worked so well in the first film. Whilst that first film is fairly enjoyable this one unfortunately doesn't come close to having the same calibre of witty dialogue. |
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Although classified here as a "Sitcom Spin-Off", that is not strictly speaking completely accurate - "Comedy" would probably be the more appropriate genre if taken in isolation. However since it is a second follow-up to a film that WAS a sitcom spin-off it seems to make more sense to classify this one in the same way. |
| Up the Junction (1968) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Roger Smith / Director: Peter Collinson / Producers: Anthony Havelock-Allan, John Brabourne | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 112 mins |
| Polly Dean is a young woman from the rich side of London who has decided that she wants nothing to do with the privileged lifestyle she was brought up in and wants instead to live an "ordinary" life. She goes to Battersea and gets a job in a sweet packing factory where she finds the no-holds barred gossip and banter among the working class women workers a delight. Her cultured accent immediately marks her out as someone out of place and her co-workers find it hard to figure out what she could possibly be doing here. But she does make some friends in two sisters called Rube and Sylvie who show her the ropes and accept her into their circle of friends.
Polly decides to move to the area and gets a small flat and buys some furniture from a second hand shop where she meets Peter the shopkeeper's assistant who helps take her purchases home. He is a pleasant and genuine young man with a nice, easygoing manner and when he tentatively asks her out, fully expecting her to decline since he realises she's way out of his league, she accepts. She shows off her new apartment to Rube and Sylvie and they can hardly believe how dingy it is - even they live better than that although they try to be polite. She goes out with Peter, but rather than let him take her somewhere up in town she just wants to wander around the streets looking at the views which she thinks are beautiful but he just sees as dirty rows of old houses that no one really wants to live in. She explains to him she wants to be happy with the simple things in life with no pre-decided life all set out for her in advance by rich parents. She finds the lives of the rich hypocritical and disgusting and no longer wants any part of it and from now on will spend only what she earns. Their relationship progresses and they become more serious and Peter asks Polly away for the weekend. He wants to impress her and hires an expensive sports car and takes her to the finest hotel and restaurant and really pampers her although she tells him she'd much rather have kept things cheap and simple. They spend the night together and declare their love for each other. Next morning they have a row when they discuss marriage and although delighted by the prospect she tells him he would have to get a better job if they did. He finds her comments strange because he knows she must have money behind her and when they are married she can stop this pretending and they can go and live somewhere nice. But she tells him she means it about wanting to live an ordinary life - it is not some sort of game she's playing and she has no wish to live like a parasite or to marry one - she believes money destroys people and she wants no part of it. He just cannot understand her attitude because the lifestyle she has turned her back on is the very thing he aspires to - there is no suggestion that he's a money-grabbing opportunist but he wants to be comfortable enough to take the sweat out of life and move away from the slums of London. He thinks she is selfish to do nothing with her money when she could be spending it to help people and make them happy. He storms out and drives off in the sports car. On the way home he is stopped by the police for speeding and it turns out he stole the car and did not hire it after all. He is given six months in prison for motor theft. Polly attends court for she still loves him and after he is sentenced she asks him why he did it for she'd have much rather have gone by bus - and he tells her that that's her trouble - and we leave the story as she is crying, watching the prison van taking him away. | |
| Starring: | Suzy Kendall (as Polly Dean), Dennis Waterman (as Peter Connors), Adrienne Posta (as Rube Macarthy), Maureen Lipman (as Sylvie Macarthy) |
| Featuring: | Liz Fraser (as Mrs Macarthy, Rube and Sylvie's mother), Michael Gothard (as Terry, Rube's boyfriend), Hylda Baker (as Winny Harp, back-street abortionist), Alfie Bass (as Charlie, Peter's boss), Michael Robbins (as Figgins, sweet factory boss) |
| Familiar Faces: | Susan George (as Joyce, factory girl - small role), Billy Murray (as Ray, pub friend of Terry), Larry Martyn (as Fruit and Veg stall trader - as Larry Martin) |
| NOTES: | |
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Adapted from a book by Nell Dunn. |
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The film is based on the BBC play of the same name which was broadcast in The Wednesday Play slot in November 1965. All the parts were recast for the film. |
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The "junction" of the title comes from Clapham Junction railway station which is near Battersea where the story is set. |
| aka: Confessions of an Odd-Job Man | |
| Writer: Derrick Slater, John Sealey / Director: John Sealey / Producer: Kenneth F Rowles | |
| Type: Sex Comedy | Running Time: 85 mins |
| Bob and his wife move to a small country village where he sets himself up as a handyman and soon starts to get lots of jobs from bored housewives and randy daughters and Bob finds the whole town seems to be sex mad although that doesn't stop him joining in at first. But when he stops providing the extra services the housewives conspire to sully his reputation so he can be dealt with by the local constabulary. | |
| Comment: In most sex-comedy type films, encountering the easily undressed female is considered quite normal and routine by the lead actor, but in this film he himself begins to think the general sex-obsessed behaviour in the town is rather odd. In the closing scene it goes all "Benny Hill" with the hero being chased around outdoors by lots of speeded-up topless/scantily-clad women - all that's missing is the music. | |
| Starring: | Barry Stokes (as Bob), Penny Meredith (as his wife) |
| Featuring: | Bob Todd, Chic Murray, Sue Lloyd |
| Familiar Faces: | Harold Bennett |
| Starlets: | Gay Soper, Valerie Leon, Helli Louise, Julia Bond, Jeannie Collings, Alexandra Dane, Ava Cadell, Nita Lorraine, Olivia Syson, Jannette Carrol |
| aka: Old Dracula | |
| Writer: Jeremy Lloyd / Director: Clive Donner / Producer: Jack H Wiener | |
| Type: Comedy Horror | Running Time: 84 mins |
| In the present day Castle Dracula in Transylvania is run as a tourist attraction hotel with the guests being offered themed dinners with a tour guide Dracula as their host. To the public at large Dracula is a legend and no one knows if he ever really existed - but he does exist and the real Count Dracula is the one behind the scenes running the whole enterprise and cashing in on his own name. His faithful human butler Maltravers acts as the tour-Dracula and they employ actresses to be the vampire waitresses. However Dracula has set up this tourist "trap" with one specific purpose in mind - he is desperately searching for someone with the rarest blood group in the world which can be used to provide the catalyst that will re-energise his beloved wife Vampira who has been in an undead coma for the past fifty years after drinking some poisoned peasant blood. Guests are routinely drugged and during their sleep have some blood extracted and analysed for that elusive group before they leave - remaining completely unaware of what happened to them.
The next guests expected at the castle are a party from Playboy magazine UK whose award winning article writer, Marc Williams, is doing a feature on the Dracula legend. He has brought along four models to photograph - there are three white models and one who is black. After dinner the models retire to bed and fall into a drugged sleep. Dracula and his servant take blood samples and when they analyse them they find they have at last found that elusive match! As long as the special blood catalyst is present then any other blood type will do to bulk-out the quantity and so all the samples taken are combined and used to give Vampira a transfusion. The process seems to be working and Dracula's wife awakens from her long slumber - but then a strange thing happens and her white skin turns black. Dracula is appalled at this development and can't imagine what people would think - although Vampira herself kind of likes it and thinks it suits her. Maltravers speculates it may be like mixing colours in the wash and the "black" blood contained in the batch has somehow affected her pigmentation. They know the special blood did not come from the black model but due to a label mix-up Dracula and Maltravers aren't sure which of the three white girls the special blood came from - and now the models have returned to England. So Dracula, Vampira and Maltravers head off to London in pursuit to get more samples and discover which of them had the special blood. They are then anticipating that if they give Vampira another transfusion to clean out her system she will turn back to her normal colour. Once in England Dracula rents a suitably gothic mansion and invites Marc Williams to visit knowing that he will have access to all the models. He hypnotises Marc into acting as his agent and commands him to take blood samples whenever he hears the codeword "Vampira". Marc then has dates with the models and in a trance is forced to extract blood from them for analysis. After a time Marc begins to become suspicious that he is under some from of control and tries to fight it but Dracula exerts his will forcing him to obey. Things culminate at a Playboy party where the final model to be tested is present and she is confirmed to be the match after the first two girls' results were negative. Dracula mixes the white-only blood up and gives Vampira another transfusion - but it doesn't work as expected - instead she stays black and feels such a surge of need that she bites into her husband's neck. This has an unforeseen effect on him as he too turns into a black person. Dracula is most embarrassed by this and decides to head back to Transylvania as quickly as possible before he is seen. | |
| Comment: This film probably doesn't get shown these days because of the racist implications that having black skin is something to be embarrassed about even though it is only David Niven's Dracula character who has this view - which is a shame because other than that it is a perfectly agreeable film. | |
| Starring: | David Niven (as Count Dracula), Teresa Graves (as Countess Vampira), Peter Bayliss (as Maltravers, Dracula's manservant), Nicky Henson (as Marc Williams, writer) |
| Featuring: | Jennie Linden (as Angela, Photographer's assistant), Bernard Bresslaw (as Playboy UK publisher), Linda Hayden (as Helga, Tour actress at Dracula's castle), Christopher Sandford (as the Photographer) (The Playmate Models) Cathie Shirriff (as Nancy), Andrea Allan (as Eve), Veronica Carlson (as Ritva), Minah Bird (as Rose) |
| Familiar Faces: | Frank Thornton (Letting Agent), Aimi MacDonald and Patrick Newell (Couple in the adjoining Hotel Room to Dracula), Kenneth Cranham (Mugger) |
| Starlets: | Carol Cleveland (as Mugger's victim), Luan Peters (as Publisher's Secretary), Marcia Fox (as Air Hostess), Hoima MacDonald, Nicola Austine and Penny Irving (as Playboy Bunnies) |
| Vampire Circus (1972) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Judson Kinberg / Director: Robert Young / Producer: Wilbur Stark | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 83 mins |
| In the village of Stetl in a European country during the nineteenth century the villagers live in fear of the mysterious Count Mitterhaus who resides in his fortified castle nearby. Several villagers' children have gone missing and although the Count is suspected they are unwilling to confront him afraid of the supernatural legends that surround him. But when a schoolteacher called Albert Mueller spots his own wife Anna leading a young innocent little girl into the castle he cannot understand what she is doing and assumes she must be under some unholy influence. He bands together the villagers and persuades them that they should at last take some action against the evil Count and save both his wife and the young girl Jenny. They enter the castle and soon discover Jenny dead from a vampire's bite - but Anna is in the Count's bedchamber as his willing lover. Count Mitterhaus is a vampire and Anna is his human concubine who has been luring innocent victims for him to feed upon. The villager's angrily attack the Count determined to rid themselves of his evil - they fight hard but the Count is supernaturally strong and cannot be harmed by conventional means - several villagers die but eventually the Count is subdued with a stake to his heart. As the Count lays dying he issues a curse on the assembled head villagers declaring that their children will suffer - that at some point in the future their offspring will die to restore his life. Anna is dragged from the castle and flogged for her treachery and the castle is set ablaze. Anna pulls free, and grieving for her lover she runs back into the burning castle and drags his body down into the cellar caves and into his coffin where in his dying moments he tells her to find his cousin Emil who will know what to do. She departs down an underground passageway and escapes to carry out his dying wishes...
Fifteen years later the same village is in the grip of an unknown plague that has caused the neighbouring villages to forcibly blockade access in or out to maintain it in quarantine. The head villagers are at a loss to know what to do and morale is very low. Then a circus troupe arrives in town mysteriously breaking the cordon without any difficulty. The circus is named "The Circus of Nights" and is run by an unnamed Gypsy Woman whose right hand man is Emil. He is secretly a vampire and has the ability to transmute into a black panther. Other circus performers are also vampires and they have arrived to put into motion the curse of Emil's cousin Mitterhaus from fifteen years previously. The village folk are delighted at first with the distraction that the entertainment of the circus brings to their miserable situation. But when children of some of the elder villagers go missing and are found dead memories of the Count's curse come flooding back. The villagers band together once more to destroy the circus vampires and attempt to prevent the Count's resurrection from being fulfilled. But the situation is too far gone and the Count is reborn - but only temporarily as he is finally destroyed for good while still in a weakened state. | |
| Comment: Although not made as clear as it should have been it seems that the Gypsy Woman is meant to be an older Anna (played by a different actress). The only plot weakness here is that the entire story is building towards the resurrection of the Count but when he is reborn he is killed again remarkably quickly and with apparent ease making him seem a lot less formidable and fearful an enemy than we are made to think. | |
| Starring: | Adrienne Corri (as Gypsy Woman), Thorley Walters (as the Burgermeister), Laurence Payne (as Professor Albert Mueller), Anthony Corlan (as Emil) |
| Featuring: | Richard Owens (as Dr Kersh), John Moulder-Brown (as Anton, son of Kersh), Lynne Frederick (as Dora, daughter of Albert Mueller), Robert Tayman (as Count Mitterhaus), Domini Blythe (as Anna Mueller), Christina Paul (as Rosa, Burgermeister's daughter), Robin Sachs and Lalla Ward (as Heinrich and Helga, twin circus gymnasts), Skip Martin (as Michael, clown), Elizabeth Seal, Robin Hunter, John Bown, Mary Wimbush, Sibylla Kay (as other villagers) |
| Familiar Faces: | David Prowse (as Strongman) |
| Starlets: | Serena |
| NOTES: | |
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Serena and her male counterpart Milovan both receive "introducing" credits. They are a circus couple doing a performance dance act in which she is painted with animal markings and he tames her. They are announced as "Weber and Serena" and their end credit character billing is as "The Webers" - they have no dialogue or part in the film other than during their dance performance sequence. |
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The director is credited as Robert William Young. |
| The Vampire Lovers (1970) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Tudor Gates / Director: Roy Ward Baker / Producers: Harry Fine, Michael Style | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 91 mins |
| Set in the early 1800s in a European country. General Von Spielsdorf is holding a grand celebratory ball for his young niece's birthday when some newcomers to the area arrive to introduce themselves. They are a Countess and her daughter Marcilla and are warmly welcomed. The Countess then receives an urgent message and is called away to visit a sick relative and she asks if she could impose upon the General to allow Marcilla to stay with him whilst she is away. The General agrees knowing that the young woman would be good company for his niece Laura. Over the days that follow the two young women make friends and become close - but then Laura begins to get ill, becoming tired and listless. The doctor can do nothing for her and after a couple of days she simply dies for no good reason, although the doctor discovers two odd puncture marks above her left breast. The General is grief stricken and goes away intent on finding some answers to his niece's sudden decline.
Nearby live the rich Morton family, they had been at the General's ball as well but had left the party early and so never met Marcilla - but they are all very sad at the death of Laura. Roger Morton lives with daughter Emma and the girl's governess Mademoiselle Perrodot. While out riding Roger Morton comes across a matronly damsel in distress whose stagecoach has had a mishap. The lady is travelling with her niece and because of the delay she asks if her charge could possibly stay with Morton whilst she continues on alone to visit a sick relative and Morton agrees thinking it would be excellent company for Emma. Her niece is called Carmilla (when we see her on screen we know she is Marcilla, although none of the Morton household know of her involvement in the nearby events at the General's house). Morton soon has to depart on business to Vienna and whilst he is away a similar pattern of events play out in this household as seen before and the mysteriously enigmatic Carmilla becomes good friends with Emma making overtures of something more than just friends when opportunity presents itself although Emma is too naïve to understand her close intimate contact is anything other than special friendship. Emma becomes listless during the day and her governess becomes increasingly concerned as to her well-being. Emma has strange puncture marks above her left breast which Carmilla explains away to the Governess as being made by a broach - but the Governess is only partly convinced and so Carmilla weaves her alluring spell on the woman who feels compelled to follow her to her room where a romantic liaison ensues. After this the Governess is a changed woman - she is no longer concerned about Emma's wellbeing and puts obstacles in the path of the worried butler Renton who thinks they should send for the Doctor. But Renton is anxious enough to go against the Governess' instructions and send for the doctor anyway. With suspicions of a vampiric predator around because of several mysterious deaths in the area, the doctor puts a crucifix around Emma's neck and has her room garnished with garlic flowers - Renton is given instructions by the doctor to make sure these safeguards are kept in place. Then on his way home the suspicious doctor is attacked by Carmilla and her vampiric nature is openly seen displayed (if there was any doubt) as she kills him with a bite to his neck before he can report anything of his findings in the village. Back at the house again Carmilla is thwarted from entering Emma's room by the defensive measures but she needs the girl to snack upon to satiate her cravings. Then Renton makes a fatal mistake when he confides in Carmilla that he thinks the Governess might be a vampire because of the way she has been trying to undermine the precautions made to keep Emma safe. Carmilla extorts her powers of mesmeric seduction over him and in her thrall he removes the charms for her and then she kills him. Roger Morton returns from his business trip and, terrified at his daughter's weak condition, he heads to the village to try and find the doctor (not knowing he is dead). On the way he meets the General who has just returned from his time away and has with him a man he found who knows all about the dangers of this area. His name is Baron Hartog and he has a story to tell ... (His story - some of which is seen in the film's prologue) Several years beforehand back in 1794 Baron Hartog's sister Isabella had been killed by a vampire of the Karnstein clan. The Karnsteins were a family who were evil both in life and in un-death and Hartog is determined to avenge his sister's death. He goes to the Karnstein castle where the vampires sleep buried in their coffins to occasionally rise when they need sustenance. He finds each coffin and stakes the occupants as they sleep. He only misses one whose tomb he could not locate and he was too overwrought by the horror of it all to continue searching any longer. So now Morton, the General and the Baron return to the castle to complete the task. They search around and in an overgrown area find the missed tomb bearing the name of Mircalla Karnstein (1527 - 1545) and when they see her portrait both local men recognise her as the woman they recently allowed into their homes to befriend their young ones. However they discover that the tomb is empty of the actual coffin which has evidently been hidden elsewhere. Back at the Morton house Carmilla has become thwarted in her efforts to further feed from Emma by a local estate manager Carl Ebhardt (who was the beau of Laura) and she decides to give up and return to her coffin since she is reasonably sated as she has recently fed from the Governess whom she has just killed. Back at the castle the three men see her come back and discover the hidden location of her coffin and the General proceeds to stake her sleeping form and then beheads her to finally destroy her evil menace. | |
| Comments: The date setting is a rough guestimate based on the date of Baron Hartog's sister's death shown in the prologue as 1794 on her obituary card. Baron Hartog appears later in the film to help wrap things up and a few years must have undoubtedly passed although it's not clear just how many.
A peripheral character seen in the film whom I wasn't able to weave into the above plot description is a mysterious man in black who is often seen observing events from the distance and is himself shown to be a vampire - although the exact nature of his identity or his role in the affairs is not clear and at the end he remains alive and undiscovered. Also seemingly unresolved is just who the Countess was - was she another vampire - or perhaps she was another woman in the thrall of Marcella/Carmilla? | |
| Starring: | Ingrid Pitt (as Marcilla and Carmilla), Peter Cushing (as The General), George Cole (as Roger Morton), Madeline Smith (as Emma Morton), Kate O'Mara (as The Governess) |
| Featuring: | Jon Finch (as Carl Ebhardt), Pippa Steele (as Laura), Ferdy Mayne (as the Doctor), Douglas Wilmer (as Baron Hartog), Dawn Addams (as The Countess), Harvey Hall (as Renton, Morton butler), Janet Key (as Gretchin, Morton maid), Shelagh Wilcocks (as General's Housekeeper), John Forbes-Robertson (as Man in Black) |
| Starlets: | Kirsten Betts (as Vampire in prologue), Joanna Shelley (as victim), Olga James (as victim), Vicki Woolf |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the story Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu written in 1871. Another film which bases itself on this same original story is the Spanish film The Blood Spattered Bride (1972) although beyond the name of the villainess and her vampirish seduction of a young woman there is no big similarity between the stories told. |
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The story of the Karnstein family and the mysterious vampire dressed in black continues in two sequels to this film. These are:- Lust For a Vampire (1971) which shows the efforts of the man in black (revealed to be Count Karnstein) to resurrect the spirit of Marcilla. And then Twins of Evil (1971) in which a later Count Karnstein becomes a vampire when Marcilla is briefly resurrected. |
| Writer: D. Daubeney / Director: Joseph Larraz / Producer: Brian Smedley-Aston | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 87 mins |
| Fran and Miriam are two beautiful vampires who live together in a large isolated gothic mansion in the country. They entrap their male victims by waiting on a roadside hitching a lift and asking to be driven back to their mansion where they invite the man in with them under the promise of a good time. They have sex with the man (and each other) and then feast on the man's blood killing him in the process. The latest prey is Ted who picks up Fran and goes home with her but Fran has decided to play it differently with him and keeps him alive night after night feeding on him while he is in a dazed state but not killing him. During the day he has opportunities to leave but finds himself drawn back to the place to find out more about her.
Camped in their caravan nearby are John and Harriet, a married couple who see various comings and goings at the mansion and Harriet becomes intensely curious as to what the women are up to after earlier passing them on the roadside trying to hitch a lift - a curiosity that has fatal consequences for the couple as the Vampyres go on a climatic killing rampage after Ted escapes. | |
| Starring: | Marianne Morris (as Fran), Anulka Dziubinska (as Miriam), Murray Brown (as Ted) |
| Featuring: | Brian Deacon and Sally Faulkner (as the Caravaners), Michael Byrne and Karl Lanchbury (as two other victims) |
| Starlets: | Margaret Heald |
| NOTES: | |
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Marianne Morris and Anulka Dziubinska both receive "introducing" credits. Anulka Dziubinska is credited simply as "Anulka" |
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The two women are not traditional movie vampires because they have no trouble being out and about during the daylight. They do sometimes sleep in a dank cellar during the day but not in coffins. It's hinted that they might not have reflections when Ted finds a mirror that is papered over for reasons he doesn't understand - but this feature is never seen demonstrated on screen. Their origin is not the usual vampire thing either and is sort of explained at the end when an estate agent describing the mansion to prospective buyers tells of a legend of two unidentified women who were found murdered inside and are said to have haunted the place. This ties in with the pre-credits sequence when the two women are gunned down by an intruder while they are canoodling together on their bed. Although how from this they became "vampires" is not explained. |
| The Vault of Horror (1973) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Milton Subotsky / Director: Roy Ward Baker / Producers: Max J Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky | |
| Type: Horror / Anthology | Running Time: 83 mins |
| Five men get into an elevator at separate floors on their way down to the ground floor of an office building - but the lift oddly bypasses the ground floor and goes to the basement where they get out and find food and refreshments laid out. The lift doors close and there is no recall button so they decide to wait it out and make the best of it until someone comes for them and soon get around to telling one another about some strange dreams they've each recently had. Their dreams are the stories we then see ...
