Drama – The Magnificent 60s

A Man for All Seasons (1966) ****

Columbia offset the gamble of turning an award-winning play with a stage star with no movie marquee luster, a co-star who had just about the same pulling power for audiences, and a host of actors nobody had ever heard of by cutting the budget to the bone – the $ 2million spent would barely be enough for a mid-level Hollywood production – even though director Fred Zinnemann belonged in the upper reaches of the Oscar hierarchy with one win and six nominations to his name.

You could even argue that the best-known person in the cast was female lead Susannah York (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965, The 7^th Dawn, 1964) or the legendary Orson Welles or even screenwriter Robert Bolt, acclaimed for his work on Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965).

Movie audiences of the period would be hard put to even recognize male lead Paul Scofield, in only his second major screen role after The Train (1964), while Robert Shaw had little more popularity unless you were familiar with From Russia with Love (1963) in which he played a bad guy and Battle of the Bulge (1965). There was a fair chance that Scofield could hit the mark among the upscale stage audiences in London and New York, where he had won a Tony. The play, by Robert Bolt, had proved substantially more popular in terms of length of run and critical esteem in New York than London.

But Zinnemann hadn’t made a picture in six years, not since The Sundowners (1960), having become embroiled in two projects The Day Custer Died (never made) and Hawaii (made but without him) without anything to show for it.

This was a virtue-signaling picture long before the term became over-used. England’s Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield) makes a principled stand against King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw). From today’s perspective, the principled stand is more complex. The idea that the ruler of a country would have to bend the knee to the leader of a religion would not sit well today. You might be unlikely to blame Henry VIII for wanting to break the rules, given he was in dire need of a male heir that his current wife could not supply, especially as without said heir the country would most likely fall into civil war.

You could make a case for Henry VIII being the heroic one, standing up to the Pope, who, for political reasons, as much as anything else, refused to annul the king’s existing marriage. When the Pope didn’t see it the king’s way, Henry VIII decided the only alternative was to break away from the Catholic Church and set himself up as the secular head of the church in England.

And although Thomas More has a fair following today for his philosophy – he wrote Utopia – Robert Bolt was guilty of leaving out aspects of his character which were more unsavory. He was a prime mover in the persecution of Protestants, condemned as “heretics,” but that’s been excised from the story told here in order to present Thomas More as a man of conscience.

Apart from the verbal duel between More and Henry VIII, there’s a rich backdrop of political machination bringing in such names as Thomas Cromwell (Leo McKern) – of Wolf Hall fame – Cardinal Wolsey (Orson Welles), the Duke of Norfolk (Nigel Davenport), William Roper (Corin Redgrave) and Richard Rich (John Hurt). There’s corruption, bribery and betrayal and at times it appears that More is the only one to place any significance on the law.

But More’s no innocent, he’s well used to playing the political game and arguing his case. He only becomes undone by his stand against a king who will brook no opposition.

Paul Scofield has a fine time of it with a well-developed character, gently spoken, appealing to sense and sensibility, and generally well loved by the populace. Although in retrospect I think other Oscar nominees Richard Burton for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Michael Caine for Alfie might have been more deserving of the Oscar gong.

Robert Shaw makes a fine opponent, tempering the monarch’s known bluster with a sense of humor. While Paul Scofield tended to steer clear of Hollywood except for films like Scorpio (1973), Robert Shaw went immediately into the male lead in Custer of the West (1967) and eventually became a genuine draw.

The uncredited Vanessa Redgrave (Blow-Up, 1966) was otherwise the star-picker’s pick. Future years would invest greater luster in the supporting cast. John Hurt (Sinful Davey, 1969) the first to be given a tilt at marquee splendor. Leo McKern (Assignment K, 1968) achieved small-screen deification through Rumpole of the Bailey (TV series, 1978-1992). Colin Blakely (The Vengeance of She, 1968) played Dr Watson in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970).

Robert Bolt deserved his Oscar for the considerable work he put in to converting his stage version for the screen. The staging looks quite stagey to me, but Zinnemann did an excellent job of adding the necessary richness and ensuring the tale was rounded-out.

Not sure I’d place it in the Top Fifty Best-Ever British Films, but it’s still enjoyable even though you might take issue with the issues presented.