Story 1 - Midnight Mess Harold Rogers is searching for his sister Donna whom he has not seen for a long time. He hires a private detective whom he promptly strangles to death once he has discovered her address. He goes to her village and finds everyone is strangely afraid of the approaching dark. He knocks on his sister's door and she tells him that there are killers who roam at night. Then he tells her the reason for his visit - their father died four weeks beforehand and she is the sole-named heir - for as long as she lives! - and he proceeds to stab her to death. It is now dark outside and he goes to a nearby restaurant which seems to be doing a bustling trade despite the locals' supposed fear. But the menu is strange in that all the items are blood related and then in the mirror he sees that he is the only person in the packed dining room who has a reflection. His sister then walks in still alive and they all reveal themselves as vampires as they proceed to have him for dinner. Story 2 - The Neat Job Ageing Arthur Critchit has taken a new young wife called Eleanor to share in all the fortune and luxury he has accumulated in his life. Arthur is an obsessively neat and tidy person and needs everything to be in the right place and although she tries her best Eleanor finds it very hard to conform to the rigid system of order he has come to live by over the years and she keeps getting things wrong. When he comes home one day to find that her clumsiness has ruined the meticulous arrangements in his workroom she snaps and kills him with a hammer. But she preserves him as he would want to be by placing all his body parts in separate jars all neatly labelled and placed on a shelf. Story 3 - This Trick'll Kill You Sebastian is a stage magician who is holidaying in India with his wife Inez who is also his stage assistant and together they are looking for new ideas for their act. They are watching a fakir and his daughter perform street magic and Sebastian takes great pleasure in exposing his "magic" as mere trickery in front of the assembled crowd. Sebastian prides himself in his ability to work out how any trick is done and so he is intrigued when later on he sees the daughter performing an Indian rope trick which even though she lets him examine it closely he cannot fathom the secret of. He offers to buy the secret of the trick from her but she refuses saying it a magic rope that has been handed down through the generations. So Sebastian tricks her into coming to his hotel room on the ruse of demonstrating the trick to Inez who he says is ill in bed - then he kills the young woman and tries the trick himself. He plays the music that she played and the rope rises and Inez practices climbing up it - but at the top she screams and vanishes and then the rope takes of a life of its own and attacks and kills Sebastian. And in the market place the Fakir and his still-alive daughter carry on their act having taken revenge on Sebastian for earlier humiliating them. Story 4 - Bargain In Death Maitland has devised an insurance scam with his friend Alex. Maitland takes a drug that will slow down his metabolism so much it will fool any doctor into believing him to be dead of a sudden heart attack. The plan is that soon after he is buried Alex will dig him up and together they will share the Life Assurance money. But Maitland plans to double cross Alex by killing him after the money has been collected - and Alex intends to double cross Maitland by not even digging him up. Meanwhile two medical students are bemoaning the fact that they have so little chance to practice on real dead bodies that they decide to get one themselves. Maitland is now underground buried in his coffin wondering what is taking Alex so long when at last he is dug up - it is not Alex though, but the two students, and they get a nasty shock when the "corpse" sits up gasping for air. But the gravedigger they have hired responds by slicing Maitland's head off with his shovel. Story 5 - Drawn and Quartered A painter called Moore has gone to live in seclusion on the island of Haiti after his artwork was strongly condemned by an art critic and considered worthless by a gallery owner. He is shocked therefore to discover that his art is now selling for record amounts back in London. He realises he has been conned by three people he trusted - the critic, art dealer and a friend called Lawrence Diltant who had bought up his work from him at rock bottom prices before he emigrated. Moore decides to have his revenge and visits a voodoo witch doctor and buys some magic to give his painting hand special powers and upon his return to London he paints portraits of the three men. He then defaces them and the men suffer similar injuries to those he has depicted for them. But Moore has also completed a self-portrait with his special painting hand and when that gets accidentally damaged a nasty death befalls him. Back to framing sequence - The lift doors open again onto a graveyard and the men file out and we learn that this storytelling is a regular occurrence that these dead men are compelled throughout all eternity to repeat - every night retelling the terrible things they did while they were alive. | |
| Starring: | The first named in each story is the lead who also appears in the framing sequence (Story 1) Daniel Massey (as Harold Roger), Anna Massey (as Donna, his sister), Michael Pratt (as Private Detective) (story 2) Terry-Thomas (as Arthur Critchit), Glynis Johns (as Eleanor, his new wife) (story 3) Curt Jürgens (as Sebastian), Dawn Addams (as Inez, his wife), Jasmina Hilton (as Indian Girl) (story 4) Michael Craig (as Maitland), Edward Judd (as Alex), Robin Nedwell (as Tom, student), Geoffrey Davies (as Jerry, student) (story 5) Tom Baker (as Moore), Denholm Elliott (as Lawrence Diltant), Terence Alexander (as Fenton Breedley, Art Critic), John Witty (as Arthur Gaskill, Gallery Owner) |
| Familiar Faces: | Arthur Mullard (Gravedigger, story 4) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on stories written by William M Gaines and Al Feldstein as originally published by Gaines in the Comic magazines The Vault of Horror and Tales From the Crypt |
| The Vengeance of She (1968) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Peter O'Donnell / Director: Cliff Owen / Producer: Aida Young | |
| Type: Adventure | Running Time: 97 mins |
| A beautiful young girl called Carol swims out to a private yacht about to weigh anchor and stows-away. The vessel is owned by George Carter who is holidaying with his wife Sheila and their friend Philip. When they discover Carol they are well on their way to their next destination and too late to turn back so she is treated as a guest. Carol is unable or unwilling to explain why she is there and Philip in particular finds her intriguing. At night Carol has bad dreams and calls out a name "Ayesha". Philip hears her and she tells him that in her dreams people call her this but she doesn't know what it means.
Still on route George receives a radio telegram with some disturbing news which causes him to change his destination. As the boat steers away Carol is racked with severe head pains and implores George to turn back to the original heading and when he refuses she jumps into the sea. George dives in to save her but his strenuous efforts give rise to a heart attack and he dies. With Carol safely back on board the boat heads to the nearest port at North Africa for an inquest. Elsewhere in a secret society of ancient scholars called the Maji we see how the destiny of the woman called Carol is being manipulated from afar. They believe her to be the reincarnation of their once-queen Ayesha, and her former lover Killikrates wants her back. Killikrates is immortal - he was made undying by the eternal flame that burns only once in a lifetime - at the same time as the once-immortal Ayesha perished in the same flames. His adviser Men-Hari is adept at mind control powers and has been influencing Carol from afar - using pain to guide her direction so she will find her way to them when she follows the route that causes her least discomfort. Killikrates intends to make Ayesha immortal once again and has promised he will do the same for Men-Hari if he succeeds in bringing Ayesha to him - but the time of the flame approaches soon with the correct alignment of the stars and they anxiously await Ayesha's arrival. Another adviser named Za-Tor is suspicious of Men-Hari's true motives and believes he has a secret agenda of his own to take control once he gains immortality. After the shipmates have reached port Carol heads off on her own into the desert. When Philip finds her gone he follows fearing for her life or her sanity. Eventually, after some run-ins with Arab slave traders they are reunited and Carol's unwavering course leads them to a hidden pass within a mountain that comes out into a temple of the lost city of Kuma where time and tradition has stood still and the people dress like ancient Romans. Carol is welcomed as Ayesha and treated as royalty and taken to see Killikrates whilst Philip is shut away in imprisoned luxury. The mind powers of Men-Hari still influence Carol and she raises little objections to the assertions of her true identity. As the moment of the flame's renewal draws close Za-Tor speaks with Philip about his concerns and Philip advises him to organise an uprising amongst his people who fear the return of Ayesha who is remembered as a ruthless ruler, and Za-Tor fears even more the immortality of Men-Hari whom he believes will try and take over the world. Philip is released by a female servant jealous of the returning Ayesha as she has her own secret love for Killikrates, and he goes looking for Carol. Killikrates takes Carol to a hidden chamber as the starlight hits the mystical crystal from which the eternal flame springs. They must wait for the flame to turn cold and then Carol can walk through it to become immortal. The flame's powers have some rules:- the person must enter of their own volition and with the consent of another immortal, and the only way an existing immortal can die is to enter the flame a second time. Philip finds them and tries to talk Carol out of it - he plants doubt in her mind that cause her to waver and Killikrates tells Men-Hari to walk her through the flame giving himself immortality too. This is what Men-Hari wanted all along and has been building to this point. Za-Tor tells Killikrates that Carol is not the true Ayesha and Men-Hari has found someone who resembles her using his mind powers to make it appear she was SHE so that he could gain immortality with Killikrates' consent. Devastated at this deception Killikrates rescinds his permission to Men-Hari and tells Carol and Philip they are free to leave. Then after a fight in which Men-Hari and Za-Tor are both mortally wounded, Killikrates feeling unfulfilled without his true Queen Ayesha walks the eternal flame once more to end his lonely existence. A dying Za-Tor then calls on the flame to destroy the accursed city whose people have taken the dark path and it obeys bringing the temple crumbling to the ground with Carol and Philip only just managing to escape in time. | |
| Comment: A sequel to She (1965) in which Ayesha was played by Ursula Andress. Olinka Berova takes over the role in this film and does have a general resemblance to Andress and is obviously supposed to be an exact likeness as far as the other characters are concerned - because when some explanatory events from the first film are shown they are re-enacted with Berova in the Andress role. John Richardson reprises his role as the mortal man Leo Vincey who was made into the immortal Killikrates by Ayesha as she inadvertently sacrificed her own immortal life at the end of the first film. | |
| Starring: | Edward Judd (as Philip), Olinka Berova (as Carol/Ayesha), John Richardson (as Killikrates), Derek Godfrey (as Men-Hari) |
| Featuring: | George Sewell (as Harry Walker, boat captain), Colin Blakely (as George Carter, boat owner), Jill Melford (as Sheila Carter, George's wife), Noel Willman (as Za-Tor) |
| Starlets: | Danièle Noël, Christine Pockett |
| aka: Spider's Venom; The Legend of Spider Forest | |
| Writers: Donald Ford, Derek Ford / Director: Peter Sykes / Producers: Michael Pearson, Kenneth F. Rowles | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 83 mins |
| Paul Greville is an artist painting scenic views in the German countryside. He meets an oddly shy girl who lives in the forest and notices she has a large dark scar on her left shoulder that resembles a spider. Back at his village lodgings the innkeeper tells him that the girl is legend amongst the simple local people and thought not to exist.
Paul meets an elder villager called Herr Huber and his daughter Ellen who seduces him and appears to be trying to find out more about him and the work he has done. At night Paul sees the mysterious girl outside his window and follows her - but he comes across the body of a man who had in his possession a famous painting by Bosch which had been thought lost in the war. The innkeeper tells him that many paintings went missing from the church during the war. Paul visits Huber at his home who tells him about a breed of spiders that inhabit the forest which are immune to all known insecticides and act like parasites drawing their sustenance from human blood. The people believe the mysterious girl is a spider goddess who can control the spiders. Paul meets the mystery girl properly and finds she is called Anna and lives in a house in the forest with her guardian. He falls in love with her. Paul finds himself the target for attacks by Herr Huber's men led by his daughter Ellen and he and Anna flee to her house where he discovers a laboratory in which her father has been extracting the venom of the spiders to create a nerve gas. Anna's perceived menace has been cultivated by the plotters to keep the simple folk out of the forest but she is not involved in anything nefarious herself. A fire destroys the lab and burns down Anna's house but she runs in to be with her father and Paul cannot save her. | |
| Comment: The ending of this film is very rushed and muddled and it is somewhat unclear what is supposed to be going on. | |
| Starring: | Simon Brent (as Paul Greville), Neda Arneric (as Anna, the mystery girl), Sheila Allen (as Ellen Huber) |
| Featuring: | Gerard Heinz (as Herr Huber), Gertan Klauber (Kurt, innkeeper) |
| NOTES: | |
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The version reviewed carried the Spider's Venom title. |
| Victor Frankenstein (1977) | Previous Next |
| aka: Terror of Frankenstein | |
| Writers: Yvonne and Calvin Floyd / Director/Producer: Calvin Floyd | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 91 mins |
| This is a literary adaptation of the classic novel by Mary Shelley. It begins in the 1820s on an ice flow in the Artic where an ice-stranded schooner takes aboard a lone wanderer called Victor Frankenstein who is near to death from the exposure and tells the captain of the fantastic tale that led him here.
It began a few years before in Geneva when the academically bright Victor went off to university full of ambition to solve the mystery of life. He experimented on a recently deceased cadaver to try and revive it with the use of electrical power harnessed from a storm. His efforts are met with a resounding success and the corpse comes back to life. Faced with this reality Victor suddenly becomes appalled at his own handiwork and rejects the creature realising what an abomination against nature he has created. He leaves it to fend for itself as he is taken home to be with his family who are concerned about his state of mind. The creature is a reasonably normal looking man with some facial scarring but possesses a full intelligence and ability to talk - but wherever he goes he is met by fear, rejection and hatred with no one willing to accept him into their community. He feels immense anger towards his creator Victor and heads off to his family home to seek his revenge. He kills Victor's young brother and tells Victor that he will do the same for the rest of his family if he does not create for him a female companion. Victor starts to comply but then reconsiders that he does not want to be responsible for spawning a new race of monsters of indeterminate ethics who might wish to destroy humanity. The creature therefore vows to carry out its threat. On the night of Victor's wedding to his childhood sweetheart Elizabeth, despite Victor's precautions, the creature gets into the house and murders her. The creature tells Victor that he is now satisfied with his revenge and that he is now headed to the ends of the Earth to live alone. For Victor this is no longer good enough and he vows to track him down and kill him. This quest eventually leads him to the Arctic where the story began and as he lays weak on the ship the creature comes to see him for one final time. Victor's heart gives out and he dies and the creature heads off into the desolate wilderness wishing to also die so that he will be a monster no more. | |
| Comment: The only visual criticism is that the "Monster" is not all that frightening looking and so whilst one can perfectly accept Victor's hatred of it knowing as he does the nature of its unholy origins, it is harder to understand why he is so universally reviled by everyone else he meets. The creature has the appearance of a normal man with a slightly scarred face - he is capable of rational conversation and is only violent when angered by unjust treatment. So the reason for the instinctive hatred of him is not readily obvious when he could just as easily be a poor unfortunate who has been in an accident that has left him scarred. | |
| Starring: | Leon Vitali (as Victor Frankenstein), Per Oscarsson (as The Monster), Nicholas Clay (Henry Clerval, Victor's friend), Stacey Dorning (Elizabeth, Victor's fiancée) |
| Featuring: | Olof Bergström (as Victor's Father), Jan Ohlsson (as William, Victor's young brother), Mathias Henriksson (as Captain Walton, Arctic ship), David Byrne (as Felix, woodland family husband), Jacinta Martín (as Agatha, Felix's wife), Harry Brogan (as Blind Man, Felix's father), Archie O'Sullivan (as Professor K.A. Waldheim, at Victor's university) |
| NOTES: | |
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This is a Swedish and Irish co-production. The title on the version reviewed was Terror of Frankenstein |
| The Viking Queen (1967) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Clarke Reynolds / Director: Don Chaffey / Producer: John Temple-Smith | |
| Type: Historical Drama | Running Time: 87 mins |
| Set in the early years of Anno Domini when Britain was under Roman occupation. The many small kingdoms of Britain were placed under the rule of a handful of Roman governor-generals each overseeing several kingdoms and in command of legions of battle-weary soldiers who despised the inclement climate. The Roman Emperor Nero issued instructions that his governors should be as accommodating as possible to the wishes of the local kings to avoid rebellion. One such kingdom was Iceni where the ageing and dying king had written a will that his land shall be jointly owned by Nero and the king's heir. Governor Justinian is temperate and agrees to honour the will to the letter imposing Roman rule in a tolerant and flexible manner. His headstrong first centurion Octavian is at odds with his commander's approach and feels that the might of the Roman sword should rule supreme and hold no quarter to these ignorant peasant people.
The old king passes the throne onto his daughter Salina whom he feels best able to take his place even though she is not the natural heir. The kingdom is still dominated by the druid religion despite all practice of this having been forbidden by the Romans. Salina has forsaken that old religion but others in her family still hold it devout. The chief druid Maelgan is particularly loathe to relinquish his power and influence and hopes to turn events so that the Romans can be driven out. Over the coming months Governor Justinian and Queen Salina fall in love and decide they wish to marry but there is little enthusiasm for this idea from their respective advisers. Also Justinian's fair-minded policy of taxing the rich more and the poor less angers the rich merchants and brings about a desire to have Justinian replaced. So Octavian and a merchant called Osiris plot together to turn events to their mutual advantage. Osiris has Maelgan organise a druid uprising in far off Anglesey forcing Justinian, who has jurisdiction, to leave Iceni to take command of the Roman response. Meanwhile Octavian, left in charge of Iceni, begins running the kingdom with the uncompromising iron fist he has always advocated. He restores the former tax policy rescinding all of Justinian's reforms. He also ceases to honour the terms of the old king's will and has Queen Salina publicly flogged when she tries to stand up to him. This action however has the effect of creating hatred towards the Romans where previously there had been grudging acceptance and thus fuels a mass rebellion. Queen Salina bears armour and sword and leads her people against Octavian and in an ambush of his convoy captures him and prepares him for execution on the next full moon according to the druid way. Justinian receives word of this and although he despairs of Octavian's ruthless hard-line attitudes which have precipitated these events he cannot ignore the flagrant insurrection of Roman law. He heads back to Iceni hoping to calm matters down but it has gone too far and a full-scale battle ensues. Although the Britons fight with fury and determination the superior Roman weaponry proves decisive and Justinian regrettably has to order that Queen Salina, whom he loves, is arrested to be taken to Rome for trial. But the Queen knows that this will mean she will end up as a slave and takes her own life rather than suffer that indignity. | |
| Starring: | Don Murray (as Justinian), Carita (as Queen Salina), Donald Houston (as Maelgan, chief druid), Andrew Keir (as Octavian, Roman centurion), Patrick Troughton (as Tristram, Salina's loyal servant) |
| Featuring: | Adrienne Corri (as Beatrice, Salina's elder sister), Nicola Pagett (as Talia, Salina's younger sister), Niall MacGinnis (as Tiberion, notary of Rome), Wilfrid Lawson (as King Priam, Salina's father), Percy Herbert (as Catus, Roman soldier), Sean Caffrey (as Fergus, son of Tristram) |
| Starlets: | Nita Lorraine (as Nubian Girl Slave) |
| NOTES: | |
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Carita receives an "introducing" credit |
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Although it uses different names this story seems to essentially be based on the story of Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, who died in AD62 after leading an unsuccessful revolt against the Romans |
| Writers: Stirling Silliphant, Wolf Rilla, George Barclay / Director: Wolf Rilla / Producer: Ronald Kinnoch | |
| Type: Sci-Fi | Running Time: 74 mins |
| Army Major Alan Bernard is talking on the phone to his brother-in-law Professor Gordon Zellaby who lives in the village of Midwich. When things suddenly fall silent at Zellaby's end and Alan is unable to get any sort of reply from any Midwich numbers he becomes concerned and drives down to investigate. (As the camera looks around the village for us we see that everyone has mysteriously collapsed with no warning in the middle of whatever they were doing). When Major Bernard reaches the outskirts of the village he discovers that there is a kind of boundary point surrounding the village inside of which any living thing immediately passes out.
This situation lasts for several hours and then suddenly it is lifted as swiftly as it began and all the villagers come around with seemingly no adverse affects. But after a few months it becomes clear that all the village women of childbearing age have become pregnant, including Professor Zellaby's wife Anthea. The babies are all born within a short time of each other and as they grow up they mature much faster than normal children and show signs of high intelligence. They seem to share a group mind and once something is learned by one they all know it. They are able to read the thoughts and intentions of the "normal" humans and have the ability to control their actions and force them to commit suicide. The children behave politely towards their "parents" but show no signs of emotion or love. They are feared by the villagers who are wary of angering them and becoming victim to their eerie mind powers. The military are aware of a similar group of children who were born in Russia on the same day and the authorities there eventually felt it was necessary to deal with them by blanket bombing their entire hometown in order to kill them. Professor Zellaby hopes that they will not have to act so drastically over here and can teach their children a set of moral values that will enable their huge intellects to be of use to all mankind - he persuades the government to allow him time to study the children more. The boy born to the professor's wife is called David and is the leader of the children. Because of this they allow Professor Zellaby a special status as their teacher as they live together in the schoolhouse while they learn and grow until they are ready to disperse into the wider world. The children are aware of what happened to the Russian children and tell Zellaby they will not allow that to happen to them - they will survive no matter what the cost. The professor realises he has misjudged the situation and there is no choice but to kill them - but now any military attempts to act against them will be detected and prevented by remote mind powers before it is started. So the professor decides he must act alone and he prepares a bomb which he puts in his briefcase on a short timer. He then blanks his mind and concentrates as hard as he can on a brick wall blocking out thoughts of anything else. When he enters the schoolroom the children realise he is deliberately keeping something important hidden and they surround his desk breaking away at his mind. The imagined brick wall slowly cracks and crumbles as it yields to their unrelenting power - but as the children at last reveal the image of the bomb behind the professor's mental wall it is too late and the briefcase explodes killing all the children and the professor. As the schoolhouse burns there is a visual depiction of the children's disembodied glowing eyes seeming to fly away from the destroyed building as if to suggest that some part of their quintessence survives. | |
| Starring: | George Sanders (as Professor Gordon Zellaby), Barbara Shelley (as Anthea Zellaby, professor's wife), Michael Gwynn (as Major Alan Bernard), Martin Stephens (as David, Zellaby's "son") |
| Featuring: | Laurence Naismith (as Village doctor), Bernard Archard (as Village vicar), Peter Vaughan (as Village policeman), John Phillips (as General Leighton, Major Bernard's superior) |
| Familiar Faces: | Richard Vernon (as Home Secretary) |
| NOTES: | |
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Made in Black and White |
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Based on the novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. |
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There was a sequel to this film called Children of the Damned (1963) which continued the same theme but with a completely different set of characters. |
| Writers: Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais / Director: Michael Tuchner / Producers: Alan Ladd Jr, Jay Kanter | |
| Type: Crime Drama | Running Time: 93 mins |
| Vic Dakin is a violent London gangster who runs a protection racket with the local night-clubs. He rewards loyalty but comes down hard on anyone who is suspected of talking to the police. He has a sadistic streak and enjoys personally dishing out beatings to anyone he suspects of disloyalty. He is also a homosexual and he likes to rough his partners up as a prelude to sex. His one tender spot is his elderly mother whom he dotes upon and couldn't be kinder or more considerate towards.
A night-club owner hoping for a small reward gives Dakin some information he has heard about a disgruntled employee at a nearby factory who is willing to supply details of his company's wage delivery. Dakin and his gang (his "firm") check out the route and the prospects of a hold-up and things seem favourable. The factory is on the patch of another gangster called Frank Fletcher so Dakin brings him in on the job as well and Fletcher involves his brother-in-law Edgar Lowis who suffers from gastric ulcers. The robbery of the wage couriers on route from bank to factory is successful although goes less smoothly than hoped and Fletcher is injured. But they get away with the money and once at a safer point decide they should split up to appear less conspicuous - Dakin and his henchman make off on foot and Fletcher and Lowis continue on with the haul with arrangements made to rendezvous and divide the cash later on. But the police investigating the robbery find clues that lead them to Fletcher and he and Lowis are soon arrested. The money is not recovered as the pair of them had managed to hide it somewhere safe. Dakin realises he will be arrested soon so he sends for a former-partner of his called Wolfe Lissner. Wolfe has distanced himself from Dakin to go it alone as a small-time con man but Dakin still wields a strong intimidating influence over him and he has little choice but to agree to manufacture a strong alibi for Dakin for the time of the robbery. Wolfe has previously provided girls for an MP he knows called Gerald Draycott who frequents a certain type of party at a mutual friend's home in the country for which Draycott is always very grateful. Wolfe supplies him with a new girl but this time secretly photographs their bedroom activities. He then confronts Draycott with the evidence and threatens to expose his shameful proclivities unless he provides Vic Dakin with an alibi. Dakin is arrested on suspicion of involvement in the wage robbery but has to be released when no less than Gerald Draycott MP tells the police that the man was with him at the time. Once released Dakin is determined to get to Fletcher or Lowis to divulge the location of the unrecovered money. The night-club owner from earlier gives Dakin a new snippet he has overheard from a punter that Edgar Lowis is to be transferred to a hospital for an operation. What Dakin doesn't know is that the night-club owner is now working as a police informant and has been told to pass on this information. Posing as doctors Dakin's men enter the hospital and abduct Lowis from under the police's very noses not realising that security had intentionally been kept minimal. When Dakin has been informed of the successful capture he and Wolfe drive to an abandoned factory where his men have taken Lowis and Dakin beats the location of the money out of the man. They go to that location but the police have been tailing them and they are all arrested although Dakin in his utter contempt for the police and the judiciary has delusions that no jury will ever convict him for fear of his reputation for reprisal violence. | |
| Starring: | Richard Burton (as Vic Dakin), Ian McShane (as Wolfe Lissner), Nigel Davenport (as Bob Matthews, Detective Inspector), T.P. McKenna (as Frank Fletcher), Joss Ackland (as Edgar Lowis), Colin Welland (as Tom Binney, Detective) |
| Featuring: | Donald Sinden (as Gerald Draycott MP), Tony Selby (as Duncan, Dakin's henchman), John Hallam (as Terry, Dakin's henchman), Fiona Lewis (as Venetia, Wolfe's girlfriend), Cathleen Nesbitt (as Mrs Dakin, Vic's elderly mother), Wendy Hutchinson (as Mrs Lowis) |
| Familiar Faces: | James Cossins (as Disgruntled wages clerk), Clive Francis (as Wolfe's Marquis friend), Michael Robbins (as Casino Manager) |
| Starlets: | Elizabeth Knight (as Patti, girl used to blackmail MP), Sheila White (Veronica, cameo passer-by during robbery), Cheryl Hall (as Judy, cameo passer-by during robbery), Bonita Thomas (as Strip Dancer) |
| NOTES: | |
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Screenplay based on an adaptation by Al Lettieri of a novel titled The Burden of Proof by James Barlow. |
| Novel: D.H. Lawrence / Writer: Alan Plater / Director: Christopher Miles / Producer: Kenneth Harper | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 90 mins |
| In the 1920s sisters Yvette and Lucille return home from a French finishing school as young ladies ready to start adult life. Home is in the North of England in a small rural community where they are the daughters of the local Rector. They live in the rectory with their brother's sister Cissie and her husband Fred, and their grandmother.
Lucille is content to fit in with the rural way of life and soon finds a job. But Yvette is discontented, she finds living here in sleepy Colgrave a dreary prospect with no likelihood of excitement or joy. Things that the family enjoy contentment with, like sitting around the hearth of an evening, she finds unbearable and the family have no understanding of why she is always being so contrary. Her mother abandoned her father, and therefore the entire family, many years before by divorcing him and is held in such disgrace that her name is forbidden to be mentioned. But Yvette begins to understand what she must have felt like and shares her mother's urge for excitement which she knows she will never find here where nothing ever happens. She feels she may need to fall in love but there is no one amongst the local lads that give her that special feeling. A group of friends take Yvette and Lucille on a day out. Leo Wetherell has a motor car and he takes them for a spin down the country roads. They stop to admire the magnificent dam which has been built to hold a water reservoir upstream from them where some workers are carrying out some routine maintenance. Next they come across a Gypsy encampment and stop so the girls can have their fortunes told by the Gypsy wife. While waiting her turn Yvette can't help but be intrigued by the ruggedly handsome Gypsy man whose piercingly penetrating eyes bore into her like she's the only woman he desires and she feels an immense sense of attraction towards him. Next day the Gypsy man comes round to the Rectory to sell some of his produce and he confirms their unspoken attraction by saying she should come back to his encampment alone soon. The next day she cycles over and while alone with him in his wagon as she washes her hands after a campfire side meal she feels an electrifying pull towards him and they almost kiss but are broken from it by the arrival of some new neighbours. The newcomers are Mrs Fawcett and Major Eastwood who are a couple - although Mrs Fawcett is still married and awaiting a divorce from her rich husband. She is friendly and perennially cheerful and the couple are clearly very much in love. They take to Yvette who finds them a fascinating pair who have done what they want against the will of society. They have rented a nearby cottage to live together and Yvette takes to visiting them regularly - for to her they are the only "normal" people she knows whose company she really enjoys. But as far as her stodgy family are concerned they are monstrous inhuman pariahs who are living in sin and are therefore considered shameful outcasts from society. The rector finds her association with them disgraceful and tells her she's like a mad stray dog who has to sniff around indecent people because no decent folk will have her. She knows her father will never understand her because he finds her too like his own wife of whom he will never speak. The film approaches its conclusion when one day Yvette is left alone in the house to mind grandmother while the rest of the family are out at work or socialising. She idly walks the grounds and looks down into the stream. She cannot understand why suddenly the current flow seems to increase and the level curiously and noticeably rises, but then she hears the Gypsy man galloping towards her on his horse shouting out an urgent call for her to run. The nearby dam has burst and a destructive tidal surge of water is fast approaching which she hadn't noticed. The Gypsy takes charge and gets her into the Rectory and upstairs to safety as the water surges through the downstairs rooms causing horrendous damage and destruction in its wake and demolishing the wooden staircase mere moments after they'd climbed it. They are unable to save the grandmother. The house is sturdy and the water not powerful enough to flatten it but the flood waters take many hours to recede and Yvette and the Gypsy, who had been soaked through, undress and get into a bed to keep warm and they share a tender night of sexual passion. Next morning Yvette awakes and finds he has gone. The waters have receded and her cut-off family have come back desperately hoping she is safe and are immensely relieved when they find she is well. But as she climbs down a ladder they are astonished that she barely acknowledges them and instead walks past them and gets into a car with Mrs Fawcett and Major Eastwood and drives off with them on their way to pastures new. The End. | |
| Starring: | Joanna Shimkus (as Yvette), Franco Nero (as The Gypsy), Maurice Denham (as The Rector, Yvette's father), Honor Blackman (as Mrs Fawcett), Mark Burns (as Major Eastwood) |
| Featuring: | Kay Walsh (as Aunt Cissie, Rector's sister), Harriett Harper (as Lucille, Yvette's sister), Norman Bird (as Uncle Fred, Cissie's husband), Fay Compton (as Grandma), Jeremy Bulloch (as Leo Wetherell), Ray Holder (as Bob, Leo's friend), Margo Andrew (as Ella, Leo and Bob's friend), Janet Chappell (as Mary the maid) |
| Starlets: | Imogen Hassall (as The Gypsy's Wife) |
| The Virgin Soldiers (1969) | Previous Next |
| Writer: John Hopkins / Director: John Dexter / Producers: Leslie Gilliat, Ned Sherrin | |
| Type: War Drama | Running Time: 90 mins |
| Set in Singapore in 1951 in an army camp where a group of conscripted men are undertaking their two year period of national service. Amongst them is Private Brigg who in civilian life is a desk clerk in Kilburn and is not happy at being stuck out here without any girls and with the distinct possibility of being killed before he has a chance to really make his mark as a man. He and his buddies frequent the local town bar where oriental prostitutes are willing to oblige but Brigg hankers after a proper relationship with a homegrown girl.
Phillipa Raskin is the daughter of the company sergeant major who lives in the fenced-off marriage quarters which is off-limits to the men. Phillipa hates the camp life which prevents her having a normal life for a girl of her age and despises her father's job that means she is forced to live here. She has a low opinion of young soldiers who are forever pestering her for dates and she refuses to participate in camp activities such as dances in which the men let their hair down and dance with the small number of servicewomen and officers wives in the area. Phillipa's father is frustrated by his daughter's attitude and wishes he could order her around as he can his men. When she once again refuses to attend the next dance evening he tries to imply there is a rumour going around that she is a lesbian and she reacts strongly to that and decides she'll show him. And after making a token appearance at the dance she leaves and impulsively sleeps with Sergeant Driscoll to whom she loses her virginity. Moving on:- when the locals begin to riot Brigg volunteers to protect the married quarters and takes Phillipa and her mother into the surrounding jungle to hide out from the bandits and overnight the two young people find comfort together while the mother sleeps off her exhaustion. After the immediate danger of civil disturbance has passed the conscripts are transferred by train to a safer place to continue their training and administrative duties. On route they are accompanied by Sgt Wellbeloved who boasts of his military jungle prowess and his bravery in the face of danger. When the train is ambushed and crashes on the track sabotaged by jungle bandits the men find themselves pinned down by enemy forces firing from the jungle. Sgt Driscoll takes command and organises a response as the inexperienced British soldiers fire back to hold their position against overwhelming odds. Sgt Wellbeloved turns out to be a coward and hides away in the train toilet. Private Brigg sees some of his squaddie friends around him die and becomes too paralysed with fright to fight back and wanders off into the jungle fortunately avoiding any enemy forces. Daylight comes and still wandering around in a state of shock Brigg finds himself further down the train line where he flags down another troop train and warns them of the ambush - the commander of those troops immediately heads for the attack area and with the arrival of these reinforcements the bandits flee and the soldiers in Brigg's company who are still stoically defending their position are saved. Sgt Driscoll realises that Brigg deserted in the face of danger but lets his cowardice pass since he ended up saving them by bring back reinforcements - but he is not so understanding with Wellbeloved whom he beats to a pulp for his cowardice. When the two year period of service is at last over the men pack their kit bags happy and ready to resume their normal lives back home while remembering those of their squad-mates who did not make it - and we see them leaving the compound in the troop lorry. | |
| Starring: | Hywel Bennett (Private Brigg), Lynn Redgrave (as Phillipa Raskin), Nigel Davenport (as Sgt Driscoll) |
| Featuring: | Nigel Patrick (as R.S.M. Raskin), Rachel Kempson (as Mrs Raskin), Jack Shepherd (as Sgt Wellbeloved), Michael Gwynn (as Colonel Bromley-Pickering), Tsai Chin (as Juicy Lucy, local prostitute), Christopher Timothy (as Corporal Brook), Geoffrey Hughes (as Private Lantry), Roy Holder (as Private Fenwick), Wayne Sleep (as Private Villiers) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the novel by Leslie Thomas. Other writing credits:- adapted by John McGrath; additional dialogue by Ian La Frenais. |
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There was a sequel to this film called Stand Up Virgin Soldiers (1977) which carries on directly from where this film ends and shows the happily departing squaddies finding themselves recalled to camp before they get very far because the grave situation in the area has caused the British government to issue an order to extend national service by a further six months. Only Nigel Davenport resumed his original role in the sequel. The main role of Private Brigg was taken over by Robin Askwith. Private Jacob who is Brigg's best friend played by George Layton in the sequel is only a minor peripheral character in this first film who barely gets a look in. |
| Virgin Witch (1972) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Klaus Vogel / Director: Ray Austin / Producer: Ralph Solomons | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 85 mins |
| Christine and Betty are sisters who have just left home and are looking for jobs. Elder sister Christine applies at a modelling agency and meets with immediate success and the agent, Sybil Waite, invites her to a country retreat to shoot some test pictures. But Sybil has ulterior motives both by her lesbian tendencies and in her capacity as a high priestess in a white witch coven for which she recruits young girls to be initiated by the high priest.
Christine, with her sister Betty in tow, stays at the country mansion (named Wychwold) where they are told about the witching traditions. Betty is appalled but Christine is fascinated and wants to know more and even asks if she can become a witch herself. She discovers she has a natural affinity and inherent ability which eclipses that of Sybil and she uses this power to take over the coven and make herself high priestess and decides to use her sister Betty to be her first virgin initiant. | |
| Comment: Ann Michelle and Vicki Michelle who play the sisters are real life sisters although not twins. Ann demonstrates a much greater acting ability in this film and has a real presence and star quality about her whereas Vicki is merely adequate. Ann went on to have the more sizeable movie career in British horror and erotic drama-type films during the 1970s, always impressing. Although ironically it is her sister Vicki who is the best remembered today for her regular roles in long-running 80s BBC sitcom 'Allo 'Allo and drama series Howard's Way. | |
| Starring: | Ann Michelle (as Christine), Vicki Michelle (as Betty), Patricia Haines (as Sybil Waite), Neil Hallett (as Gerald Amberly, the high priest) |
| Featuring: | Keith Buckley, James Chase |
| Starlets: | Paula Wright, Helen Downing, Maria Coyne, Prudence Drage |
| NOTES: | |
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Ann and Vicki Michelle both receive "introducing" credits although Ann had been in a film called Psychomania the previous year. Ann Michelle's first name is shown as "Ann" in the opening credits and as "Anne" in the closing credits. |
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When watching this film it appeared to me by their looks and tone of their relationship that Christine was the elder more sophisticated sister and Betty the younger one who defers to and is led by Christine. Perhaps it is never actually stated who is the elder and I was making an assumption because upon checking the sisters' birth dates it appears that Vicki is the elder by a couple of years. |
| Writers: George Kirgo, Robert Enders / Director: Kevin Billington / Producer: Robert Enders | |
| Type: Chiller | Running Time: 86 mins |
| Special Spoiler Alert for twist ending
(prologue) Robert and Claire are a couple with a young 6-year-old son called David. Whilst on a boating holiday on a river they moor near a weir and while the couple have a bit of quality time together below decks they let David go off and play. Later on David is nowhere to be found and after a desperate and frantic search in the local surrounds and by the river patrol it is assumed he must have fallen in the water and drowned. Some unspecified amount of time later (possibly several years) Robert and Claire are travelling by car on a cold foggy evening to spend time together at an old isolated house in the country that she inherited. Claire floundered in her grief following David's death - wracked with guilt she was driven to attempt suicide and was eventually committed to a hospital for psychiatric help. She is now better and has just been discharged from hospital and this trip is an attempt at a renewal of their strained relationship. The car journey is difficult because of the dense fog and hazardous with the oncoming traffic hard to see resulting in several close calls. Eventually they have decided it would be safer to walk and they arrive at the house on foot with most of their luggage left behind in the car. The house is large, cold, and empty with no power and no running water and Robert lights the fireplace to help keep them warm. After a short time there Claire begins to hear strange chuckles and eventually clear voices coming from nowhere. Robert can hear nothing and begins to fear she is losing her mind again. He becomes angry with her and their relationship becomes ever more strained but since they cannot leave due to the fog and onset of darkness they have to make the most of it and spend the night. Claire has a problem being intimate with Robert because she is forever reminded of what they were doing on that boat when their son went missing. As the night progresses the voices continue and then Claire begins to see people too - a family group of a mother and her two children - dressed in period clothing, ghosts of a bygone era - although they are oblivious to her as they continue their play and merriment. As morning approaches Robert starts to see and hear the family as well and realises Claire has been telling the truth all along. They decide to leave the haunted house as quickly as possible and Robert goes to fetch the car now that it is daylight and the fog has lifted. Left alone with the ghosts Claire shouts at them infuriated and suddenly they hear her - but think she is a ghost haunting them. Claire then runs out of the house and through the woods after Robert and finds him standing at the roadside looking at the wreck of a car. Inside the car they see their own dead bodies. They come to the realisation that in the fog the previous night they did have an accident and died in the crash and have been ghosts ever since without even knowing. | |
| Comment: The bulk of the film is staged much like a play being a two-hander taking place in the single set of the downstairs reception hall area of the old house. The only other locations are the prologue by the river, the car journey in the fog, and the final scenes of car wreck discovery. | |
| Starring: | David Hemmings (as Robert), Gayle Hunnicutt (as Claire) |
| Featuring: | Ghost family:- Lynn Farleigh (Mother), Eva Griffiths (girl), Russell Lewis (boy) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on a play by Richard Lortz. |
| Voyage of the Damned (1976) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Steve Shagan, David Butler / Director: Stuart Rosenberg / Producer: Robert Fryer | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 151 mins |
| In May 1939 a few months prior to the eventual start of World War II a passenger liner full of 937 oppressed German Jews are allowed to leave Germany to start a new life in South America. Their exile is called a humanitarian gesture of goodwill by the Nazi authorities but secretly the German High Command have a different agenda.
The Jewish refuges are mostly of privileged backgrounds who were until lately highly respected members of society and consider themselves patriotic Germans and are very sad to be forced to leave their homeland - but most are relieved to be getting away from the madness that has en-seized their country's political leaders. The cruise of the SS St Louis is conducted with every luxury afforded as the passengers live it up and look forward to their new lives and new beginnings until such time as the turmoil ends and they can safely return home. However as the liner arrives at its destination of Havana in Cuba it becomes clear that things are not going according to plan. The Cuban authorities claim that the passengers' landing visas are not valid and refuse to take them - leaving the passengers to wait it out on board the liner moored in the harbour whilst frantic negotiations take place. But no bribe nor incentive seems enough to persuade a change of heart and the ship is forced to return. Other nearby countries including America refuse to take them for fear of getting involved in the political wrangling and appearing to take sides This is what the Nazi's secret propaganda agenda was - to show the world that no one else wants the hated Jews either and the only option is to take them back. The liner begins its voyage back to Europe and a reception in Germany that the Jewish passengers are in dread fear. They plead with the captain to take them somewhere else and even threaten mutiny or mass suicide if he doesn't help them. The (non-Jewish) captain has every sympathy for the plight of his passengers but cannot be seen to be defying his orders under the watchful eye of the Nazi party representative on board. So he has secretly devised a plan whereby he will fake an emergency aboard ship off the coast of England that will necessitate the abandonment of the ship in lifeboats. However just as he is about to implement his plan word comes through on the radio that several European countries including England, Belgium, France and Holland have agreed to lend assistance and accept a share of the passengers. The passengers celebrate in relief at their salvation. | |
| Comment: The film is not a war thriller and it is fairly "soapy" at times as we peek into the lives of several groups of passengers during their long voyage.
The film is based on a true incident. And as the closing captions tell us - two months after the end of their voyage the war began and ultimately only the passengers who went to England were the lucky ones. Of the original 937 passengers over 600 still ended up dying in concentration camps as the various counties of mainland Europe succumbed to the Nazis. | |
| Featuring: | (Selected "Name" cast) (some passengers) Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Lee Grant, Sam Wanamaker, Lynne Frederick, Julie Harris, Maria Schell, Jonathan Pryce, Georgina Hale (Some Crew) Max von Sydow (as The Captain), Malcolm McDowell (as The Steward), Helmut Griem (as Nazi Party representative), Keith Barron (as The Purser), Donald Houston (as Doctor), Don Henderson (as Engineering Officer) (In Cuba) Orson Welles, James Mason, Katharine Ross, Victor Spinetti, Bernard Hepton (Germans) Denholm Elliott, Leonard Rossiter |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the book of the same name by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts |
| Novel: James Vance Marshall / Writer: Edward Bond / Director: Nicolas Roeg / Producer: Si Litvinoff | |
| Type: Adventure | Running Time: 100 mins |
| The father of an English family living in Australia takes his teenage daughter and young son on a trip far into the desert outback for what the children think is a picnic. But the father's business has suffered a serious setback and he is planning to kill himself after first shooting his children. The daughter and son manage to flee for cover as he starts shooting and he gives up on trying to kill them and just shoots himself after blowing up the car leaving the children stranded.
The girl takes charge of her brother and decides to try walking back to civilisation. The boy is about 10-years-old and the girl about 16 and she allows her brother to think it's a bit of an adventure game to keep his spirits up. They have little or no survival knowledge and soon flounder in the heat as they wander aimlessly around in their school uniforms. They are saved from immediate death when they meet a teenage aborigine boy who is on a customary rite of passage to his adulthood in which he is cast out from his tribe to survive alone for several months in the outback land. He shows them how to find water and hunts for food using his skills. They do not understand each other's languages but he takes them in hand as they communicate through gestures. The teenage girl feels an uneasy sense of attraction to his virtually naked and lithe body and the aborigine boy seems intrigued by her too. But there is no direct acknowledgement between the two of this forbidden attraction. The aborigine boy leads them around for days from the desert into more lush regions where the three of them form a sort of family unit having fun and surviving as they make their way back to a populated area. They eventually get to an old, long abandoned farm and stay there overnight. The aborigine boy paints himself up with tribal markings and begins a dance outside the house directed towards the girl. She does not understand its meaning or decides to pretend she does not, but he is clearly making some sort of mating overture trying to impress her in a courtship ritual. He dances long into the night and seems very disheartened when he gets no counter response from her. Next morning they find the aborigine boy has hanged himself from a tree evidently feeling some sense of extreme inadequacy for failing to woo her. She has no tears for him and appears quite detached about his death even though she and her brother would have perished if not for his help. They find they are near a main road and they follow it and eventually make their way back to civilisation. | |
| Starring: | Jenny Agutter (as the teenage girl), Lucien John (as her younger brother), David Gumpilil (as the aborigine boy) |
| Also: | Other minor parts played by: John Meillon, Robert McDara, Pete Carver, John Illingsworth, Hilary Bamberger, Barry Donnelly, Noelene Brown, Carlo Manchini |
| NOTES: | |
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Opening caption: "In Australia when an Aborigine man-child reaches sixteen, he is sent out into the land. For months he must live from it. Sleep on it. Eat of its fruit and flesh. Stay alive. Even if it means killing his fellow creatures. The Aborigines call it the Walkabout. This is the story of a Walkabout." |
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The three main characters are not given names in the film. |
| The Walking Stick (1970) | Previous Next |
| Writer: George Bluestone / Director: Eric Till / Producer: Alan Ladd Jr | |
| Type: Drama / Crime Drama | Running Time: 97 mins |
| Deborah Dainton is a woman in her early thirties who works as an antiques assessor at a large London auction house called Whittington's. She suffered polio as a child and has a crippled leg which means she has to walk with the aid of a stick. Her disability has given her an insecurity about her eligibility as a romantic prospect for men and consequently chooses to distance herself from social gatherings. She reluctantly agrees to attend a party organised by her sister Sarah where she meets a young artist called Leigh Hartley who gives her a lot of attention. He asks her out although she declines - but over the days that follow his persistence mellows her and she eventually agrees to go out with him on a date. A romance gradually develops as she begins to trust and care for him and she moves in to his riverside studio apartment. Deborah has ambitions to open up her own antique shop and Leigh is keen to get involved as well. They view some shop premises but realise that the prices are way beyond their current means.
Then Leigh tells Deborah he has been given an opportunity to make some quick money from someone who is willing to pay for some information about the security arrangements at her workplace. A gang is planning to burgle the auction house's safe of its jewellery collection and wants some inside information - she balks at that idea until Leigh tells her that he has decided to help with the robbery and because she loves him she feels trapped into providing the information to increase his chances of not being caught. Once she has made the first step of providing the specifics of alarm systems and security procedures she is drawn into helping them further by hiding in the offices after lockdown and opening the back door for the gang to gain entry. The robbery proceeds and is successful but afterwards she begins to find out that some of the things Leigh told her about his life are untrue and she discovers that he knew where she worked before he ever met her. She realises she was targeted by the gang and Leigh was an active member all along and groomed her as an inside contact. She wrestles with her conscience and writes a confession and seals it in an envelope addressed to the investigating officer at Scotland Yard. When she next sees Leigh he tells her he is sincere about his relationship with her and although it might have started in the way she has guessed it has developed into true love for him. He tells her he still wants to set up that antiques shop with her as they has planned. But Deborah can no longer bring herself to trust him, remaining unsure if he is just trying to further draw her deeper into another dodgy scheme. He strenuously denies this and tells her he does genuinely love her - but it is no good and they part company. And in the final moments of the film we see her posting her confession letter. | |
| Starring: | Samantha Eggar (as Deborah Dainton), David Hemmings (as Leigh Hartley) |
| Featuring: | (Deborah's family) Phyllis Calvert (as Erica Dainton, mother), Ferdy Mayne (as Douglas Dainton, father), Francesca Annis (as Arabella Dainton, sister), Bridget Turner (as Sarah Dainton, sister), David Savile (as David Talbot, Sarah's boyfriend) (Gang) Emlyn Williams (as Jack Foil, leader), Dudley Sutton (Ted Sandymount, electrical expert), John Woodvine (as Bertie Irons, explosives expert) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the novel by Winston Graham. |
| Writer: Roger Marshall / Director: Bill Bain / Producers: Max J. Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky | |
| Type: Chiller | Running Time: 85 mins |
| Johnnie Tallent lives with his elderly 78-year-old grandmother and appears to her to be the very model of a devoted and caring grandson who provides her with much-needed company now that she is house-bound. 22-year-old John has been living with Gran for ten years since the death of her husband - but John's charming demeanour towards her hides a growing impatience to get his hands on the fairly sizeable amount of money that he will eventually inherit. She has a heart condition but her medication keeps her fit and able around the house and she shows no signs of any imminent decline and her doctor happily tells Johnnie not to worry for as long as she avoids excitement she'll be around for a long time yet - which for Johnnie is not good news. John has a girlfriend called Jill Standish whom he has to meet in secret when he goes out because Gran disapproves of her. Jill is a clever and scheming young girl whose interest has been drawn to the high-life and luxury she could enjoy with Johnnie's money and she has devised a long-term strategy for John to employ to do away with Gran.