The Born Losers (1967) ***

The indie movement wasn’t embraced back in the day the way it is now. Occasionally an indie auteur would find favor – John Cassavetes (Shadows, 1958), for example – although it was another decade before he made another movie that carried his particular stamp. With such an abundance of movies arriving from Sweden, Italy and France, critics didn’t have to go far to find material from outside the limited Hollywood prism that they could pump up and make themselves feel important.

So indie writer-producer-director-actor Tom Laughlin failed to gain notice. There had been no upsurge of critical support for his first two features, The Young Sinner (1961) and The Proper Time (1962), both of whose subject matters should have generated some coverage. In fact, they’re still ignored, not a single reviews for either on Imdb unless you count TV Guide. So when he came to his third picture, The Born Losers, he hid behind anonymity, the movie helmed by “T.C. Frank” and produced by “Don Henderson” with “James Lloyd” (in reality female lead Elizabeth James) allocated the screenwriting credit.

And it was, ostensibly, a biker pic, so no self-respecting critic was going to give it the time of day even though The Wild Angels – 83 critical reviews on Imdb – the previous year had attracted attention though largely through its nepo cast, Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra the children of Hollywood legends, in which the bikers were cast as innocent victims of authority.

So critics failed to note that The Born Losers was pretty much the first movie with an ecological theme and that it was probably only the second to deal with racism against Native Americans – Abraham Polonsky, on the other hand, got massive critical mileage for covering the same theme in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969).

And there’s nothing redemptive about these bikers, not given a free pass as in Wild Angels or deified as in Easy Rider (1969). But the picture certainly emphasizes their attraction, especially to teenage females entranced by what they view as an exciting alternative to Dullsville, USA. Girls are seduced by the image of bikers being akin to old-style cowboys, pioneers of the west enjoying a freedom few others dared even pursue. In the Californian sun girls jiggle around in bikinis, excited at the revving bikes.

Nor is Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin) the kind of two-fisted vigilante protector of the underdog as exemplified by Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. In fact, where Eastwood and Bronson generally dodge judgement of their maverick style, Billy Jack gets into more trouble with the law for preventing a young man being beaten to death than the bikers attempting to beat the victim to death.

But unlike the Eastwood and Bronson vehicles, the actor Laughlin isn’t center stage all the time. And that’s primarily what makes the picture work. The director in Laughlin is very even-handed, covering the various aspects that produce a more than tolerable narrative and one that also reflected what would be a later Hollywood trope, the victims too frightened to come forward for fear of further retaliation.

There’s an unusually idyllic opening for a biker picture that telegraphs to the audience this going to be different, Billy Jack surviving with ease in the mountains and bathing under a waterfall. Likewise, Laughlin allows time to build up the two other main characters. Equally, unusually, they both have daddy issues. Wealthy Vicky (Elizabeth James) is devastated when her globe-trotting father fails to turn up for a long-promised rendezvous and biker leader Danny (Jeremy Slate) defies his bullying cop father, who spits in his son’s face. Whatever judgement you pass on the rest of Danny’s actions, he passes muster as a father, affectionately ruffling his son’s hair, and as a brother, standing up for his younger sibling.

You might also be surprised at the fashion statements. Vicky is decked out like Audrey Hepburn with those trademark sunglasses and is apt to take to the road on her two-wheeler wearing a white bikini. Danny wears an ironic version of the Hepburn shades. Whether Vicky’s ensemble is a deliberate attempt to draw comparison with Nancy Sinatra is anybody’s guess but the white boots the college girl wears are remarkably similar to the footwear in Sinatra’s most famous hit.

Once Billy Jack heads for the town, seeking work as a horse wrangler, he hits trouble in part due to overt racism, in part because he refuses to be a bystander when the authorities and citizens fail to act.

There’s an audacious jump-cut that would be the hallmark of more critically-acclaimed directors such as Tarantino, and a scene of bikers arriving over the hill that’s reminiscent of John Ford westerns. And there’s a hint of homosexuality.

Five rapes take place offstage, but their harrowing consequence is not passed over. Mental health is damaged beyond repair, LuAnn (Julie Cohn) afraid to show her face in public, while Vicky is treated as a freak. With the town boasting its “weakest sheriff” and the girls capitulating to intimidation, it’s left to Linda Prang (Susan Foster) to agree to go to court. Luann, though under police protection, is kidnapped, and the bikers capture Vicky and Billy Jack, both girls facing further rape.