As part of the plan Johnnie has been slowly introducing into his conversations with Gran his fears about a growing social movement called "Youth Power" who, he tells her, actively despise old people and the way they selfishly use up valuable resources and live alone in large houses that several younger people could be better using. As he describes it they are a secretive organisation of like-minded people who are gathering information on the elderly. Johnnie says he has become a member but only so he can keep tabs on their shocking activities and protect Gran although he tells her she's OK because they are only going after the over-80s. To increase her anxiety, John cuts innocuous articles from the newspapers and when she asks what he has removed he tells her he is trying to protect her from the upsetting developments being reported giving her made-up sketchy details of what the article is supposed to have said. And if a genuine accident involving the elderly is reported he gravely tells her that Youth Power have started taking action. Jill phones Gran posing as a mysterious census girl asking her questions about her age and how many rooms there are in her house to heighten her paranoia. Johnnie helps cement it by acting increasingly alarmed on her behalf as he tells her with mounting trepidation that he has just heard that Youth Power have lowered their tolerated age from 80 down to 75 and Gran would now be considered a legitimate target but he promises to do his best to keep her safe. Jill has contacts in the student fraternity and she has arranged for the route of the student rag march to pass down Gran's street. They are a harmless bunch of young people who will be out enjoying themselves - but they will be loud, boisterous and numerous and would seem to someone who is sufficiently primed to be a horde of violent youths on an angry protest. On the day of the march John tells Gran he has just heard that Youth Power are coming today doing a sweep of the area - overnight he has painted some graffiti on a fence opposite their house declaring "Out With The Oldies" which she sees from her window and he tells her he has seen similar sentiments daubed everywhere. Then the noise of the student marchers is heard with their exuberance sounding very threatening in the context that Gran believes - and outside Jill starts knocking on the door and smashing windows to represent the baying hoards trying to get in as John pretends to be trying to repel them while Gran is shut in the kitchen for her own safety only able to hear the noise. After the students have passed on by John goes into the kitchen fully prepared to tell her he managed to fend them off this time if she is still OK - but his smile broadens into delight when he sees that their plan has worked - she has had a heart attack and died with a look of sheer terror frozen on her face. Now they are rid of Gran, Jill moves in with John and they make plans to get married as soon as John has control of the estate. But when they go to the solicitor there is a nasty surprise in store. Gran has recently drawn up a codicil to her will stating that her loving grandson John can remain tenant in her house and receive the income from her investments whilst he is single but the ownership will remain in trust under control of the solicitor executor until he is married at which point he will become the owner - as long as the woman he marries is not Jill Standish! Gran had clearly recognised the money grabbing type that Jill represented which was why she took an instant dislike to her and made these efforts to safeguard her grandson from her. John and Jill are very angry as the income is insufficient for two people to live on and they had hoped never to have to work again. John starts suggesting wild ill-thought out ideas to get around the codicil but Jill's keen mind immediately points out the flaws. Instead Jill suggests her own idea - the will amendment says nothing about how long he needs to be married for so she tells John he should find someone to marry and then dump her once he's inherited the money. John goes out and meets a girl that Jill points out to him as a good candidate but then Jill starts to get intensely jealous feeling insecure about her position and suggesting to Johnnie that he's enjoying it too much - he says he can hardly get a girl to marry him by showing no interest in her - but she isn't listening and lunges at him with a knife after he slaps her to quieten down her hysteria. She only wings him but he loses control of his own anger and picks up another knife and stabs her in the belly. Realising what he has done he goes upstairs to get some towels to stem the blood but when he returns she has managed to crawl out of the house and into the street implicating him to passer-bys as she dies. And as we leave the story the police are heard knocking on John's door to come and get him for murder. | |
| Starring: | Paul Nicholas (as Johnnie Tallent), Vanessa Howard (as Jill Standish), Mona Washbourne (as Alice Tallent, Gran) |
| Featuring: | Peter Copley (as Solicitor), Peter Jeffrey (as Doctor), George A. Cooper (as Jill's boss) |
| Starlets: | Angela Down, Patricia Fuller |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the novel The Ruthless Ones by Laurence Moody. |
| Writers: Vernon P. Becker, Barry Downes / Director/Producer: Vernon P. Becker | |
| Type: Sex Comedy / European | Running Time: 81 mins |
| In Victorian England young Jack Armstrong is firmly entrenched within the rigidity of proper behaviour that his parents impose on him and they are so incredibly formal to each other that he sometimes wonders how he was ever conceived. He is given books to study on every subject going except on that one topic that is beginning to interest him greatly - that of the opposite sex. His father confiscates some rude photos Jack comes by and his mother makes him wear boxing gloves in bed to prevent any self-gratification. He is sternly lectured that his life will be ruined unless he represses all sexual desires.
Some years later in his final year at Cambridge Jack's parents unexpectedly die and leave him with only a modest inheritance meaning he must get a job as a lawyer. The one thing of value left to him was the services of a deaf butler called Samson. Amongst his father's papers Jack is astonished to find what appears to be love letters and when he visits the lady in question it turns out she is a brothel Madame called Helena. She fondly remembers his father for his strong sexual appetite and when she finds out Jack is still a virgin she immediately institutes a training regime for him with the brothel girls to teach him all about the art of lovemaking. Now that Jack has experienced sex he yearns for love and while visiting an art gallery he spots the woman of his dreams. She is named Alice Faversham and she is a proper lady always escorted by a chaperone. He tries to talk to her but she refuses to converse with a gentleman without a formal introduction. He finds out where she lives and showers her with flowers and invitations but she replies to none of them. Finally he receives an invitation from her to attend a prayer recital held by her mother and father who are pillars of Victorian morality. He cannot get time alone with her and so invites her on a picnic but she is always chaperoned. He is of course the perfect gentleman towards her at all times but is inwardly yearning for her whilst remaining forever restrained by the bounds of society and proper conduct of which she is a staunch advocate. Eventually Jack pawns most of his belongings to buy a ring and propose to her but she has bad news as she has just accepted the proposal of a gentleman that her father has picked for her as being most suitable - a man with title, money and a mansion - even though he is over 60 years old - Jack in his disappointment forgets himself and comments that he does not know how she would be able to bear to sleep with him - she finds this comment a most obscene outburst and demands he leave. Jack unexpectedly becomes rich when an uncle dies leaving him everything and there is more good news for him when Alice's elderly intended snuffs it on a wild stag night at the brothel on the night before the wedding leaving Alice a free woman once more. He asks Madame Helena for some tips on how to woo Alice properly and Helena tells him that what Alice needs is to be properly "educated", he should forget he's a respectable gentleman and teach her who's boss and he would soon find that under her cool exterior there was a passionate woman bursting to get out - he should get her alone and do something bold, daring and even beastly towards her. With this advice in mind Jack buys a town house which is going cheap because it used to be a madhouse - but its padded soundproof rooms suit Jack's purposes perfectly for the devilish plan he has devised. He spends the next few months converting an upstairs room into a comfortably furnished lounge room which he can use as a photographic studio but laced with hidden mechanisms which will come into play when he gets Alice alone in there. He calls the room "The Snuggery" to make it sound warm and welcoming. He then invites Alice round to tea although she is still accompanied by either her sister or maid each time. Eventually after many weeks she finally comes alone and using a ruse Jack manages to persuade her to come into The Snuggery. But once in there he locks the door and soon reveals his wicked intentions to violate her virtue. He tells her she has amused herself with his heart for long enough so he will now do likewise with her body. She is outraged and demands he let her leave but he tells her the room is soundproof and only Samson is in the house anyway and he is deaf. He suggests she submit quietly but she insists she'll fight him all the way and he'll not enjoy a moment. She dodges round the room trying to evade his clutches - but she is ensnared by one of his hidden mechanisms and is soon standing helpless with her arms tied by leather straps. He tries to undo her garments but cannot fathom the complications of her corsetry and it soon becomes clear that she has secretly decided she might as well make the most of this for she craftily tells him how to undo it by pleading with him not to do certain important things. Eventually he has her naked and wheels out a tickling machine to amuse her into submission and this gets her into such a state that she passes out with pleasure. He carries her over to the couch but she was only feigning and secretly picks the door key from his pocket. But as she is laying there on the couch supposedly unconscious and helpless Jack has a change of heart and voices his realisation of just how beastly he is being and can't go through with it - and she opens her eyes and tells him with irritation that after all this indignity she's been put through in the end he's proved to be a timid rabbit. This slur spurs him on and he has sex with her on the couch in a marathon session. At the end of it he is exhausted but content to have achieved his objective and he dresses and wonders why she is not getting dressed too for she is now free to leave. Then as he tries to open the door he realises the key is missing from his pocket. She shows him she has it and wonders where on earth he could be going as she hasn't finished with him yet. He is puzzled because it was he who had her - but she tells him she allowed him to and did he really he think he could do anything to her she didn't want him to - and right now she wants him... again! He tries to escape her clutches but fails realising that he has unleashed a monster upon himself. They get married soon after and Jack ruminates that he often wonders who entrapped who that afternoon in The Snuggery. | |
| Comment: There is a kind of subplot which seems to unnecessarily confuse matters in that Jack The Ripper is hiding in secret passages behind the walls of the old madhouse and observing some of the goings on through a peephole - but this adds very little to the plot. | |
| Starring: | Ole Søltoft (as Jack Armstrong), Sue Longhurst (as Alice Faversham) |
| Featuring: | Charlie Elvegård (as Samson the butler), Malou Cartwright (as Fanny, Alice's maid), Martin Ljung/Martin Young (as Jack the Ripper), Steven Lund (as young Jack), Barbro Hiort af Ornäs/Barbara Hart (as Jack's mother), Egil Holmsen/Gil Holmes (as Jack's father), Tina Möller-Monell/Tina Monell (as Marion, Alice's sister) |
| Star-Turns: | Diana Dors (as Helena, brothel Madame) |
| Starlets: | Berit Agedahl, Inger Sundh, Vivi Rau, Marie-Louise Fors (as Brothel Girls) |
| NOTES: | |
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This is a Swedish production with an original title of Champagnegalopp. It has a number of alternate English titles and the one shown above for this entry is the one on the version reviewed. It is listed here because it is made in English and co-stars UK sex-comedy stalwart Sue Longhurst |
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Even though it is a Swedish production, in the context of the English version there is actually no reason to refer to the butler as being Swedish because they are all playing members of English society in Victorian London. |
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Malou Cartwright is Alice's maid and chaperone companion and is referred to as "Fanny" throughout. However the end credits incorrectly name her as "Penny". |
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The names of the Brothel girls shown above are taken from the Internet Movie Database - they are not shown in the end credits (of the English version). The IMDB probably contains the original Swedish credits because as well as missing off the brothel girls names, the English credits show anglicised versions of some of the actors names playing the bit parts. Where different these are dually shown above with the Swedish name/English name - taken from IMDB and the end credits respectively. |
| aka: Girl Trouble | |
| Writers: Christopher Gilmore, Menahem Golan, Norman Wisdom / Director: Menahem Golan / Producer: Tony Tenser | |
| Type: Comedy | Running Time: 102 mins |
| Timothy Bartlett is a hard working somewhat officious assistant bank manager in his mid-50s. His home life has become routine and although he and his wife still love each other the fun and romance has gone from their marriage.
On the eve of an important banker's conference in Southport the bank's manager falls ill and Timothy is sent in his place. Driving down to the coast he picks up two girl hitchhikers:- Nikki and Meg - or to be more precise they rather barge in on him while he's stopped at a petrol station - but he takes them along anyway. They are both playful and funny and although he tries to maintain a dignified air befitting his position he is secretly charmed by Nikki in particular and when the journey is over he feels a bit sorry to see them go. That evening at the hotel after dinner feeling at a loss for something to do he decides to visit some clubs hoping for the vague chance that he might bump into the girls. And eventually he does and Nikki invites him to join her group of friends. He feels like a fish out of water in his smart dinner suit amongst all the casually dressed youngsters but she drags him on to the dance floor and he eventually finds the groove in his own unique way. Nikki is a fun-loving outgoing girl and assumes Timothy will want to take her back to his hotel for sex and, totally smitten with her, he realises he wants to when she suggests it. He has a tough job smuggling her into his hotel room which maintains a no lady-visitors rule but once he does they spend a happy night together. At his conference meeting the next day he can't concentrate on anything except memories of her the night before. So he excuses himself from the meeting claiming a headache and spends the whole day with her at the beach and the funfair having the greatest most fun day of his life as he re-captures his lost youth with a beautiful young girl. Next day he buys himself some casual clothes and has more time with Nikki followed by a romantic dinner and another night of passion and the next day at the conference he arrives in causal hippy-clothes to everyone else's amazement and gives an impressive speech with new found vigour and confidence. He realises he has fallen in love with Nikki and despite the warnings of her friend Meg that he shouldn't take her so seriously as she is only after a fun time he goes round to her flat again and is devastated to find her in bed with a male student. He storms out hurt and rejected. He then decides to call his wife and asks her to come to Southport to visit him. She arrives and with her he replicates the perfect day he had with Nikki with his new found youthful spirit and although it's not quite the same she manages to keep up with his boundless energy and he realises he doesn't need Nikki anymore as he can have just as much fun with his wife if he makes the effort. | |
| Comment: A very good film that's touching and funny and very unfairly berated as being a low-point in Norman Wisdom's career. It's a good solid well-told film with Wisdom on fine acting form and the then newcomer Sally Geeson charming and delightful as Nikki. | |
| Starring: | Norman Wisdom (as Timothy Bartlett), Sally Geeson (as Nikki), Sally Bazely (as Margaret Bartlett, Timothy's wife) |
| Featuring: | Sarah Atkinson (as Meg, Nikki's friend), Derek Francis, Terence Alexander, David Lodge |
| Starlets: | Hilary Pritchard |
| NOTES: | |
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Sally Geeson receives an "introducing" credit. |
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Norman Wisdom sings the theme song. |
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There are two versions of this film. The one reviewed here is the UK print which is a "tame" version - but there is also a continental version where Sally Geeson played the same bedroom scenes topless. Comparison with screenshots from that much rarer version show that the scenes were identical except that in one she is wearing a white bra and the other not - and in another scene has a blanket fully covering herself in the tame version but down to her waist in the continental version. The UK version contains only one scene that retains some minor topless nudity when Sally Geeson is taking a bath. |
| What's Up Nurse! (1977) | Previous Next |
| Writer/Director: Derek Ford / Producer: Michael L Green | |
| Type: Sex Comedy | Running Time: 77 mins |
| Dr Robert Todd is travelling on a train to take up his position as the new intern at Banham-on-Sea General Hospital. He gets chatting to a pretty girl who, when she finds he is a doctor, takes him to the toilet cubicle to demonstrate her embarrassing sexual problem. This results in them becoming stuck together in an embarrassing way and they are rushed to casualty at his new hospital. Dr Ogden, the chief doctor, is angry that his intern hasn't shown up yet and then furious when he discovers that the intern-in-question Todd has become his latest patient, and then beside himself when he realises that the girl involved is his own daughter Olivia. Thus begins a pattern of events in which Todd gets himself into scrapes and finds himself rushed to casualty to be treated by Ogden. One such incident involving his glamorous landlady Helen with whom he has a sexual misadventure on her boat and ends up with mild concussion.
Todd also treats patients himself - all of whom have odd complaints. One man has a jam jar stuck in an embarrassing place; another patient believes he has swallowed a frog and the staff normally give him a frog-dissolving pill (sugar) to keep him happy until the next time. But Todd decides to pretend to operate and extract the frog and show the patient it has been removed - this necessitates Todd going out into the countryside to actually catch a frog and in so doing accidentally comes across some girl nudists playing ball and falls foul of their "anti-peeper" patrol causing another trip to casualty. The most bizarre patient scenario is a dopey gay man who actually has severe constipation, but believes he is pregnant - he passes out during an enema treatment and while he is unconscious a chimp, that is being treated in the next cubicle, finds its way into his bed - and when the man wakes up and finds the chimp with him he believes it to be his new born baby! Later on Todd travels to Ostend with Olivia to pick up a boat as a favour to his landlady and her boyfriend not realising he is transporting illegal immigrants. When he and Olivia successfully have sex on the voyage back she lets off distress flares by way of celebration and the coastguard arrive and arrest him. In police custody he is apparently the only doctor who can treat a sick patient so he is released handcuffed to a policeman and has to do his examination with the policeman's hand constantly getting in the way - and then he has to operate on another patient with a similar handicap. Eventually he and Olivia make their getaway but have an accident with some cement and get married while joined together in a slab of concrete. Once released from this they eventually have their honeymoon on a fairground carousel because Olivia has discovered she can only have sex while on the move. | |
| Comments: An attempt at a sex comedy which succeeds to some extent although the jokes and patient problems are sometimes a bit too smutty. Andrew Sachs puts in a good cameo performance as a pushy and aggressive Italian waiter who won't take no for an answer and bullies his customers into ordering things they didn't want. | |
| Starring: | Nicholas Field (as Dr Todd) |
| Featuring: | John Le Mesurier (as Dr Ogden), Felicity Devonshire (as Olivia), Graham Stark, Kate Williams, Bill Pertwee, Peter Butterworth, Jack Douglas |
| Familiar Faces: | Michael Cronin |
| Star-Turns: | Andrew Sachs (Italian Waiter), Cardew Robinson, Frank Williams, Anna Karen |
| Starlets: | Angela Grant (Landlady), Barbara Mitchell, Julia Bond, Elisabeth Day, Kate Harper, Zoe Hendry, And:- Dawn Dodkin, Ingrid Leon, Val Penny, Lisa Taylor, Janet Marsden, Charon Martan (as the girl nudists) |
| NOTES: | |
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There was a sequel to this film called What's Up Superdoc! (1978) - although besides the lead character having the same name there is no real continuity between the two. |
| What's Up Superdoc! (1978) | Previous Next |
| Writer/Director: Derek Ford / Producer: Michael L Green | |
| Type: Sex Comedy | Running Time: 89 mins |
| Dr Robert Todd is a family GP who one day gets a visit from an attractive female doctor called Annabel Leith who works at the Artificial Insemination Donor Services (AIDS) clinic. She tells Todd about their most celebrated donor #1169X whose sperm has resulted in 837 male babies all of outstandingly high IQ. She then tells him that this donor is in fact Todd himself from when he took part in a donor programme at medical school. Only trouble is they have run out of sample and would like some more as his remarkable sperm count has made #1169X a legend amongst clinics up and down the country.
He agrees to supply more sample partly because he fancies Annabel and hopes he'll be able to see more of her. At the clinic the receptionist goes wild with lust when she discovers which donor he is and she is promptly sacked - but in revenge she leaks his identity to the press. Todd's surgery is then besieged by women clamouring for his seed and he has to be rescued by the police. He hides out in a hotel and Annabel who feels rather responsible for his predicament supplies him with a bodyguard to keep women away from him - he comes in the shape of a retired sergeant major who takes his job very seriously and institutes a fitness and training regime for Todd to keep his mind on other things. One evening Todd visits a strip club but a stripper recognises him and he has to flee. He escapes out of the window and into the room of a prostitute - they discuss terms and have sex but then she pays him because she knew who he was all along. Todd then goes on a TV talk show where the host is strangely reluctant to use any terminology that might offend the family audience but then lets loose with a string of expletives live on air when Todd becomes uncooperative. Todd is then kidnapped from the studios by some thugs whose Texan boss wants Todd to provide a special "service" for his daughter. When Todd refuses he sets about sending beautiful naked women his way in the hope that a sample might be obtained. Later on an Italian Mafia gangster gets in on the act hoping to take Todd on tour supplying his seed around the world - but luckily he is rescued in the nick of time by the Sergeant Major and Annabel. | |
| Comment: This is a "sequel" to What's Up Nurse! (1977) - although other than the lead character's name there is nothing else similar. He is played by a different actor, works as a GP instead of at a hospital and also there is no trace or mention of the woman he married at the end of the first film. So it's easier to think of this as a separate standalone film which is actually somewhat better than Nurse. The jokes aren't as crude and it has a single driving plot rather than a series of mini-escapades. Also Julia Goodman as Annabel adds a touch of highly watchable acting class to the proceedings. Hughie Green plays an obnoxious TV host and achieves that aim fairly well but probably didn't do himself any favours as the impression might be that he was playing himself and when he lets loose with repeated use of the W-word it does jar a bit on the tone of the movie. | |
| Starring: | Christopher Mitchell (as Dr Todd), Julia Goodman (as Annabel), Harry H. Corbett (as Sergeant Major) |
| Featuring: | Bill Pertwee, Beth Porter, Sheila Steafel, Marianne Stone, Melvyn Hayes |
| Star-Turns: | Hughie Green (as a talk show host) |
| Starlets: | Angie Grant, Julie Kirk, Nova Llewellyn, Maria Harper, Sue Upton, Lisa Taylor, Fay Hillier, Alison Begg, Mary Millington, Vicki Scott, Anna Bergman, Nicola Austin |
| NOTES: | |
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Christopher Mitchell was one of the stars of It Aint Half Hot Mum (the soldier that Sergeant Major Williams favoured because he thought he might be his son). |
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Bill Pertwee and Angela Grant were also in What's Up Nurse! but as different characters. |
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The clinic's abbreviation (AIDS) comes from a time before those letters came to stand for something more pernicious. |
| Writer/Director: Val Guest / Producer: Aida Young | |
| Type: Adventure | Running Time: approx 94 mins |
| On primitive Earth a tribe of humans who worship the sun are preparing to offer their sun god the lives of three young blonde women when suddenly a fierce wind begins and disrupts the ceremony. In the confusion one of the women called Sanna escapes her certain death by jumping into the sea and is swept away and is most fortunately rescued by some fishermen from another tribe. When the storm is over a new light is in the sky which the primitive people don't understand and think is some sort of punishment for failing to provide the required sacrifice. They see Sanna was rescued and the tribe's leader Kingsor mounts an expedition to bring her back.
Sanna's rescuers do not worship the sun in the same way but are also wary and fearful of the new astronomical body which seems to be getting larger over time. Sanna is allowed to live in their tribe situated on the coast in a region populated by many types of dinosaurs which the humans fear but also hunt for food. The lead fisherman who rescued Sanna is a handsome young man called Tara and Sanna and he feel a bond of attraction. Tara starts to pay her special attention and this makes Tara's current mate Ayak jealous and so she takes the opportunity to cast blame on sun-worshipping Sanna for the new light in the sky. Sanna foresees the danger she is in and flees the area just as the men from her own tribe arrive searching for her. The two tribes team up and co-operate to locate Sanna whose death they believe will solve the sky problems. Sanna manages to elude the hunters who find evidence that makes them believe she has perished inside a predatory carnivorous plant. Actually Sanna spends the night asleep inside a large broken dinosaur egg. Next morning the dinosaur mother comes back to her nest and finding Sanna inside the broken shell believes the woman to be her child and treats her as a member of the family. Sanna finds that the mother dinosaur offers her a degree of protection and will follow her instructions. Meanwhile Tara refuses to believe Sanna is dead and continues to search and eventually finds her and they become a couple. But they are spotted by a scouting hunter and the tribe renew their efforts to capture Sanna who manages to escape with help from her "pet" dinosaur. However Tara is captured and is set to be put to death for his disloyalty. But then on the beach something odd and frightening happens that has never occurred before - the tide goes out! And in the distance a vast tidal wave is seen approaching which sends the tribe fleeing for their lives leaving Tara tied up and helpless. Sanna returns to the beach and frees Tara and together with two others who forget their differences in the danger make to the sea in a fishing raft and brave the oncoming wave. The four of them come through the danger and look up into the sky and see the new body has settled and become a new fixed feature of their nightly skies and something new for the people to worship. | |
| Comment: If it isn't clear from the above summary, the new celestial object is the arrival of the Moon into orbit around the Earth. Obviously such events did not really occur during the time of man on Earth - nor did man co-exist with dinosaurs. So it's very much a fantasised vision of prehistoric events. The people speak their own primitive language and so there is no understandable dialogue except for an opening English narration by Patrick Allen (who also has a role in the film). Therefore the film is intended to be followed by visuals alone. Other than Tara (the leading man) it is somewhat difficult to tell the male characters apart who all have similar black beards whereas the women are far more distinctive. | |
| Starring: | Robin Hawdon (as Tara),Victoria Vetri (as Sanna), Patrick Allen (as Kingsor, Tribal Leader) |
| Featuring: | Drewe Henley, Sean Caffrey, Patrick Holt |
| Starlets: | Magda Konopka, Imogen Hassall, Jan Rossini, Carol-Anne Hawkins, Maria O'Brien |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on a treatment by J.G. Ballard |
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The version reviewed was an edited daytime TV version with nudity removed and this lasted 91 minutes - the removed scenes involving nudity have been seen separately which last about 3 minutes - hence the above approximation of running time. |
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This is the second of three "primitive man" films made by Hammer although there are no continuing characters or situations that link them. The first film was One Million Years B.C. (1966) and the next one was Creatures the World Forgot (1971). |
| Writer: Alistair MacLean (based on his own novel) / Director: Etienne Périer / Producer: Elliott Kastner | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 89 mins |
| Philip Calvert is a British Secret Agent who has been given the job of investigating the recent hijack of a number of ships carrying gold bullion. What is particularly strange is that the container ships have vanished without trace. A radio transmitter is planted on the next likely ship to be targeted and although this device is quickly discovered and disabled by the hijackers it helps pinpoint a general area of Scottish coastline near Tor Bay that seems worth further investigation.
Calvert and his technical friend Roy Hunslett cruise the area in a research vessel posing as marine biologists as they look for clues. Also in the area is the luxury vessel of rich philanthropist Sir Anthony Skouras and his new wife Charlotte following the recent death of his first wife Anna. Calvert's suspicions fall upon him and his associate Lavorsky and when Charlotte escapes and seeks sanctuary on Calvert's vessel claiming her husband's brutality it seems more certain he is not the kind-hearted benefactor everyone thought he was. Calvert's probing brings out opposition willing to kill to protect their secrets and he only just escapes death several times. Hunslett is not so fortunate and is killed. Calvert is joined on the research vessel by his boss Arthur Cranford-Jones and together they work out that the missing vessels have been deliberately sunk in a deep loch and the gold bullion is being retrieved by divers and taken to a cavernous dock under a nearby island castle that has been taken over by the villains. Calvert breaks in and discovers that prisoners are being held hostage to ensure cooperation including Sir Anthony's first wife Anna whose captivity has been forcing the millionaire to finance the operation against his will. It is really Lavorski who is the criminal mastermind and Charlotte is actually his wife who has been feeding back information from Calvert's vessel to keep the criminals informed of his progress. Calvert and Cranford-Jones mount a two-pronged operation set to begin at midnight (eight bells) and storm the castle killing all the villains and rescuing the hostages. Calvert allows Charlotte to go free. | |
| Starring: | Anthony Hopkins (as Philip Calvert), Robert Morley (as Arthur Carnford-Jones, Calvert's boss), Nathalie Delon (as Charlotte), Corin Redgrave (as Hunslett, Calvert's partner) |
| Featuring: | Jack Hawkins (as Sir Anthony Skouras), Ferdy Mayne (as Lavorski, Skouras' associate), Maurice Roëves (as Lieutenant Williams, helicopter pilot), Wendy Allnutt (as Sue Kirkside, young woman at Island castle), Leon Collins (as Tim Hutchinson, shark hunter) |
| Where the Spies Are (1965) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Wolf Mankowitz, Val Guest / Director: Val Guest / Producers: Val Guest, Steven Pallos | |
| Type: Spy Drama | Running Time: 108 mins |
| In Beirut a British agent called Peter Rosser is abducted and killed after attempting to send a telegram to MI6's London HQ revealing a plot he has uncovered. In London, MI6 boss MacGillivray is at a loss to understand what has happened to his agent or what he might have been about to send them. With no other trained agents available in Lebanon he consults his list of civilians who have provided assistance to the agency in the past. There is an imminent medical conference in Beirut and so the ideal candidate to journey there with a plausible cover story seems to be a Dr Jason Love who helped the section during the war but has had no training in the spycraft field.
MacGillivray approaches Dr Love who thinks the idea of spying laughable but is persuaded to lend a hand with a sufficient incentive of being given a rare classic car which is his passion. Love does not take the cloak and dagger stuff particularly seriously treating it all as a bit of a joke as he is given codewords and gadgets. He just intends to do the seemingly straightforward task of locating the missing Rosser and then treat the rest of the trip as a holiday. His first stopover is in Madrid where he is to make contact with an agent who will give him further instructions. He is delighted to find his contact is a beautiful French girl called Vikki who works as a model. Love is most indiscreet telling her all about his mission as if he's on a boys' own adventure. He wants to see more of her but she tells him he must continue and gives him the tickets for his onward plane to Beirut. But after she has left Love decides it doesn't matter if he's a bit late so he gets his ticket changed to a later flight so he can see more of Vikki. But when the plane he was supposed to be on tragically blows up shortly after takeoff he realises how amazingly lucky he's been and decides to get on with the job. Once in Beirut he cannot find Rosser and searches his hotel room. There he meets another British agent called Parkington who has come from Singapore to make his own unofficial investigation into his friend Rosser's disappearance. Parkington believes the plane explosion was not an accident but an attempt to kill Dr Love to prevent him finding something out - Dr Love is appalled that so many people died because of him. The pair of them team up and by utilising Parkington's spycraft training and Love's natural resourcefulness they discover that Rosser is dead and that he had uncovered a Russian backed plot to assassinate the country's Prince and in the political upheaval the plotters would seize British oil interests by renationalising them. Parkington is killed leaving Love on his own - but he manages to foil the assassination plot. Afterwards, however, the Russian's capture him believing him to be a British master spy with invaluable secret knowledge and take him on a diplomatic plane headed back for Russia to be tortured and questioned. Nikki is on the plane as well and it turns out she is a double agent although she has pangs of conscience about her part in things. The plane is tricked into landing in Canada to help in an SOS medical evacuation and Vikki helps Love escape by shooting her Russian boss although she is killed herself in the exchange of fire. Doctor Love is picked up by the Canadians with his mission successfully accomplished. | |
| Comment: Although the casting of David Niven in the lead might give the impression that this is a comedy spy spoof it is in fact played as a fairly straight secret agent drama. | |
| Starring: | David Niven (as Dr Jason Love), Nigel Davenport (as Parkington, British spy), Françoise Dorléac (as Vikki, model and enemy agent), John Le Mesurier (as MacGillivray, MI6 boss) |
| Featuring: | Noel Harrison (as Jackson, MacGillivray's assistant), Paul Stassino (as Simmias, enemy agent), Ronald Radd (as Stanilaus, enemy boss), Eric Pohlmann (as Farouk, helpful mechanic), Cyril Cusack (as Peter Rosser, missing agent) |
| Familiar Faces: | Geoffrey Bayldon (as Lecturer, MI6 defector, one-scene only) |
| NOTES: | |
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Additional scenes by James Leasor, adapted from his novel Passport to C????? (could not read final word on screen). |
| Where's Jack? (1969) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Rafe and David Newhouse / Director: James Clavell / Producer: Stanley Baker | |
| Type: Period Drama | Running Time: 114 mins |
| Set in London 1724. Jack Sheppard is a humble locksmith's apprentice from a poor family who knows his place and doesn’t expect much from life. Justice in the city is meted out by the cold-hearted Jonathan Wild, dubbed "The Thief-Taker of London", who ruthlessly upholds the rule of law making him a feared and despised man amongst the commonfolk. When Jack's older brother Tom is caught stealing and sentenced to hang, Jack deferentially approaches Wild in a tavern and asks him to spare his brother's life. Jack holds little expectation that this ruthless and unfeeling man will show any mercy to a lowly nobody such as his brother and so is taken aback when the Thief-Taker agrees to spare Tom's life if Jack helps him with something.
Jack is taken to an underground lair where he is astonished to discover that the lawman carries on a double-life as a fencer of stolen property and moneylender. Wild lends out money to the poor at high rates of interest and makes them pay it back by bringing him stolen valuables for which he strikes off a fraction of each items worth from their debts. He has built up a veritable treasure hoard of valuable items in his domain in which he is treated like a king. To spare Tom from the hangman Wild wants Jack to make use of his locksmith skills to break into a stately home and steal a valuable tiara. Jack is no thief but agrees to do it for the sake of his brother. He is given the assistance of two other criminals called Blueskin and Leatherchest who later become his friends. When Tom has successfully delivered the tiara to Wild he thinks his family worries are over. But Wild has double-crossed him and whilst Tom has indeed been spared the noose as promised he is instead deported to a harsh penal colony in America - never to be seen again. Jack decides to get even with Wild and raids his lair and cleans out all his treasures. Wild is furious at this defiant act and knows Jack was responsible but has no proof so instead he plants the tiara which he still possesses in Jack's rooms and then sends the constables to arrest him for its theft. Jack is imprisoned awaiting hanging as he is shut away in a dungeon cell in the formidable and inescapable Newgate Prison. But Jack refuses to be beaten and believes there is always a way out of any situation if one is clever and skilful enough to find it. He scrutinises his dungeon tapping the walls and discovers a hollow behind one wall leading to a chimney flue through which he escapes. He becomes the first man ever to do so and he builds himself a reputation among the commonfolk as someone special who has outsmarted the Thief-Taker. Wild is determined not to be bested but has been unable to recapture Jack who has now become a gentleman highwayman whom the ladies find quite charming as they hand over their valuables. Jack has a sweetheart called Bess and so Wild decides to get at him through her. He takes Bess into custody on a trumped up charge and the chivalrous and noble Jack gives himself up to save her. Jack is thrown back into a different cell in Newgate. This time he discovers a way to get into the sewers and manages to escape again creating for himself an even stronger reputation. The King and the Lord Chancellor get involved and decide to give the Thief-Taker one last chance to capture this guttersnipe who is making a mockery of justice and giving the people an unwelcome folk hero to cheer their spirits. They decide to lay a trap by passing word that the king has laid a bet with the Chancellor that this audacious Jack Sheppard could probably steal the Chancellor's chain of office if he tried. Bess and Jack have made plans to leave England and start a new life in America (the New World) but this royal challenge tempts Jack. He knows full well it is a trap but cannot resist pitting his wits against the odds and believes he can beat whatever precautions they have put in place to ensnare him. And pull it off he does - Jack successfully gets away with the chain of office despite all the protective measures taken - but then the Thief-Taker has one last card to play. He has captured Jack's friends Blueskin and Leatherchest who were waiting for Jack outside the Chancellor's mansion and forces Jack to give himself up lest they be immediately hanged - and the ever-loyal Jack does so. Back in prison and this time in heavy chains and watched by guards round the clock there is no chance of escape. The day of his execution arrives and as Jack is driven through the streets to the public gallows he is cheered by the crowds who adore him whilst the Thief-Taker is booed in hatred. Some of Jack's friends secretly have a plan to try and save him which relies heavily on luck and timing. The hanging method is by hoist and strangulation (rather than by drop and neck-break) and so after Jack has been hanged and appears dead his friends rush over to cut down and steal his body which is quickly taken to a surgeon who revives him. A substituted dead body is shrouded and placed in a coffin and returned to the Thief-Taker's men for burial. The Thief-Taker although unhappy with the body seizure is persuaded by his guard captain (who is secretly sympathetic to the people's outpourings) that the actions were just an impulsive response to immense grief and he remains satisfied that Jack is at last dead. The grieving Bess is told Jack is still alive and they have a happy reunion. The film ends there and although we don't discover what happens to them after that it can probably be assumed that they must then go off together to the New World and start a fresh life as they had earlier intended. | |
| Comment: Despite what one might possibly presume upon seeing Tommy Steele's name heading the cast, this is not a light-hearted jape - but a gritty, straight-played affair. | |
| Starring: | Tommy Steele (as Jack Sheppard), Stanley Baker (as Jonathan Wild, Thief-Taker of London), Fiona Lewis (as Bess, Jack's sweetheart) |
| Featuring: | Dudley Foster (as Blueskin, Jack's criminal friend), Noel Purcell (as Leatherchest, Blueskin's mute strongman companion), Sue Lloyd (as Lady Darlington, high -society lady), John Hallam (as Guard Captain), Michael Elphick (as Hogarth, Jack's supporter in rescue bid), Howard Goorney (as Surgeon, in Jack's rescue bid), Alan Badel (as The Lord Chancellor), Harold Kasket (as King George I), Leon Lissek (as Deeley, Wild's oily henchman), Jack Woolgar (as Mr Woods, Jack's locksmith boss), George Woodbridge (as Hangman), William Marlowe (as Tom Sheppard, Jack's brother) |
| Familiar Faces: | Cardew Robinson (Lord Mayor, crowd scene cameo) |
| Writer/Director: Joseph Larraz / Producer: Sam Lomberg | |
| Type: Chiller | Running Time: 90 mins |
| Tulia is a young fashion model just starting her career and while working with a photographer in a studio they are visited by a woman called Sara. They get talking and Sara invites Tulia for a weekend away at her country cottage where she lives with her nephew Theo who is a keen photographer himself and would be delighted to take some shots for her portfolio.
Sara tells Tulia that Theo is a very sensitive young man and not actually her nephew but she looks after him. Sara's cottage is situated in an isolated location near some woods where Theo likes to go walking. Tulia thinks the place is lovely although in the woods and by the picturesque lake she picks up some strange vibes which give her an uneasy sense of foreboding. Sara mentions an Irish girl called Rhonda who spent some time with them recently - reminders of Rhonda are everywhere in the cottage and Sara thinks it was a shame she left so suddenly. Tulia gets the feeling there is some big mystery surrounding Rhonda's disappearance but she isn't clear why because Theo doesn't want to talk about it. It soon becomes clear (to the viewer) that Sara and Theo have licentious ulterior motives for inviting Tulia. They talk in a complicit way about how they will conspire to take advantage of their guest. Theo does not think she will be quite as good as Rhonda but with some suitable coaxing they might get some kicks out of her. That evening they all have a lot to drink and play cards which turns into strip poker which Tulia ends up losing. Theo's role is to seduce Tulia and then bring her to bed with Sara where the older woman can enjoy some lesbian petting with the girl - and then have sex with her "nephew" after he has been fully aroused by the younger woman - Tulia finds the other two's coupling a little odd even though she knows they are not an actual aunt and nephew. Next day Theo takes Tulia to the woods with a friend of his called Tom who proceeds to molest and virtually rape her while Theo takes pictures and then makes off as if they are abandoning her naked. However at the end of her ordeal Theo just tells her he was doing it for the pictures so her terrified reactions would appear genuine. Tulia decides to leave but before she goes she cannot resist having a look in Theo's darkroom (even though he specifically told her it was off-limits to anyone but himself). In there she finds photographs of Rhonda that show she went through the same sort of "rape" experience that she did. We then see a flashback:- Rhonda is actually willingly having sex with Tom and is knowingly "simulating" the rape for the benefit of Theo's camera. But then Tom holds her down and produces a knife to force her cooperation as they bring in a tramp to make sexual use of her which she has not in any way consented to and feels sickened by. When the tramp has gone she argues with Tom and he stabs her (possibly accidentally - but maybe not) and he and Theo dispose of her body in the lake. Theo then tells Sara that Rhonda left and he saw her off himself at the bus stop. Although Tulia cannot have determined all these events from the photos in the darkroom she perhaps instinctively links it all to that foreboding sense of evil she felt when she was near the lake. She turns to go but Theo has discovered her snooping and it is clear that he intends to kill her for her curiosity to cover his own tracks - he believes he has a special awareness that allows him to relish in another's suffering. Tulia runs out into the woods but Theo eventually catches her and stabs her to death. THE END (well not quite - there follows a full screen still of Tulia with some dialogue of some unseen policemen played over it talking about having arrested Theo for the murders). | |
| Comments: That clumsy bit at the end with the policemen talking must have been an afterthought which maybe the makers were compelled to add to show that Theo didn't get away with it and that had been the only way to do it without filming new material. One assumes however that the filmmakers' original intention was to end with the murder and give no indication whether Theo is ever brought to justice. | |
| Starring: | Karl Lanchbury (as Theo), Vivian Neves (as Tulia), Pia Andersson (as Sara) |
| Featuring: | Johanna Hegger (as Rhonda), Andrew Grant (as Tom) |
| NOTES: | |
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Joseph Larraz (aka José Ramón Larraz) was credited as J R Larrath |
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Based on an idea by Sam Lomberg |
| The Whisperers (1967) | Previous Next |
| Writer/ Director: Bryan Forbes / Producer: Michael Laughlin | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 101 mins |
| Mrs Margaret Ross is a 76-year-old woman who lives alone in a run-down ground floor flat. She becomes easily confused and is slipping into senility and thinks she hears voices in her flat that are not really there.
Mrs Ross is living on the breadline and needs to claim benefit from the National Assistance Board (NAB). To keep her pride she maintains to the NAB clerk that she is merely waiting for a large inheritance to come through from her lawyers and then she'll be able to support herself - the clerk kindly humours her and it is no longer clear whether or not she even knows that it's not true. Mrs Ross has a regular routine to her days which consist of a visit to the library to keep warm and then attending church services where they give out free soup to the congregation afterwards - and then back home to her cold flat. One day her grown-up criminally-inclined roguish son Charlie makes a rare and unexpected visit which confuses her as she struggles at first to remember who he is. He claims to want to fetch something from her spare room but actually he secretly hides a package he brought with him - and then he leaves. Some time later when Mrs Ross is having a tidy up she comes across the hidden package and doesn't know what it is - she opens it and inside are large wads of banknotes. Mrs Ross is flabbergasted and believes it to be her inheritance at last come through (although in truth it is the proceeds from a robbery for which Charlie has now been captured and imprisoned). She proudly tells the NAB man that she'll no longer needs his money and keeps a large amount of it in her purse which she shows off to prove her story. But then she falls prey to a woman called Mrs Noonan who suddenly behaves as her best friend taking her to the pub for drinks and generally tiring her out and confusing her until she falls asleep. She then steals her money and with help from her husband leaves her asleep in the street all night. Mrs Ross consequently catches pneumonia and spends a long time in hospital until she recovers. With no one to look after Mrs Ross at home the NAB contacts her estranged husband Archie Ross. He is several years younger than she is and had long ago left her. He is currently serving time in prison for petty crime but is offered an early release if he goes to live with her and support her - and he agrees. Mrs Ross remembers Archie and accepts him back into her life but she has lapsed into her private world and has no conversation for him and Archie becomes easily bored. He starts to gamble and gets a driving job with a crooked bookmaker. When the bookmaker is ambushed by rivals Archie is left with a briefcase full of money and takes off leaving Mrs Ross on her own once again. She quickly falls back into her normal routine with only the unheard "voices" for company. | |
| Starring: | Edith Evans (as Mrs Margaret Ross), Eric Portman (as Archie Ross, her estranged husband) |
| Featuring: | Gerald Sim (as Mr Conrad, National Assistance Board), Nanette Newman and Harry Baird (as Couple who live in flat above Mrs Ross), Avis Bunnage (as Mrs Bella Noonan, woman who steals from Mrs Ross), Michael Robbins (as Mr Noonan), Ronald Fraser (as Charlie, Mrs Ross's criminal son), Max Bacon (as Mr Fish, betting office boss), Robert Russell (as Andy, Mr Fish's employee at betting office), Robin Bailey (as Psychiatrist), Margaret Tyzack (as Hospital Almoner) |
| Familiar Faces: | Leonard Rossiter (as National Assistance Board Officer) |
| Starlets: | Penny Spencer (as Mavis, Mrs Noonan's daughter), Clare Kelly (as Prostitute) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on a novel by Robert Nicolson |
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Made in Black and White |
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The "Whisperers" of the title are unheard voices that Mrs Ross thinks she is hearing near the start of the film (although we don't hear anything) - however beyond conveying that she is becoming senile it is not an important feature of overall plot. |
| White Cargo (1973) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Ray Selfe, David McGillivray / Director: Ray Selfe / Producer: Negus-Fancey | |
| Type: Comedy | Running Time: 62 mins / 74 mins |
| Albert Toddy is a scruffy unemployed dreamer with an overactive imagination and has regular daydreams of himself as a suave sophisticated adventurer. He receives a complimentary ticket to a theatre club in Soho and decides to go along but once he gets in it turns out to be a strip club. While watching the stripper Albert sees a young woman being bothered backstage by a large powerful looking man and he rushes to her assistance overpowering the man and rescuing the girl - BUT NOT REALLY. He is not a coward and he uses his fantasy as a blueprint of what to do but as always things don't go so smoothly in real life and he proves ineffectual against the thug and he and the girl are summarily ejected after Albert gets a beating for his interference.
The girl is called Stella who is a dancer at the club who was caught going through the club owner Dudley Fox's desk. She takes the bruised and beaten Albert back to her apartment to treat him where she tells him she was searching Fox's office because she was concerned about the plight of a number of other showgirls who have all unaccountably gone missing whilst working at Fox's club. She shows Albert an address book she appropriated from Fox's office although they are unable to read it as it is in Arabic. Then while Albert is getting changed in her bedroom Stella is abducted by two intruders. Albert is left with the address book and decides to try and get a translation. For this he comes into contact with two bumbling Special Branch operatives Chumley and Fosdyke who have been keeping watch on the strip club and have been following Albert around. Albert makes his way to the address he obtained in the translation and discovers it is a mansion owned by Dudley Fox. Albert sneaks inside and finds Stella and the other missing showgirls chained up in the basement where they are due to be shipped off to an Arabian oil state as slaves. Albert daydreams a magnificent heroic rescue where he improvises a daring plan to overcome all the villains in the house. But when in reality he tries to execute the plan it all goes miserably wrong and he is also captured. The next day the prisoners are all transported to a dockside warehouse ready for shipment and Albert gets another chance to play hero but although his super-spy persona manages to once-again defeat the foes with ease the same flawless strategy proves useless in real life. But this time he bumbles his way through it and often by luck more than judgement manages to overpower the villains. Stella turns out to be an undercover policewoman and the ineffectual special branch operatives also show up to lend a hand and in gratitude Albert is given a job as a desk constable at the local police station. | |
| Starring: | David Jason (as Albert Toddey), Imogen Hassall (as Stella Lindsay), Hugh Lloyd (as Chumley), Tim Barrett (as Fosdyke) |
| Featuring: | Raymond Cross (as Dudley Fox), Sue Bond (as Desiree, showgirl), Dave Prowse (as Harry, Fox's right-hand man) |
| Starlets: | Bozena, Viviene Stokes, Deirdre Lindsay, Kirstie Pooley, Jacqueline Hurst (as kidnapped showgirls) |
| NOTES: | |
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There are known to be a 62 minute and a 74 minute version of this film. The one reviewed here was the longer one. What is cut in the shorter one is not known. |
| White Fire (1984) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Edward John Francis / Director: Jean-Marie Pallardy / Producers: Jean-Marie Pallardy, Alan G. Rainer | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 79 mins |
| Bo Donnelly and his sister Ingrid are diamond smugglers. She works at a diamond mine as the Boss's assistant and smuggles jewels out for Bo to sell. In a disused cavern an old miner finds a raw diamond bigger than a rugby ball embedded in the rock - when he touches it his hands burn. He reports his find to the company Boss and then takes the Boss and his assistant Ingrid to see it. Once the boss knows the location he murders the miner. The diamond was thought to be legend and has the name "White Fire". Boss plans with Ingrid to retrieve the diamond but really is plotting behind her back with a gang of crooks led by a woman called Sophia. But Sophia is plotting herself and plans to kidnap Ingrid who is the only one besides Boss who knows the location of the White Fire. However Ingrid is inadvertently killed by a poison dart in the abduction attempt.