There are three stunning twists. Vicky, rather than Billy Jack, saves the day, sacrificing herself to save the Native American. Linda confesses she wasn’t raped, but had gone of her own free will with the bikers before and after the rape charge, in order to spite her mother because the bikers were “everything you hate.” And once justice is done Billy Jack is mistakenly shot by the cops.

While Billy Jack occasionally intervenes, mostly he’s outnumbered and beaten up, so he doesn’t fit the same template as Eastwood and Bronson. And that’s also to the picture’s benefit. This isn’t about the male hero, but male shortcomings and female suffering.

While there’s no great acting, the story is decently-plotted and the emotional jigsaw knits together.

Worth a look, but not if you’re expecting a typical biker picture.

The Visit (1964) *****

Wow! How has this sailed under the radar? Not only does two-time (at this point) Oscar-winner Ingrid Bergman shred her screen persona as the loved one in a romantic interlude or as the victim, but she turns into one of the most chilling femme fatales you can imagine. Made today, this would be termed “High Concept”. But it’s better than that, it’s concept heaven, such a brilliant idea and superbly executed.

From the moment widowed billionaire Karla Zachanassian (Ingrid Bergman), dressed in white like a Hollywood star, steps off a train and cuts the waiting townspeople dead with a haughty look only to seconds later seduce them with a warm smile, you can guess this is going nowhere near where you’d expect.

The train wasn’t scheduled to stop. She merely pulled the emergency cord as if her wealth was excuse enough. And she was only on the train because she wanted to make an entrance. For, as it transpires, her chauffeur is in attendance.

The town is bankrupt and in the way of the small-minded the townspeople imagine that the only reason she could be returning to the place where she could grew up twenty years after she left would be to rescue Guellen from its financial misery. So the townspeople are ready with a parade and welcome banners and fine speeches. Former lover Serge (Anthony Quinn), though now married to Mathilda (Valentina Corsese), is happy to play his part and recall their romance, visit the barn where they made love for the first time, as if she has returned only to satisfy memory.

But that’s not the reason. She has a different recollection of events and while she’s willing to play the role of the returning benefactor, offering the town one million and another million to be shared equally among the townspeople, there’s a condition. She wants revenge for being humiliated. Serge – who had thrown Karla over in favour on the daughter of a richer man – denied her child was his and bribed false witnesses so she was sent packing, with prostitution her only option and the child dead within a year.

So now the townspeople can show themselves to be principled, refusing to encourage her barbaric sense of justice, or, more likely, start to nip away at the idea of justice when there’s a bounty of two million at stake. Karla sits on her balcony dressed to the nines twirling her parasol and sipping an iced drink watching like a hawk chaos unfold below or lounges in her room feeding red meat on a toasting fork to a caged cheetah.

There’s some interesting satire on both bureaucracy and democracy – should people be banned from voting on such a sensitive subject or should democracy insist otherwise. And while ostensibly the powers-that-be back Serge, he gets a shock when he realizes the ordinary people have starting buying new shoes and clothes on credit in anticipation of the bounty and the going rate for an assassin is just two thousand. Soon the town is overwhelmed with retailers selling fancy goods – cars, fridges, televisions, fashion items – on credit. There’s time, too, for other stories to play out in realistic fashion.

There’s a brilliant sequence where Serge is hunted through the streets by men with rifles on the erroneous (or deliberately erroneous) belief that he’s been mistaken for a wild animal and even his wife deserts him. The climax is absolutely stunning.

There would have been many parallels at the time – Communist witch hunt, the persecution of the Jews – but from today’s perceptive it’s more like a capitalist witch hunt or judgement on a “good” society.

Anthony Quinn (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) bought the rights because he realized Serge was a terrific part but as producer he made the mistake (or touch of genius) in hiring Ingrid Bergman (Goodbye Again, 1961). Without doubt she stole the show. Amazing that she wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar given the chilling portrayal she delivered.

Directed by Bernhard Wicki (Morituri / Code Name Morituri, 1965). Adapted by Ben Barzman (The Heroes of Telemark, 1965) and Maurice Valency (The Madwoman of Chaillott, 1969) from the play by Friedrich Durrenmatt.