Devastated by the loss of his sister Bo visits a bar and meets a woman called Olga who quite by chance has a similar look to his sister Ingrid. Bo and his partner Sam then offer Olga $50,000 to undergo plastic surgery to have her face changed to match Ingrid and then impersonate Ingrid so the crooks will believe she is still alive and she can resume her dealings with Boss. The surgery is achieved flawlessly. But Olga was being pursued by a man named Noah whose boss had some unfinished business with her and he tracks her down to the plastic surgeon and finds out about her face change. In the climax three groups converge on the cavern containing White Fire:- the Boss and Sophia and their men wait outside the cave to ambush Bo and Ingrid/Olga and their men after they retrieve the diamond; whilst Noah and his men are there to catch Olga. Massive gunfights ensue and eventually the radioactive diamond blows up! The Boss is killed in the firefight and Noah agrees to let Olga go and say that she died in return for some diamonds. | |
| Comments: An oddly plotted film - in the opening pre-credits sequence we see an event from twenty years before when the siblings were children fleeing through a forest with their parents hotly pursued by soldiers with the parents eventually being killed but the children escaping - which is fine at first, but once the film is complete and you realise there is no subsequent follow-through on these events to explain them or make them significant in the main plot, it is rendered irrelevant (which is why I couldn't work it into the above plot summary). They are just a brother and sister who work together - that's all you need to know for the purposes of the story. Then bizarrely half-way through the film the sister gets killed only to be replaced by a similar looking actress who undergoes plastic surgery to make her into an exact replica of the sister (and subsequently played by the first actress once again) - plot-wise this does not really add anything useful to the story which couldn't have been done in a more conventional way. And can diamonds become radioactive - and would they explode? Don't know.
The Boss did have a name but I didn't catch it properly - sounded something like "Neilmad" but he doesn't appear to be credited so I couldn't be sure - so I just call him "Boss" in the above summary. | |
| Starring: | Robert Ginty (as Bo Donnelly), Belinda Mayne (as Ingrid, and Olga/Ingrid after plastic surgery) |
| Featuring: | Fred Williamson (as Noah), Jess Hahn (as Sam), Mirella Banti (as Sophia), Diana Goodman (as Olga, before plastic surgery) |
| Who Dares Wins (1982) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Reginald Rose / Director: Ian Sharp / Producer: Euan Lloyd | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 119 mins |
| SAS soldier Captain Peter Skellern is discharged from service when he loses control during field training and subjects some new recruits to a particularly brutal form of torture exercise. Meanwhile the security services are becoming concerned about the activities of a radical anti nuclear bombs peace organisation called The Peoples Lobby whose inner core are believed to be planning a major incident - but the nature of the outrage is as yet unknown.
Needless to say Peter Skellern's ignominious departure from the service was part a pre-planned operation so he can infiltrate the Peoples Lobby under the truthful seeming guise of a malcontent ex-SAS soldier. Peter makes contact with an American woman called Frankie Leith, believed to be the ringleader, and uses his charm to gain her trust as he pretends to share her extreme viewpoints. She believes his unique knowledge of SAS tactics will come in useful in the operation they have planned. Her co-conspirators are not so keen to bring in an outsider and even though his dismissal story checks out they have him discretely followed. Peter becomes Frankie's lover and moves in with her as the radicals prepare for their operation. Peter is seen making somewhat suspicious contacts around the city which lead Frankie's people to have his wife held hostage to ensure his good behaviour - although Peter insists it is not necessary since he is squarely on their side and intends to help in any way he can. The terrorists' plan swings into operation as they pose as US military concert party personnel to enter the American Embassy on the night of the ambassador's dinner reception for high ranking American and British dignitaries - including the British Foreign Secretary and the US Secretary of State. Once the building is secure Frankie issues demands that a nuclear bomb be dropped on the Holy Loch submarine base in southern Scotland to show everyone just how devastating a blast can be so the world will be appalled and demand immediate multilateral disarmaments of such devices - failure to comply within 18 hours will result in the deaths of all the VIPs. Once the British secret service know the nature of the threat posed by the group the SAS swing into action while facile negotiations are carried out to give an impression of consideration and deliberation to the demands. Peter manages to make a coded contact with the army and at a prearranged time he makes his move inside by securing the safety of the VIPs to coincide with the assault from outside. The SAS storm the building and all the terrorists are killed and elsewhere another SAS unit rescues Peter's wife from her kidnappers. | |
| Starring: | Lewis Collins (as Captain Peter Skellen), Judy Davis (as Frankie Leith), John Duttine (as Rod Walker, terrorist), Richard Widmark (as US Secretary of State Arthur Currie), Edward Woodward (as Commander Powell, hostage negotiator) |
| Featuring: | Rosalind Lloyd (as Jenny Skellen, Peter's wife), Ingrid Pitt (as Helga, terrorist), Robert Webber (as General Ira Potter, head of US Strategic Air Command), Maurice Röeves (as Major Steele, SAS), Tony Doyle (as Colonel Hadley, SAS), Bob Sherman (as Captain Hagen, US Rangers, training with SAS) |
| Familiar Faces: | Patrick Allen (as Police Commissioner, cameo) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on an original story by George Markstein |
| Writer: John Gould / Director: Jack Gold / Producer: Barry Levinson | |
| Type: American / Thriller | Running Time: 88 mins |
| An eminent American scientist called Lucas Martino who heads a major research project is involved in a serious car accident on the East German border as his car crashes over into the other side. The Russians save his life but tell the Americans they cannot return him for six months while he recuperates.
Six months later when he is handed back to the Americans he is unrecognisable - his head and body have been reconstructed using extensive metal components making him appear more like a robot than a man. But a man remains inside and that man says he is Dr Lucas Martino. FBI investigator Sean Rogers has severe doubts because he knows that throughout the six month period Martino has been in the charge of head KGB spy trainer Colonel Azarin. Agent Rogers has to consider the serious possibility that an impostor has been trained to replace Martino, or if it is Martino that he may have been brainwashed. However Rogers finds it impossible to catch the man out in details of Martino's personal life no matter how trivial an item and it seems increasingly likely that it is the real Martino - but Rogers cannot shake his concerns and pass Martino security-fit to return to work until he is absolutely certain because he knows how thorough a man like Azarin would be in preparing a spy. Martino gets frustrated with all the continual questioning as all he wants to do is get back on with his life's work at Project Neptune. It is a project he began in college days with a friend called Frank Heywood who was almost (but not quite) as clever as Martino and who divided his scientific studies with political ambitions. Heywood worked alongside Martino at Neptune for a time until his political views made him a security risk and he was thrown off the project - and he has subsequently died. Eventually Martino gets fed up with waiting around and decides to go back and live on his parents old farm where he grew up as a boy until the authorities make up their minds about him. Throughout the above we also see narratively correlating flashbacks to Martino's time in Russian hands. We see:- him survive the life saving operation under the care of Dr Kothu using extensive cybernetic grafts; Colonel Azarin questioning him in minute detail about his childhood and early life in order to test his memory following his trauma ; and Azarin deciding to train up an agent to take Martino's place using the extensive background details obtained. The agent in question is Frank Heywood - not dead after all but defected to Russia and ideally suited because he already has a working knowledge of Martino's early life and is almost as knowledgeable about the Neptune project that he could go back to work there with a level of understanding similar to Martino's and not arouse suspicion - but then be able to pass back secrets. Heywood reluctantly agrees to undergo a radical surgical operation to change his appearance to match the current robotic look of Martino. (So now as we return to the present we are privy to the seeming fact that Martino is an impostor after all). Rogers is put under pressure by the authorities to pass Martino security-fit since he has not been able to prove otherwise. The project desperately needs him back at work and they reason that if he turns out not to be the great man he will soon show himself up with an inability to understand his own complex theorems. So Rogers' doubts are overruled and he is ordered to tell Martino that he can return to work. Therefore despite his reservations Rogers visits Martino on the farm and delivers the good news that the scientist can now resume his work at Project Neptune. Then we return to the flashback and discover that Frank Heywood did not survive the trauma of his operation. He could not face life looking like a machine man and died, whereas Martino had survived that same shock because he truly wanted to live no matter what. Therefore Azarin has no choice but to return the real Lucas Martino to the Americans. (So in the final moments we learn that it is and has always been the genuine Martino all along). But after tasting the simple rural life of his boyhood again Martino's perspective on life has changed - he has discovered an inner contentment working the land in peace and solitude and has decided he no longer feels the need to return to work and he respectfully declines. He had been Lucas Martino all this time but now he is not Lucas Martino - any more. | |
| Starring: | Elliott Gould (as FBI Agent Sean Rogers), Trevor Howard (as Colonel Azarin), Joseph Bova (as Lucas Martino) |
| Featuring: | John Stewart (as Frank Heywood, Martino's friend and colleague, and later a Russian defector), Ed Grover (as Finchley, FBI boss), John Lehne (as Haller, State Department official), James Noble (as General Deptford, American military), Alexander Allerson (as Dr Kothu, Russian cybernetics expert treating Martino, in flashbacks), Michael Lombard (as Dr Besser, from Project Neptune), Kay Tornborg (as Edith, Martino's girlfriend, in flashbacks), Joy Garrett (as Barbara, restaurant worker, in flashbacks) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the novel by Algis Budrys |
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Although this film is shown as being a UK production there is nothing really in story location, cast or plot to mark it out as seeming to be in any way British - nor was it filmed in the UK (that was done in Germany and Miami). Trevor Howard is in it (playing a Russian) - although a major Hollywood-ised Brit in an American film wouldn't normally be sufficient reason alone to review a film for this site - however since it has been done and it is a fairly obscure film it's included here. |
| Whose Child Am I? (1974) | Previous Next |
| aka: Feelings | |
| Writer: James Stevens / Director: Lawrence Britten / Producer: Jesse & Carol Vogel | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 89 mins |
| Barbara and Paul Martin are having trouble conceiving. They undergo tests which reveal him to be sterile although she is perfectly fertile. They try artificial insemination which fails to work. Barbara privately consuls an expert who advises her that natural fertilisation with a sperm donor is likely to be more successful. This involves her having sex with a volunteer donor directly. She and the donor Michael have sex several times both at the clinic and privately at his flat and eventually she falls pregnant. Husband Paul is delighted but thinks the pregnancy happened via normal artificial insemination methods. Eventually baby Harriet is born. Several years pass and a rich uncle dies leaving young Harriet a sizeable bequest to be administered solely by her father. Former donor Michael hears of this and institutes legal proceedings claiming that as the biological father he should be the one to administer the estate. A legal battle ensues.
Intermixed with this are some subplots:- Helen, a lab technician at the fertilisation clinic, is going out and sleeping with a much older man. Helen's mother had undergone artificial insemination to have her (by more approved means!) but had accidentally seen the donor. And when she meets Helen's older man-friend realises that he is that donor and Helen is sleeping with her own father; Another subplot involves a lesbian couple who want to have a baby; And another is about a pregnant white woman to whom the fertilisation clinic believe they might have accidentally given the sperm of a black man. | |
| Comment: The main story carries the film for the first half until the birth of Harriet and then the remainder of that story shares screen time with the three other subplots that are introduced. | |
| Starring: | Kate O'Mara (as Barbara Martin) , Paul Freeman (Paul Martin), Bob Sherman (as Michael) |
| Featuring: | Edward Judd (as Dr Benson), Frances Kearney (as Helen Randall), Ronan O'Casey (as John Roberts, Helen's older boyfriend), Melissa Stribling (as Helen's mother), Beth Porter (as Mrs Lustig, sperm mix-up case), Diane Fletcher (Renate, in lesbian couple), Felicity Devonshire (as Carrie, in lesbian couple) |
| Starlets: | Sally Faulkner, Rikki Howard |
| NOTES: | |
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Although this is a British film populated by British actors and the outdoor shots clearly reveal it being set in the UK, all the actors (Kate O'Mara, Paul Freeman, etc) speak with mock American accents which is somewhat disconcerting. |
| The Wicked Lady (1983) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Leslie Arliss, Michael Winner / Director: Michael Winner / Producers: Yoram Globus, Menahem Golan | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 94 mins |
| In 17th century England, Caroline is happily engaged to wealthy landowner Sir Ralph Skelton. She invites her sister Barbara, whom she has not seen for some time, to be her Maid of Honour. Barbara duly arrives for the big day but becomes so enamoured of Ralph herself, and he of she, that they themselves fall in love and Barbara manages to hijack the wedding and become the bride herself - relegating her sister to the Maid of Honour role. Luckily Caroline is fairly accepting of the situation and stays around after the wedding to be a companion to her sister who is now Lady Skelton. But Barbara soon realises she has made a dreadful mistake - for even during the wedding reception she met another man called Kit Locksby whom she would have dearly loved to marry instead - but by then it was too late. She is no longer in love with Ralph so she opens up a spare room in the manor house and declares that they will have separate bedrooms. Barbara is intrigued to find that the spare room has a secret passage that leads to the outdoors.
Ralph's sister Henrietta comes for a visit and they all play cards - Barbara loses heavily, but determined to chance her luck one further time she impulsively wagers all the losses against her ruby broach - a special heirloom from her late mother - on one cut of the cards - and she loses it! Henrietta jokes that she will have to be careful on her way home lest the notorious highwayman Captain Jackson holds up her carriage and attempts to steal it. This throwaway comment gives Barbara an idea on how to get her broach back and she dresses herself up as a masked highwayman and uses her bedroom's secret passage to leave the house and proceeds to hold up Henrietta's carriage and steal back her broach. It all goes to plan and Barbara finds the experience thrilling and decides to carry on the illicit activity with some "proper" hold-ups. This becomes a nightly activity for Barbara until inevitably she crosses paths with the real highwayman Captain Jackson who is angered that a rival is on his patch. He gives chase but when he finds she is a woman they come to an agreement to work together and they also become lovers - although he sees her face he has no idea who she really is. Jackson's one golden rule is "no killings" because once murder has been committed then capture means the hangman's noose. Barbara hears that a consignment of gold is being transported by wagon and she and Jackson hold it up - but during their escape she shoots and kills a man while aiming for his horse. The authorities assume it was Jackson and he becomes a wanted murderer. Meanwhile at home the elderly family butler Hogarth has become wise to Barbara's nocturnal activities and tells her she must cease otherwise he will have to tell Ralph. For weeks Barbara puts on a show of being a dutiful lady of the house to ensure Hogarth's silence whilst secretly poisoning him slowly to give an outward appearance of onsetting poor health. Eventually Ralph realises what she is doing and she has to smother him to death with a pillow. Free again to go out she heads off to town to be with her lover Jackson only to find him in bed with another woman. Feeling betrayed she tips the authorities off to his whereabouts and he is captured. At the day of his hanging a riot develops as Jackson's girlfriend has a catfight with Barbara which allows Jackson to be freed by his friends - but not before Jackson spots the Skelton crest on her coach and realises who she is. Later that day he visits her for revenge but after taking out his frustrations on her they decide to continue working together. Barbara has decided to kill Ralph under guise of a robbery to be free of him and be able to marry someone she really loves - but Jackson wants no part of it and so Barbara shoots and kills him. Then during the hold-up a soldier wings her and she rides off mortally wounded just managing to get back to her bedchamber where her dark shameful secret identity is revealed to her family just before she dies. | |
| Starring: | Faye Dunaway (as Lady Barbara Skelton), Denholm Elliott (as Sir Ralph Skelton), Glynis Barber (as Caroline), Alan Bates (as Captain Jackson), John Gielgud (as Hogarth, the butler) |
| Featuring: | Prunella Scales (Lady Henrietta Kingsclere), Oliver Tobias (as Kit Locksby), Joan Hickson (as Aunt Agatha), Marina Sirtis (as Jackson's Girlfriend) |
| Starlets: | Fiona McArthur, Judi Maynard, Lucy Hornak, Francine Morgan (as four Bridesmaids), Louise English, Elaine Ashley (as two Servants), Guinevere John, Celia Imrie, Teresa Codling, Lisa Mulidore |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the novel Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton by Magdalen King-Hall. |
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Glynis Barber's nudity is very probably a body double. |
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There are four bridesmaids collectively listed in the credits and two of them are seen topless. Lucy Hornak has been identified as one of these by means of a separate appearance in the Bond movie Never Say Never Again from the same year. Fiona McArthur appeared as a maid in a 1990 episode of "Poirot" and has been visually matched as being the other topless bridesmaid from that appearance. Of the other two, Judi Maynard has been seen in 1992's Natural Lies and was certainly one of the bridesmaids not seen topless. Francine Morgan has not been visually checked from any other source but must, by elimination, be the other bridesmaid who is also not seen topless. |
| The Wicker Man (1973) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Anthony Shaffer / Director: Robin Hardy / Producer: Peter Snell | |
| Type: Chiller | Running Time: 84 mins (standard version) |
| A police sergeant from the West Highland constabulary called Neil Howie flies himself out via seaplane to the remote and isolated Scottish island of Summerisle. He has received an anonymous letter addressed directly to him expressing concerns about a young girl called Rowan Morrison who has not been seen for several months. The letter included a photograph of the girl but when he shows it around the island-folk claim to have never heard of her or seen her before - even the woman whom the letter cites as her mother does not know who she is.
He decides to stay overnight and takes a room at the Green Man Inn run by Alder MacGregor and his daughter Willow. Sgt Howie is a deeply religious man taking his Christian faith seriously and he is engaged to be married. That night he is tortured by a sweet seductive song from the next room sung by Willow with a clear invite to join her but he just manages to resist with supreme effort. Howie is struck by the overt sexual behaviour of the townsfolk - from lewd songs in the pub to some public copulation on the village green that he observed the previous evening and he wonders what sort of people these are to behave so degenerately. Next day he visits the local school and is astonished to hear young children being taught about phallic allusions in the upcoming May Day celebrations and he accuses the teacher Miss Rose of impropriety towards the young which she defends by telling him they are simply being taught to celebrate the regenerative forces of nature. Mindful of his main task in hand he asks Miss Rose and the children if they know the missing girl Rowan which they all disavow - but with his suspicions growing he checks the register and finds Rowan's name listed. Miss Rose then admits she knows her and she is dead - but the island people think of death differently believing that when a life is over the soul returns to the surroundings. This is the philosophy of life on this island and Howie is appalled that the Christian religion is no longer practised or taught and considers that the young are being corrupted by these heathen beliefs. Howie finds the place where Rowan is said to be buried but he must first visit the laird of the island Lord Summerisle to seek his consent as a Justice of The Peace to exhume the body so that it can be taken back to the mainland for a post-mortem examination. Somewhat against Howie's expectations Lord Summerisle readily gives his permission. When Howie queries the religious teachings on the island Summerisle tells him that the origins of this go back to 1868 when an ancestor of his arrived on this island to find the people poor and undernourished because the island soil was unsuitable for fertile growth. This ancestor was a gifted biologist and thinker who found the environment perfect for a new strain of fruit he had developed - he got the locals working for him by motivating them with a pseudo-religion - and with the success of the harvest the community flourished. The villagers took this as a sign and abandoned the old religions and embraced the new pagan ways. Howie returns to the graveyard and exhumes the remains but finds inside not the body of a girl but of a march hare. Furious that he has been tricked by more duplicity he redoubles his efforts. He finds photographic evidence that the previous year's harvest had been a particularly poor one and upon researching the background to the upcoming May Day traditions discovers that it was once used to offer sacrifice to please the gods into making the next harvest a bountiful one - this at one time included human sacrifices! Howie makes the intuitive connection that Rowan is not dead at all but is being held captive and will be sacrificed at the following day's May Day festival. Next day Howie puts on a masked costume and joins the parade incognito. When the marchers get to the beach, as Howie predicted, Rowan is brought out hands tied. He rushes out to free her and she seems pleased to be saved and leads him through a cave tunnel up to the cliff-top. But the villagers are waiting - and Rowan is not the one they were waiting for! Lord Summerisle tells Howie that it is he, not Rowan, who is to be the sacrifice and that he was lured to the island and has been manipulated ever since to bring him to this point. The villagers believe that an adult sacrifice will be all the more potent to the gods especially one invested with the authority of a king such as a policeman possesses. Behind them is a giant figure of a man constructed of wicker to form a cage. Howie is placed inside and the construct is set alight - Howie appeals in vain to their humanity but they are set in their beliefs that his sacrifice will save their community and they sing their joyous praise as they watch him burn to death within the wicker man and all Howie can do is pray to his own god and find comfort in his own Christian beliefs. | |
| Director's Cut: The above summary describes the events as presented in the "standard" version of the movie. But there is also a longer version lasting 99 minutes which was the originally intended version of the movie before it was cut down to the 84 minutes which then became the officially released standard version. An extra scene in the longer version comes right at the start and shows us some of Sgt Howie's life on the mainland including the moment he receives the letter from the island. One major restructuring done in the shorter edit is to make it appear that Howie stayed only one night on the island. But in the full-length version he actually stays two nights. The seductive dance that Willow performs on the night of his arrival originally takes place on the second night and was moved from later in the film to much earlier in the standard version. Also in another new sequence Christopher Lee makes an earlier first appearance in a scene on the first night. The end-credits were not remade in the edit and consequently there are a number of characters who only appear in the additional scenes although they are credited in the standard version. There are no additional nude scenes in the full version although Willow's nude dance sequence is about 50 seconds longer. | |
| Starring: | Edward Woodward (as Sgt Neil Howie), Christopher Lee (as Lord Summerisle) |
| Featuring: | Diane Cilento (as Miss Rose), Britt Ekland (as Willow), Lindsay Kemp (as Alder MacGregor, Willow's father), Ingrid Pitt (as Librarian), Geraldine Cowper (as Rowan Morrison) |
| Starlets: | Lorraine Peters, Barbara Ann Brown |
| The Wife Swappers (1970) | Previous Next |
| Writers: Derek Ford, Stanley Long / Director: Derek Ford / Producer: Stanley Long | |
| Type: Documentary | Running Time: 82 mins |
| A documentary dealing with an emerging aspect of modern 1970s life:- Wife Swapping. It includes dramatic scenes, interviews with people associated with it, and expert analysis by a psychiatrist. The documentary attempts to explain the phenomena and give an understanding of what goes on and some of the pitfalls to avoid | |
| Comment: I'm not entirely sure if it was intended as a serious documentary at the time or just as a reason to have some sexy scenes. The interview pieces seem genuine enough and the interviewer seems to question the participants quite hard at times asking some awkward and pertinent questions - so maybe it was serious although the topic seems almost comical nowadays. (Interview subjects were a man who runs a contact magazine; and a swinger turned prostitute; as well as stopping people in the street and asking for their opinions). The psychiatrist seems to be genuine and probably not an actor - after each dramatic sequence he discusses them as case studies direct to camera like he's presenting an Open University course on the subject. The dramatic sequences are pitched as being "reconstructions" with the main female participant narrating in voiceover what is going on and why she became involved. The reconstructions involve various types of Wife Swapping parties and dare games as new wives are initiated into the activities and at the end turns full circle with a wife rebelling against the idea and quitting but in the process losing her circle of friends. | |
| Featuring: | Fiona Fraser, Valerie St. John, James Donnelly, Denys Hawthorne, Bunty Garland |
| Starlets: | Joan Hayward, Sandra Satchwith |
| Writer/Director: Frank Launder / Producer: E.M. Smedley-Aston | |
| Type: Comedy | Running Time: 87 mins |
| The St Trinian's pupils action committee decide they have had enough of being pushed around and decide to set up a Trade Union for British Schoolgirls so they can go on strike to force changes. They ask their trusted confidant Flash Harry for advice and he says it will only be effective and get noticed if all the schools in the country are involved.
So the 4th-6th formers start a programme of infiltration of other schools forming action cells and signing up new members. Flash Harry says they must get the posh schools too so they intercept one girl called Angela going to Highdown Ladies college and substitute one of their own girls in her place and then keep Angela prisoner at St Trinian's. The Union becomes fully subscribed and the girls take action - at Highdown the St Trinian's substitute creates such mayhem that she is expelled and this gives the Union the pretext to call an all-out strike of British schoolgirls. Unfortunately Angela is actually a princess daughter of an important prince from a middle-eastern oil producing country and the authorities are desperate to get her back as well as put a stop to the strike action. The Government Ministry for Female Education gets involved although no one there cares for the assignment because the very name of St Trinian's strikes dread into all those who work there. A couple of them are sent to infiltrate the school but are quickly repelled with their dignity not intact. In desperation the minister calls on the leader of Left-Action Democratic Students Union (L.A.D.S.) and suggests they try and merge with the Schoolgirls Union and take it over and in return they get 200,000 new members. The L.A.D.S. boys target the St Trinian's sixth form girls wooing them and inviting them to a dance with the object of getting a signature to transfer control. But the St Trinian's fourth and fifth formers are having none of it and disgusted at their boy-crazy turncoat "sisters" they storm the party and scupper the minister's plan. Due to the involvement of an undercover detective posing as a teacher the Princess is returned but the minister ultimately decides the only way to end the strike action is to give into all the girls' demands which includes some demeaning domestic duties for him and his staff. | |
| Comment: This latter day St Trinian's film is rarely seen. Whenever TV runs a season of St Trinian's films this one is never included. One might think this is because it is a sleazy, seedy cash-in soft-porn effort bastardising the good name of the series. But far from it - it is actually a perfectly adequate entry into the series which is much in keeping with the type of stories the 50s and 60s films are known for. In fact it's even possible that in 1980 it might have been considered a bit dated - but now a couple of decades on this hardly matters and it can be taken on its own merits regardless of when it was made. There is no strong language and only a very minor bit of nudity when a teacher and a sixth former's bottoms are seem when they go skinny dipping in the sea to have a race. As far as I can tell it is an "official" film in that it makes good and liberal use of the glorious St Trinian's theme tune by Malcolm Arnold. | |
| Starring: | Sheila Hancock (as Olga Vandemeer, St Trinian's headmistress), Michael Hordern (as Sir Charles Hackforth, government minister), Joe Melia (as Flash Harry) |
| Featuring: | Thorley Walters, Rodney Bewes, Deborah Norton (as Ministry people), Maureen Lipman (as Katy Higgs, Private Detective), Julia McKenzie (as Miss Dormancott, Highdown headmistress), Veronica Quilligan (as Lizzie Strutton, lead St Trinian's girl), Luan Peters (as Miss Poppy Adams, St Trinian's games mistress) |
| Familiar Faces: | Hilda Braid, Ballard Berkeley |
| Starlets: | Lisa Vanderpump, Debbie Linden (as St Trinian's Sixth formers), Gloria Brittain |
| NOTES: | |
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This is a belated fifth St Trinian's film. The previous four were:- The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954), Blue Murder at St. Trinian's (1957), The Pure Hell of St. Trinian's (1960) and The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery (1966). |
| The Witches (1966) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Nigel Kneale / Director: Cyril Frankel / Producer: Anthony Nelson Keys | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 87 mins |
| Gwen Mayfield is a teacher who has recently returned from a mission school in Africa after having a bad experience with the local superstitious natives. She suffered a breakdown after a terrifying experience at the hands of a witch doctor but has now recovered. She is delighted to be accepted as the new headmistress at a small school run by rich brother and sister Alan and Stephanie Bax in the village of Heddaby.
Alan is a bit of an eccentric who likes dressing up as a vicar although there is no church in the village other than an old abandoned one that is half in ruins. Elder sister Stephanie is the more dominant presence and a famous article writer well known for her forthright and informed views. Gwen's class at school contains children of all ages - the elder of the girls is 14-year-old Linda Rigg just flowering into womanhood. She is inseparable from her boy friend of a similar age called Ronnie Dowsett. Gwen sees this as quite normal for children their age although she gets the impression from some townspeople that the relationship is not approved of. Linda lives with her grandmother who is especially disapproving. Granny Rigg is considered by some to be a witch able to put curses on people and so when Ronnie falls sick and goes into a coma there is talk of it being Granny Rigg's doing using magic to protect her young granddaughter. After a few days Ronnie recovers and is taken away by his mother to live elsewhere. Gwen knows Mrs Dowsett visited Granny Rigg the previous day and wonders to herself that perhaps if there is anything to this witchcraft theory then maybe the two women came to an arrangement whereby Ronnie would be allowed to recover if he was taken away. Ronnie's father stays behind - he has lived in this village all his life and doesn't see why they should have to leave - and after a bout of drinking he declares he is going to see Granny and have it out with her. Next day Mr Dowsett is found dead in the duck pond and Gwen thinks he was deliberately drowned when she sees lots of barefooted footprints in the muddy edges. Gwen wonders why the townspeople would go to so much trouble to protect the purity of one young girl until she suddenly has a troubled thought - perhaps Linda is being kept virginal for some kind of black magic ceremony requiring a virgin sacrifice! But before Gwen can investigate her suspicions she is hit by a relapse of the condition she experienced following her African ordeal and is taken to a nursing home suffering memory loss. She spends some time in care and when she is sufficiently better the doctor, who is a friend of the Bax's, recommends she spend some time recuperating in Cornwall. But Gwen gives the medical staff the slip and makes her way back to the village and to the Bax residence. Stephanie is delighted to see her again and invites her to stay while she recovers. The latest news is that during Gwen's absence young Linda has gone missing. Looking from her bedroom window at night Gwen sees many of the townspeople making their way to the ruined church and Gwen follows - there she sees a congregation performing some sort of black magic ritual and the high priestess leading them is Stephanie! She is the powerful witch who has the townspeople in her thrall. Stephanie takes Gwen back to the house and explains her intentions which she believes are for the greater good. Stephanie considers herself a learned person who uses her wisdom and understanding for the benefit of mankind in the ideas she puts forward in her articles. Although not yet elderly she is getting on a bit and knows how much she could go on to achieve if only she had a second lifetime to live with which to capitalise upon her current lifetime's accumulated wisdom and experience. To this end she has unearthed a rite in an ancient 14th century book which describes how a virgin of exactly 14 years and 9 months can be sacrificed and her skin be worn to give the seeker a new life. Powerful dark forces are involved and the text warns that no blood other than the victim's must be spilled at the ceremony lest the power be turned upon the seeker. Linda has now reached the required age and the ritual is to take place that night. Gwen is allowed to witness the ceremony for which the townspeople have been driven into a frenzy of excitement by Stephanie's occult incantations. An entranced Linda is brought forward to be sacrificed with a ceremonial dagger and the local butcher stands ready to skin her. But as Stephanie raises the dagger to strike Gwen remembers the ancient text's dire warning and rushes forward taking the butcher's knife and cuts her own arm spilling blood onto Stephanie's robes. This is in defiance of the set rites and Stephanie screams and falls to the ground dead. Linda recovers and without the powerful witch's influence the townspeople come to their senses and return to their normal lives. | |
| Starring: | Joan Fontaine (as Gwen Mayfield), Kay Walsh (as Stephanie Bax), Alec McCowen (as Alan Bax) |
| Featuring: | Leonard Rossiter (as Dr Wallis), Ingrid Brett (as Linda Rigg), Michele Dotrice (as Valerie Creek, grocer's daughter), Ann Bell (as Sally Benson, schoolteacher), Martin Stephens (as Ronnie Dowsett), John Collin (as Mr Dowsett, his father), Carmel McSharry (as Mrs Dowsett, his mother), Shelagh Fraser (as Mrs Creek, Valerie's mother), Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (as Granny Rigg), Duncan Lamont (as Bob Curd, butcher) |
| Familiar Faces: | Bryan Marshall (man at ceremony), Rudolph Walker (scared African man working in mission hut with Gwen during prologue) |
| NOTES: | |
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Based on the novel The Devil's Own by Peter Curtis. |
| Witchfinder General (1968) | Previous Next |
| aka: Matthew Hopkins - Witchfinder General | |
| Writers: Tom Baker, Reeves / Director: Michael Reeves / Producers: Louis M. Heyward, Arnold Miller, Philip Waddilove | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 82 mins |
| England in 1645 is in a state of civil war between King Charles' royalists and Oliver Cromwell's parliamentary party. Law and order has broken down and local town magistrates wield the power to indulge their personal whims of justice. Amid this atmosphere unscrupulous men emerge who seek to take advantage of the simple folks powerful superstitious beliefs - men like Matthew Hopkins working with parliamentary decree to tighten up lawlessness and eliminate witchcraft. Hopkins preys on the innocent creating a climate of heightened fear as he roams the country following up leads on reported witchery often fuelled by local jealousies or vindictiveness. He extracts confessions by torture or intimidation or relies on false testimony and hangs or burns the culprits receiving payment from the local magistrate for each one.
Amid this background the main story involves Richard Marshall, a cavalier in Cromwell's roundheads. He takes leave to propose to the love of his life Sara Lowes seeking the duly given consent of her uncle John Lowes. Later back on duty he receives word that the witchfinder has visited that area and John Lowes has been executed for witchery. Marshall returns vowing bloody revenge on Hopkins and his sadistic companion John Stearne - a threat which Hopkins takes seriously - and he and Stearne decide to have Marshall accused of witchcraft to rid themselves of him. Finding someone to falsely accuse Marshall proves no problem and they duly capture him and Sara - using her torture to try and get him to confess - since being seen to follow due process of the law is still important to Hopkins. Marshall's cavalier friends help free him and he exacts his revenge on Hopkins, beating him to death. | |
| Starring: | Vincent Price (as Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder), Ian Ogilvy (as Richard Marshall), Hilary Dwyer (as Sara Lowes) Robert Russell (as John Stearne, Hopkins' henchman) |
| Featuring: | Rupert Davies (as John Lowes, Sara's uncle), Nicky Henson (as Trooper Robert Swallow), Patrick Wymark (as Oliver Cromwell) |
| Familiar Faces: | Tony Selby, Wilfrid Brambell |
| Starlets: | Maggie Kimberly, Maggie Nolan, Sally Douglas, Donna Reading |
| NOTES: | |
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Hilary Dwyer receives an "introducing" credit. |
| Women in Love (1969) | Previous Next |
| Writer: Larry Kramer / Director: Ken Russell / Producers: Larry Kramer, Martin Rosen | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 124 mins |
| In the early 1900s, two sisters Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen are both schoolteachers on the fringes of the social upper class. Together they dream of and contemplate the merits of marriage and social advancement. Rupert Birkin is a school inspector who is an intellectual with a profound take on the meaning of love - he is friends with Gerald Crich, a rich and intense mine owner who provides work for the area and owns a vast estate.
The four of them meet up at a garden party held on the Crich estate and they settle into relationships:- Rupert and Ursula form one couple and Gerald and Gudrun as the other. Together and separately they try to discover and define their feelings and what love means to each of them. This concludes with a skiing holiday in which the more ardently passionate affair of Gerald and Gudrun burns itself out whilst the more leisurely and contemplatively sensuous relationship of Rupert and Ursula seems to persist even though she finds some of his ideas about the nature of love a bit hard to accept. | |
| Comment: It's a very talky film with not all that much plotwise to comment on - in places it does get a bit dull. | |
| Starring: | Alan Bates (as Rupert Birkin), Oliver Reed (as Gerald Crich), Glenda Jackson (as Gudrun Brangwen), Jennie Linden (as Ursula Brangwen) |
| Featuring: | Eleanor Bron (as Hermione Roddice, Rupert's girlfriend), Alan Webb (as Thomas Crich, Gerald's father), Catherine Willmer (as Mrs Crich, Gerald's mother), Vladek Sheybal (as Loerke, man on skiing holiday), Sarah Nicholls (as Winifred Crich, Gerald's young sister), Sharon Gurney (as Laura Crich, Gerald's married sister), Christopher Gable (as Tibby Lupton, Laura's husband), Michael Gough and Norma Shebbeare (as Mr and Mrs Brangwen, Gudrun and Ursula's parents, cameo roles) |
| Starlets: | Nike Arrighi (as Contessa) |
| NOTES: | |
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From the novel by D.H. Lawrence |
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Events from earlier in the teenage life of Jennie Linden's character Ursula are told in a subsequent film adaptation of The Rainbow (1988) which was also directed by Ken Russell. In that film Ursula is played by Sammi Davis and although her younger sister Gudrun also features she is very much a minor character. Glenda Jackson appears again in the later film playing a different character (the sisters' mother). Although filmed in reverse the books were originally written in a chronological order. |
| Writer: Jeremy Brooks / Director: Peter Hall / Producer: Thomas Clyde | |
| Type: Comedy | Running Time: 86 mins |
| Set a few years in the future (of 1968) in the sprawling municipal of DICE located at the throbbing heart of England. DICE (Domestic Industries Community Estate) is a fully-planned society in which every industrial process is fully automated requiring no human intervention. However job quota regulations are such that everyone must be employed and so all the inhabitants are required to work about half-an-hour a day on full pay with the rest of the time available for their own leisure. The menial jobs they do are totally unnecessary and mostly involve sitting watching a production line go by with no involvement by them required.
Valentine (Val) Brose is a man who has no time for any of that nonsense being too self-absorbed in his own interests - his current obsession is the horticultural growth of Mexican mushrooms in his basement. However he is having no success because he cannot provide conditions that are warm and steamy enough to suit them. His girlfriend is Betty Dorrick who wishes he would get a job so they could settle down and get married - she reads the situations vacant to him and one such job on offer is that of a nighttime Auxiliary Attendant at the fully automated power plant. This job rouses Val's interest because he figures that the plant's boiler room would be a suitably steamy environment into which he could re-locate his disappointingly unresponsive mushroom crop. Val visits the DICE headquarters building called Centrepoint to apply for the job. He has a hopeless ineptitude with machinery with an uncanny knack of breaking anything he tries to use. The Managing Director Mr Price finds him exasperating and wishes he didn't have to employ him but the personnel manager Mrs Murray reminds her boss they have an obligation to meet and the power plant job seems safe enough as all it involves is sweeping up. The duties of the completely contrived quota-filling job involve nothing else but Val having to nightly sweep out the restroom hut that has been built specially for the sweeper to rest in after completing his work sweeping the hut. The hut is constructed within the plant area but Val is not required to do any sweeping work outside of his designated duties. He smuggles in his mushroom growing crates and positions them near the boilers but when they do not seem to be delivering the correct amount of steam he thinks nothing of adjusting valves and dials until he achieves the ideal conditions he is after. Now that he has a job Val and Betty are able to quickly get married although Betty is soon dismayed to find that for their honeymoon he has chosen to take her to live in the power plant. Val is also causing anxiety for the personnel manager Mrs Murray who is becoming increasingly stressed that Val wants to work longer hours than his shift requires and even wants to work at the weekends (which is unheard of) - she becomes a blubbering and incoherent wreck trying to reason with Val to work shorter hours and she calls Mr Price to come and help her. And furthermore the power plant control room manager has noticed some anomalous readings on his normally uneventful board which have built up as a result of Val's adjustments causing alarms to sound. All these people meet up in the power plant looking for Val who is oblivious to all the havoc he has created with his only concern being his delight that his mushrooms have now grown. When he nibbles at one he notices it gives him a strange feeling of light-headedness and he persuades all the people angry at him to also try some. They too feel elated as the mushrooms' hallucinogenic qualities dally with their senses. No one cares any longer about their various grouses with Val as they fool around abandoning all their cares and inhibitions and when the power plant manager shuts down the generator and all the lights in the city go off everyone applauds in delight. All around the plant machinery, the mushrooms have started to grow in every nook and cranny with more than enough to keep everyone happy for ages. The newlyweds leave them to it and head off into the countryside as Val says he's had enough of mushrooms now as they've proved too easy to grow in the end and he needs a new challenge. | |
| Starring: | David Warner (as Valentine Brose), Cilla Black (as Betty Dorrick, his girlfriend), David Waller (as Mr Price, Managing Director of DICE), Elizabeth Spriggs (as Mrs Murray, Personnel Manager) |
| Featuring: | Zia Mohyeddin (as Dr Aly Narayana, power plant control room technician), Jan Holden (as Mrs Price, wife of MD), John Steiner (as Anthony, on DICE management board), Derek Royle (as Briggs, Powerplant guard), Alan Howard (as Reverend Mort), Tony Church (as Mr Arkwright, Price's aide) |
| NOTES: | |
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Adapted from the play "EH?" by Henry Livings |
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Cilla Black appears in a straight acting role - not as a singer of any sort (although she does sing the theme tune) |
| Writer: Jackie Collins / Director: Robert Young / Producers: Malcolm Fancey, Oscar S. Lerman | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 102 mins |
| David Cooper is an advertising executive whose latest campaign for a beauty soap features his mistress Claudia Parker. Claudia is a young ambitious model/actress who will sleep with anyone who can advance her prospects. David's wife Linda is strongly suspicious of David's affairs but without direct evidence prefers to turn a blind eye.
At the launch of David's new television ad campaign Linda meets young pop star Gem Gemini who is singing the jingle and she is taken by his charming manner and attentiveness towards her although she declines his various offers to meet again because she is married. Claudia meets film producer Conrad Lee who promises her a part in his movie but makes it clear that certain sexual favours will be required first which is not something she has a problem with. At another party Linda sees David and Claudia having sex in a side room and confronted with direct evidence of his infidelity she kicks David out of the family home. She then decides to take up Gem Gemini's offer and they become lovers. Claudia meanwhile is having to submit herself to humiliating degrading sex acts with Conrad not realising he is just stringing her along with no intention of helping her acting career. David tries to celebrate his freedom from his wife with a string of prostitutes but can't seem to perform. On the television news he hears a showbiz story about Gem Gemini and his new partner Linda. Enraged by this David goes to the venue where Gem is singing live and shoots him dead on stage. The End. | |
| Starring: | Anthony Franciosa (as David Cooper), Carroll Baker (as Linda Cooper), Sherrie Lee Cronn (as Claudia Parker), Paul Nicholas (as Gem Gemini) |
| Featuring: | Anthony Steel (as Conrad Lee), Gareth Hunt, Georgina Hale, Jean Gilpin |
| Starlets: | Moira Downie, Alison Elliott, Susie Silvey, Stephanie Marrian, Penny Kendall, Lindy Benson, Vida, Christine Donna, Pat Astley, Nicki Austin, Adele Neatrour, Nova Llewellyn, Helli Louise |
| NOTES: | |
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Sherrie Lee Cronn receives an "introducing" credit. |
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Bonnie Tyler sings the theme tune in-vision to camera during opening titles. |
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The "Vida" in this film is placed on porn-star Vida Garman's credits on IMDB (Last checked: Jan 2006). But her porn film career seems to start in about 1991 and according to the stated DOB would have been just 13 in 1979. So this "Vida" is someone different. |
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The director is credited as Robert William Young |
| Writers: Iain Cassie, Robert Smith / Director: Harry Bromley Davenport / Producer: Mark Forstater | |
| Type: Horror | Running Time: 82 mins |
| Tony Phillips is a young boy who is haunted by bad memories of a time three years beforehand when his father Sam went missing while the family were staying at their holiday cottage. Sam's wife Rachel was not there at the time and is under the impression that Sam simply abandoned them and she thinks Tony's wild stories of bright lights in the sky and abductions are the boy's way of rationalising his much-loved father's desertion of them. Tony now lives in a town house apartment with his mother and her new lover Joe and their French au-pair Analise. Sam has made no contact with them since he went missing.
Elsewhere we see a series of bright lights in the sky followed shortly afterwards by a young couple being killed by some sort of monster; and later a woman living alone in a cottage is also attacked by the monster which clamps a tentacle over her mouth and pumps an alien substance into her. Her belly very quickly swells and from within her emerges a fully grown man who is the spitting image of Sam Phillips. This "new" Sam establishes contact with his family and Tony is delighted to see him although Rachel is less enthusiastic because she has now moved on with her life. Sam cannot account for himself over the last three years and says he remembers nothing since he went missing. But when alone with his son, Sam confides that he is different now - he was taken to another world and was altered so that he could live there and he has now come back for Tony. Sam gives his some a fatherly embrace and bites into his shoulder injecting him with an alien substance. After this Tony begins to exhibit special powers of telekinesis and is able to make his toy action figures become real and follow his commands. Meanwhile Rachel takes Sam to the holiday cottage in the hope that the familiar surroundings might trigger his memories. Tony is left in the care of Analise and while playing hide and seek with her he uses his animised clown to overpower her and then transfers alien matter into her belly. This causes her to become shrouded in a cocoon and turn into a living factory for alien egg creation. Tony then leaves things to develop and goes out to find Joe. At the cottage Rachel finds out Sam is no longer human and she has to flee for her life. She is saved by her boyfriend Joe who has driven down with Tony after becoming concerned about her - although Joe soon falls victim to the Sam creature himself. Rachel follows the source of a bright light she notices in the woods and sees the alien-that-was-Sam taking a willing Tony into a spaceship which then takes off. Rachel is unable to do anything and returns home to her apartment only to find it filled with strange fluid filled spheres made of gluttonous transparent material and containing a throbbing bio-mass - she curiously picks one up and the bio-matter springs out and clamps over her mouth injecting her with alien matter. THE END | |
| Comments: It's not particularly clear why the film has the title it does although it is obviously meant to convey "extra-terrestrial" in some way - but that particular form of abbreviation styling is not spoken or explained in the film at all. | |
| Starring: | Philip Sayer (as Sam Phillips), Bernice Stegers (as Rachel Phillips), Danny Brainin (as Joe Daniels), Maryam d'Abo (as Analise Mercier), Simon Nash (as Tony Phillips) |
| Featuring: | Anna Wing (as Mrs Goodman, downstairs neighbour), David Cardy (as Michael, Analise's boyfriend), Peter Mandell (as Toy Clown, made living by Tony's power) |
| Starlets: | Katherine Best (as Jane, girlfriend in car, monster's victim), Susie Silvey (as Woman in Cottage, monster's victim), Vanya Seager (as Paula, photographic model) |
| NOTES: | |
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Maryam d'Abo and Simon Nash both receive "introducing" credits. |
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(other writing credits) Additional dialogue by Jo Ann Kaplan. Based on an original screenplay by Michel Parry and Harry Bromley Davenport. |
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There are two different ending versions to this film. In the "unhappy" ending (as per the version reviewed here) Rachel finds the eggs and is attacked when one of then starts to hatch. In the "happy" ending she returns home and finds her home full of multiple doubles of her son (presumably from the eggs which have already hatched). |
| The Yes Girls (1971) | Previous Next |
| aka: Take Some Girls | |
| Writer: Martin Gilman / Director: Lindsay Shonteff / Producer: Michael Elam | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 83 mins |
| Maria Carter is a young woman in her later teenage years who is resident in an approved school (a state-run school for delinquents) in Northumberland. She is desperate to escape and is prepared to use her well-developed body to secure favours. She persuades the old gardener to leave a gate open for her and she gets away and heads for London.
In London Maria has no friends, contacts, or money and starts out badly when she is caught shoplifting for some new clothes to wear. The manager is intent on calling the police but with her sunny disposition and ability to come over as innocently naïve (or is it real?) he soon realises that he can secure payment from her in other ways. Maria has no concerns about providing sex for men in return for other favours but is not predatory or scheming about it - she just shrugs her shoulders and does it. At a café Maria meets a girl her own age called Angela who says she is an actress and is a bit standoffish at first when Maria starts chatting to her and asking her if she knows any places to stay. Angela shares a flat with a girl called Caron and in truth they are both unemployed and have a pervy landlord who is always after them for rent and has made it clear they can pay in other ways which neither of them are inclined to do. So Angela shrewdly calculates that if she lets Maria become their new flatmate they can use her to deflect the landlord's interest. Maria moves in with Angela and Caron unaware of what they have arranged with the landlord and on rent day the two new girls make themselves scarce leaving Maria to find out when the expectant landlord arrives. Maria cottons on fast and with her usual unconcerned gaiety gives the landlord what he wants and does not feel at all aggrieved with Angela and Caron for setting her up since she wants to pay her way. After that they all become best friends with no hidden agendas. Aspiring actress Angela gets an audition for a role in a film with a small production company called Ritzy Film Productions. She gets a shortlist call back and Maria and Caron go with her for moral support. But when the producer Jack Shulton sees Maria he decides to cast her instead and Angela and Caron get consolation supporting parts. Although Shulton exaggerates the project to get the girls interested, in fact what he is making is a cheap sexploitation movie called Flesh In The Fields and the three girls are the only stars. He promises exotic location work after an initial two weeks of filming in cold and windy off-season Broadstairs - although actually that is going to be the only location. Shulton's watchwords are cheapness and penny-pinching and the production suffers - although because the director King Reiter is well-respected the girls think it is all very arty and they put up with the budget conscious conditions. But Reiter has been forced to compromise his artistic integrity and cannot make the film he wants with the meagre budget on offer. At the end of the shoot which is plagued with unexposed cheap film and negatives being scratched in cheap camera equipment, a finished movie is cobbled together and the girls attend the premiere in Brighton. It is in black and white and full of jump-cuts due to bad frames and has been rendered totally incomprehensible - but the girls think this is because it is high-brow and arty. The critics are also fooled and think it was deliberately made to look cheap and hail it a masterpiece. Shulton gets interest from Hollywood studios to use Maria in their next pictures and offer him vast fees for her services and he quickly signs Maria up on a personal contract for a small fraction of this. Maria is delighted and promises to take her two friends along for the ride. The End. | |
| Comment: There is a small side-plot early on when Maria first gets to London (and the reason she went there) in which Maria hires a private detective to find her mother who abandoned her to the social system when she was a baby. Maria is full of hope and excitement at finding her mother but when she does finds her mother really does not want to know. This side-plot doesn't ultimately impact much on the main plot however. | |
| Starring: | Sue Bond (as Maria Carter), Sally Muggeridge (as Angela), Felicity Oliver (as Caron), Ray Chiarella (as Jack Shulton, film producer), Jack May (as King Reiter, film director) |
| Featuring: | Jack Smethurst (as Sam Hed, private detective), Fred Hugh (as Landlord), Anthony Jacobs (as Clothes shop manager) (Film production staff) Neville Barber (as Production Manager), Tony Edwards (as Cameraman), Dennis Adams (as Writer) Denise Stafford (as Mrs Carter, Maria's mother), Tony Lenon (as Gardener at approved school) |
| Starlets: | Linda Dean, Barbara May (as Maria's friends at Approved School) Louisa Livingstone, Jane Spearing, Tony Lee (as Extras on film shoot) Greta Nelson, Susan Shaw (as Auditionees for film) Ann Nicole (as Shop Assistant), Mary Howard (as Shulton's Secretary) |
| NOTES: | |
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The version reviewed carried the title Take Some Girls with the subheading The Story of a High Class Film |
| aka: The Swordsman | |
| Writer: Ellis Hugh Brody / Director: Lindsay Shonteff / Producers: Lindsay Shonteff, Elizabeth Gray | |
| Type: Thriller | Running Time: 87 mins |
| Set in the present day, the film opens with a duel taking place between two master swordsmen who embrace the skills of a bygone era. Reynaud Duval and his rival and former friend Alex Zendor are fighting as if to the death. Duval wins and when Zendor begs for mercy Duval spares him and tells him he must leave the country and never return. Reynaud has an arrogant confidence in his abilities and possesses a charismatic flair that he can use if he so chooses but underneath he has a black heart. He runs his own fencing school but is impatient to inherit his father, Christian Duval's, vast wealth and even though he stands to inherit half he wants it all sharing none with his younger brother Korel. Reynaud forces his wheelchair bound father to sign a new will made over to just himself and then skewers him with his rapier and takes for himself the jade pendant his father always wore as the symbol of head of the family. He then leaves a note supposedly from Zendor claiming it was a revenge killing and that Korel will be next.
Korel arrives home from boarding school for his father's funeral and Reynaud tells him that he was cut out of the will because he was adopted and not a true son of Christian. Korel is astonished by this news and decides to hire a private detective to find his real father. Enter Harriet Zapper, Private Detective and her Chinese assistant Hock who get on with checking adoption agencies but draw a blank with their initial inquiries. Changing the will is not enough for Reynaud however and he wants Korel disposed of as he remains concerned that whilst alive the will could be contested. He sets his girlfriend, Guy Champion, the task of killing him with her crossbow skills but making it look like a rapier attack so that Zendor can be blamed again. After Korel is wounded in a failed attempt on his life Harriet Zapper arranges for him to be put in protective custody whilst she follows a lead to France with some information about Korel's early life. Reynaud is becoming concerned with Harriet's progress and sends Guy off to destroy some incriminating records in France and then kill Harriet. Guy manages to destroy the records in the public records office but is not able to best Harriet and is herself killed. Harriet locates a man called Raberlay who was once Christian Duval's valet when he lived in France. Raberlay tells her that in fact it was Reynaud who was the adopted son and Korel was Christian's true son - this is the information that Reynaud wanted kept suppressed. Raberlay holds an envelope that was to be opened in the event of Christian's death which he gives to Harriet. This contains a map to the location of a buried box which an attached note says contains proof of his two sons' parentage and his real will. Harriet sends Hock to find and dig up the box but he is discovered by Reynaud and killed - the box contained a note saying the key to a safe deposit box was embedded in the jade pendant that Christian always wore - the same one that Reynaud now wears which he took from his father's body. Harriet arrives and proves to be a master swordswoman herself disposing of six of Reynaud's best fencing school students before having a showdown with Reynaud himself. Harriet wins through and the key is revealed when the pendant is smashed and Harriet hands it over to Korel with her job completed. | |
| Starring: | Linda Marlowe (as Harriet Zapper), Alan Lake (Reynaud Duval), Jason Kemp (as Korel Duval), Edina Ronay (as Guy Champion, Reynaud's girlfriend), Tony Then (as Hock, Zapper's assistant) |
| Featuring: | Noel Johnson (as Christian Duval, Reynaud's father), Peter Halliday (as Raberlay) |
| NOTES: | |
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Jason Kemp receives an "introducing" credit. |
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The only nudity in this film is a breasts close-up of Edina Romay's character when Alan Lake use his swordplay skills to cut her top off - but it's an obvious cut-away body double insert. |
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This is a follow up film to Big Zapper (1973) in which Harriet Zapper was first introduced. |
| Writer/Director/Producer: John Boorman | |
| Type: Sci-Fi | Running Time: 101 mins |
| In the far future of 2293, Earth civilisation has broken down and the people now live a basic unsophisticated barbarian existence, surviving off the land, uneducated and warlike. Many centuries beforehand one group of farsighted scientists seeing the great unrest approaching shut themselves away from the outside world inside an impenetrable area they called the vortex - their greatest scientist discovered the secret of immortally and they built a powerful computer called the Tabernacle to control it - they saved for posterity all of mankind's scientific and literary knowledge and its greatest artworks - and finally they erased from their minds the secret of the Tabernacle's construction so they would never be able to destroy it - these people call themselves the Eternals.
Now centuries later the Eternals have learnt everything there is too learn and for most of them their existence is a drudge. They cannot die, they do not age except artificially as an imposed punishment for crimes and misdemeanours. Those who rebel are punished with eternal old age and senility and are called Renegades. Another group of Eternals have become so bored with the tedium of their existence that they have shut-off their minds and live in a trance-like state and are called the Apathetics. The small group of remaining true Eternals have strong psychic abilities and commune with each other in meditatory psychic states. They no longer have sex because there is no need for children - if any Eternal is killed accidentally or by their own hand the Tabernacle simply restores them. One Eternal called Arthur Frayn has the task of managing the tribes of Brutals (as the Eternals call them) on the outside world. He does this by appearing to them as a god called Zardoz whom the people worship and obey. He travels to the Brutal's land in a flying giant stone statue of Zardoz's head and bellows out his instructions from within. Because he is not always there he has selected a special group of Brutals called the Exterminators whom he has armed to keep order amongst their own people which they do with an iron ruthlessness - the Exterminators have been selectively bred by Arthur/Zardoz for higher intelligence and strength and their leader is a man called Zed. Much of the above is back story that gets revealed as the film progresses. But as the film actually begins Zed has stowed away inside the giant Zardoz head as it was collecting the grain harvest that the Brutals are tasked by their god with growing. As Zed arrives in the Eternals land they are curious about him and frightened too not knowing how he came to be here. Some want to kill him immediately, others prefer to study him. So Eternal May is given three weeks to study him before he is put to death. But Zed has planned this infiltration because he wants to learn the truth - in his own land he found an abandoned library - he taught himself how to read and educated himself - when he came to one particular book it changed his total outlook and he realised the god Zardoz was a sham - the book was The Wizard of Oz - a book about a man who tries to control his people with a loud booming voice from behind a frightening mask - and Zed realises this is exactly what is being done to them even down to using the title (wiZARD of OZ) for the god's name. Zed gains the trust of some Eternals who would welcome a release from their life which has become a prison for them. They transfer all their knowledge to Zed's genetically superior brain and he works out how to destroy the Tabernacle. With the computer destroyed the "sentence" of immortality is lifted - Zed's Exterminators are able to enter the vortex and they set about massacring everyone which is joyfully welcomed with blessed thanks by the victims. Those that survive go on to have ordinary life-spans growing old and dying normally. | |
| Starring: | Sean Connery (as Zed), Charlotte Rampling (as Consuella, Eternal), Sara Kestelman (as May, Eternal), John Alderton (as Friend, Renegade Eternal) |
| Featuring: | Sally Anne Newton (as Avalow, Eternal), Niall Buggy (Arthur Frayn/Zardoz, Eternal), Jessica Swift (as Apathetic Eternal) |
| A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) | Previous Next |
| Writer/Director: Peter Greenaway / Producers: Peter Sainsbury, Kees Kasander | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 111 mins |
| The wives of two zoologist brothers die in a car driven by a woman called Alba Bewick when it crashes due to being hit by a swan. The grieving brothers, Oswald and Oliver Deuce, become obsessed by the nature of decay after death and begin a programme of studies on dead animals using time-elapsed photography.
Alba lost a leg in the accident and as she convalesces she is visited by the brothers and has affairs with both of them separately and together. Her somewhat Machiavellian doctor convinces her that she should have her other leg amputated as well to help with her balance and symmetry - his ulterior reason seems to be to make her less attractive to the brothers although this plan completely fails and their sexual interest continues eventually resulting in her becoming pregnant. The brothers reveal to Alba that they are actually twins who were once conjoined and they are now considering an operation to reconnect themselves to each other (although eventually they don't get around to having this done). The brothers' experiments become too obsessive and their employees deny them further use of the zoo facilities. So the brothers set up their continued studies privately. Once Alba's baby is born she decides she is now is ready to die and wants to end her own life. She offers the brothers her body to be photographed in their decomposition studies but after she has died her family veto the idea. So the brothers decide instead to photograph themselves decaying for the furtherance of science. They set up their automatic photographic equipment outdoors in a remote location by a river and then lay side by side to die after giving each other lethal injections. But their sacrifice is completely in vain because overnight the site is overrun by snails which causes the electrical power to fuse leaving their final unattended experiment to continue unrecorded. | |
| Comment: The film is a very disjointed affair lacking in normal narrative focus and hence makes it difficult to become particularly engaged or involved with it. | |
| Starring: | Andréa Ferréol (as Alba Bewick), Brian Deacon (as Oswald Deuce), Eric Deacon (as Oliver Deuce) |
| Featuring: | Frances Barber (as Venus de Milo, seamstress and animal storyteller), Gerard Thoolen (as Van Meegeren, Alba's surgeon), Guusje van Tilborgh (as Caterina Bolnes, Van Meegeren's associate), Jim Davidson (as Zookeeper [Yes, this is the stand-up comedian in an acting role]), Agnès Brulet (as Beta Bewick, Alba's young daughter), Joss Ackland, Ken Campbell |
| Familiar Faces: | Geoffrey Palmer (as Zoo owner) |
| NOTES: | |
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The odd title is simply an elucidation of how to spell "Zoo". |
| Zee and Co (1972) | Previous Next |
| aka: X, Y and Zee | |
| Writer: Edna O'Brien / Director: Brian G. Hutton / Producers: Jay Kanter, Alan Ladd Jr | |
| Type: Drama | Running Time: 103 mins |
| Robert and Zee Blakeley are a married couple who have been together for some years and now have a turbulent relationship which veers from occasional moments when they recapture the old affection they once felt, to heated arguments which usually stem from Robert's open infidelity. Zee is well aware that her husband has casual flings but they never last and he always comes back to her and so she copes with it.
At a party they both attend Zee sees Robert zero-in on an attractive woman called Stella who is a widowed dress designer with two young boys. Robert charms Stella and they arrange to go out on a date and they begin an affair. Zee can see that this woman is different from the others and Robert is getting more serious about her - so she decides she will intervene. The new woman has an air of serenity about her that Zee finds sickening but recognises that Stella's sad vulnerable temperament might seduce her husband and make this woman more than a passing fancy for him. She befriends Stella and playacts like a best friend revealing silly girly secrets that Stella responds to in kind. Zee discovers through this that Stella was once expelled from her school but does not manage to find out quite why. As Robert and Stella get more serious Zee does what she can to make it difficult for the couple to have any privacy and goes out of her way to spoil their arrangements for romantic get togethers. Robert knows what his wife is up to but she is such a strong exuberant personality that he has no way of stopping her. He makes it clear to her how infuriating he is finding her games but his irritation is a sign of success for her. Stella is often on the verge of tears, fearful that they are never going to get any peace to be happy with Robert's wife forever spoiling their arrangements - and she begins to wonder if it's all worth it - which is of course what Zee would have been hoping for. Robert and Stella lease an apartment so they can live together without Zee's interference and Robert has one final night at his family home before moving out. He and Zee have a few melancholy moments as they share reminiscences of when they were happy together and it seems she has at last resigned herself to accept the new situation. She gets a bit drunk and they go to bed in their separate bedrooms. The next morning Robert finds his wife in the bath after having cut her wrists in a suicide attempt. He calls an ambulance and she is saved. The compassionate Stella visits Zee in hospital and it seems the aggrieved wife has come to terms with the break up of her marriage and is now being realistic about it as they have a heartfelt chat about their feelings and inner emotions and Zee speculates that under different circumstances they could have been the best of friends. During this exchange of confidences Stella, taken in by Zee's sincerity, reveals that she was expelled from her convent school for kissing a nun. Zee is still being duplicitous and secretly finds this titbit extremely illuminating. When Zee is better she comes to visit Stella and continues her best friends act. Zee has realised that a little girl would not be expelled for innocently kissing a nun and so Stella must have been a somewhat older girl at the time and motivated by latent urges that might still be within her. Zee uses her own feminine wiles to come on to Stella to test her theory and (although unseen on screen) it is clear they have some sort of lesbian dalliance as Zee manages to reawaken those buried urges. And when Robert comes home to the apartment he realises this too and discovers that he has lost his mistress to his own wife as Zee's cunning wins out. | |
| Starring: | Elizabeth Taylor (as Zee Blakeley), Michael Caine (as Robert Blakeley), Susannah York(as Stella) |
| Featuring: | Margaret Leighton (as Gladys, a society friend), John Standing (as Gordon, gay friend of Zee's), Mary Larkin (as Rita, Robert's personal assistant at work), Michael Cashman (as Gavin, Stella's young assistant at her boutique) |
| NOTES: | |
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The version reviewed carried the US title of X, Y and Zee |
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Elizabeth Taylor's indicated nudity occurs when Michael Caine is pulling her character out of a bath following a suicide attempt - it is rear nudity which is seen and is almost certainly a body double. |
| aka: Alien Women; The Love Factor | |
| Writers: Cort and Alistair McKenzie / Director: Michael Cort / Producer: George Maynard | |
| Type: Comedy / Sci-Fi | Running Time: 82 mins |
| James Word is a secret agent working for Department 5. He is visited by Ann Olsen, his bosses new secretary, who wants to know all about his most recent mission. After a bit of feminine persuasion he tells her a fantastical tale about a race of women called the Agvians...
They live in another dimension without men and have some special powers and fighting skills. Their numbers are made up by Earthwomen who have been kidnapped and converted and are led by Zeta their queen. A rogue agent of Department 5 called Major Bourdon knows about them and wants to discover more so he sends his henchman Swyne to find out who the next woman to be kidnapped is likely to be. She is a stripper called Edwina and Bourdon recruits her giving her a homing device to swallow so that the Angvian base can be traced when she gets kidnapped. Meanwhile Bourdon has captured an Angvian girl of his own and tortures her for information. Later he captures another Angvian girl and uses her as sport in a fox and hounds chase and Zeta sends her fighters to Earth to rescue her and Bourdon is defeated. | |
| Comment: Although Major Bourdon is painted as the villain and his methods of extracting information might be somewhat extreme (he tortures a topless Carol Hawkins on a medieval rack) he only seems to want to find out more about a race of potentially dangerous Earth enemies.
James Word is telling Ann the story although his involvement in the affair seems very minor - he seems to spend most of the time in his apartment with a woman and when he does get assigned to look into the matter by his boss he wanders around the woods during the final stand-off but doesn't get particularly involved. At the end (back in the linking narrative) it transpires that Ann is another Angvian girl who has been sent to find out how much is known about her race and when it turns out to be quite a lot she kidnaps James to serve the race of women as a pampered stud. | |
| Starring: | James Robertson Justice (as Major Bourdon), Charles Hawtrey (as Henchman Swyne), Robin Hawdon (as James Word), Yutte Stensgaard (as Ann Olsen) |
| Featuring: | Anna Gaël, Dawn Addams (as Queen Zeta), Wendy Lingham (as Edwina) |
| Starlets: | Valerie Leon, Carol Hawkins (credited as Carolanne Hawkins), Yolande Del Mar, Brigitte Skay, Also: (as Angvian Girls) Juliet Adams, Gillian Aldam, Tasma Bereton, Kirsten Betts, Hani Borelle, Rina Brown, Fay Browning, Belinda Caren, Yvonne Castelle, Charleine, Jenny Field, Angie Grant, Gilly Grant, Caroline Johnson, Helen Jones, Sandra Kirwan, Linda Lawson, Jenny Le Fre, Olga Linden, Nita Lorraine, Trudi Nielson, Janet Pearce, Angela Pitt, Donna Reading, Vikki Richards, Christine Rigg, Birthe Sector, Erika Simmonds, Countessa Veronica, Jennifer Watts, Jeannette Wild (Many or maybe even all of these are seen topless but only a few are individually recognisable from other films and its impossible to keep track of them from scene to scene as they are all dressed very similarly with identical hairstyles) |
| NOTES: | |
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The opening section has some bizarrely slow-paced padding as Ann and James play a game of strip poker that lasts for over 10 minutes with the sole plot purpose that when she wins she can decide what to do next - which is get him to tell her about the mission. |
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There is a scene when James is entering his headquarters that seems straight out of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. The building's lifts are voice operated and also speak and this one is having a bad day and is in a grumpy mood complaining in a mechanical monotone voice about its lot in life and how people never say thank you when they use its services and halfway up goes on its tea break - and is actually quite an amusing scene. A cross between Marvin and the personality doors from HHGTTG - although of course this film came first. |
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"Fortunately" for the special effect budget the women's special powers are incredibly cheap to reproduce - they point their hand at someone and there is a whooshing sound and the person falls over - no ray beams, smoke, or flashes of light required. |
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The Angvian's favoured fighting attire is wearing next to nothing - some briefs and a few bits of rope slung around their necks and down their fronts is what it amounts to with their breasts entirely bare but for a small circular coverings over their nipples. Seventies Carry On dolly-bird favourite Valerie Leon is the fighting leader and looks suitably impressive in her only known topless role (unless one is being picky because they cover up their nipples). |
| Writers: Cy Endfield, Anthony Storey / Director: Douglas Hickox / Producer: Nate Kohn | |
| Type: Historical Drama | Running Time: 111 mins |
| In January 1879 in the South African republic of Natal the British have conquered and occupied part of the land which has been wholly claimed as part of the British Empire and its peoples considered subjects of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The aristocratic elite of polite British society live in uneasy proximity to the native Zulu tribes who occupy the land on the other side of Buffalo river. An understanding has been formed that the two cultures will tolerate the others presence provided the river border is respected and neither side tries to attack the other.
However a decree comes from Queen Victoria that the savage nature of the Zulu, who live by bloodthirsty laws and customs abhorrent to civilised society, cannot be tolerated amongst those that are now considered British subjects. The Zulu king Cetshwayo is issued with an ultimatum that his people must change their ways and respect British sovereignty and its codes of behaviour. The king forthrightly declines to accede to this impudence and is much more concerned with his peoples gathering their harvest for the year - but he restates his commitment to respect the land the British currently occupy. The British contingent of military forces commanded by Lord Chelmsford are concerned that the Zulus may attack with their vastly superior forces reputed to number 30,000 or more in contrast to the British numbers of just a few thousand. So the decision is made that the only way to defend against the threat they pose is to attack pre-emptively - confident that superior long-range weaponry can easily overcome an enemy fighting with spears and shields. Thus Britain declares war on the Zulu people. The British send their infantry regiments across the river and into Zululand and set up camp at Rorke's drift at the foot of a mountain. The precise disposition of the Zulu forces is not known and so Lord Chelmsford splits his forces to guard against all possible directions believing he can easily outsmart the crude intelligence of the natives. But although not as well equipped as the British, the Zulus are far from stupid and employ very shrewd battle tactics to feed false intelligence which leads their overconfident enemy into spreading its already inferior forces too thinly. When the main battle comes the Zulu impi warriors swarm over the mountain in their seemingly never-ending thousands. The mere thousand or so British defending at Isandlwana fire their rifles and cannon into their midst killing many hundreds but barely denting the onrush. Soon the British are overwhelmed and forced to engage in hand-to-hand combat to which the Zulu impi are far better suited and the British line becomes disorganised and forced to fight in retreat. Eventually all the British soldiers are massacred and Lord Chelmsford later returns from his scouting expedition to view the carnage resulting from his foolhardy excursion which has resulted in the greatest defeat of a modern army at the hands of native people in history. | |
| Starring: | Peter O'Toole (as Lord Chelmsford, overall commander of British forces), Burt Lancaster (as Colonel Durnford, officer who has some doubts over tactics) |
| Featuring: | (The remainder of the roles were on the whole of a short cameo nature with their characters only popping in for short intervals) Here are a selection of the best known names: Simon Ward, Denholm Elliott, Peter Vaughan, James Faulkner, Christopher Cazenove, Bob Hoskins, Nigel Davenport, Michael Jayston, Ronald Pickup, Ronald Lacey, Chris Chittell, John Mills, Freddie Jones, Anna Calder-Marshall |
| NOTES: | |
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The events of this movie precede those in the movie Zulu (1964) which dealt with a further engagement between British and Zulu forces a short time later precipitated by the events told here. The two films feature different sets of characters and are not really sequel/prequel other than historically. |
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