When you see how hard today’s “visionaries” strive to come up with meaningful tales of a serious nature or examinations of “the human condition,” you can see how much they fall short compared to this well thought-out drama.

I was blown away.

80,000 Suspects (1963) ***

Eschews the X-cert terror of some of the end-of-the-world efforts of the period such as The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) and Day of the Triffids (1963) in favor of a more solid documentary-style approach and focusing on the tangled love lives of the main characters. There’s a distinctly British tone. People form long, orderly queues to receive an injection to combat a sudden epidemic of smallpox and police and any kind of hard-line enforcement plays a minor role. And the medical boffins in charge act more like detectives, tracking down potential infected individuals, engaging in door-to-door street-by-street hunts for those carrying the virus, maps are drawn, areas blocked off. There are deadlines and countdowns. Doctors are disinfected, clothes are incinerated and corpses cremated. So there’s enough tension to keep everyone on their toes.

But most of the emotional muscle is not by asking an audience to empathize or sympathize with those in danger or whose lives are suddenly cut short. But by concentrating on the impact of adultery on two couples. Dr Steven Monks (Richard Johnson), who identified the presence of smallpox in the large town of Bath with 80,000 people potentially at risk, is suspected by retired nurse wife Julie (Claire Bloom) of having an affair with glamorous Ruth (Yolande Donlan), wife to Monks’ stuffy colleague and friend Dr Clifford Preston (Michael Goodliffe).

The Monks are on the verge of going abroad on holiday when the smallpox disrupts their plans, although it’s Julie who appears the more principled and dutiful of the two, her husband being all set to head off and leave someone else to sort out the mess.

To make sure emotions are not sidelined by the scale of the epidemic, Dr Monks and wife are kept in the thick of it, the stakes rising dramatically when Ruth catches the disease. That triggers the most interesting – and original – sequence of the drama. When Steven thinks his wife is in danger of dying his feelings for her surge, but when she recovers, his ardor dampens down. He receives another kick in the teeth when he discovers that his lover Ruth has another fancy man.

So quite a lot of this is couples trying to work out their feelings, and it doesn’t follow the usual cliché, even though Julie is somewhat short-changed by the script in not being allowed to rage against her husband but passively accept his adultery. Dr Preston is more insightful, able to accept that his best friend has betrayed him, but sympathizing rather than condemning his wife because he knows that none of her adultery has brought her any happiness. It helps both of the Monks to have a wise padre (Cyril Cusack) available to listen to their troubles.

Though the epidemic is well drawn with plenty location work capturing the times, really the story is more about a pair of adventurous lovers, Steven and Ruth, landed with a pair of dullards in Ruth and Clifford, and making the necessary adjustments.

This was the first top-billed role of the career of British actress Claire Bloom (Three into Two Won’t Go, 1969) despite arriving on the scene in a blaze of leading lady glory. The Buccaneer (1958) opposite Yul Brynner and Look Back in Anger (1959) opposite Richard Burton should have been enough of a calling card, but she drifted to Germany and then television before another leading lady stint in The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) before tumbling down the credits for The Chapman Report (1962).

And except that she had outranked Richard Johnson in The Haunting (1963), you might wonder why she achieved top-billing here when Richard Johnson (Deadlier than the Male, 1967) has the bigger role. In theory, Bloom has the better role, she’s a victim of disease and has to cope with an unfaithful husband, but its Johnson who faces the bigger predicament in coming to terms with a love for Bloom that is at its peak only when he risks losing her.

High-spirited Yolande Donlan (Jigsaw, 1962) steals the early scenes. Decent support in Cyril Cusack (Day of the Jackal, 1973), Mervyn Johns (Day of the Triffids), Ray Barrett (The Reptile, 1966) and former big marquee attraction Kay Walsh (Oliver Twist, 1948).

Val Guest (The Day the Earth Caught Fire) has to duck and weave with this one to ensure the human drama isn’t buried by the impending disaster – and vice-versa. Written by Guest based on the novel by Elleston Trevor (The Flight of the Phoenix, 1965).

An interesting watch.

Airport (1970) ****

Thundering entertainment from an era when they made movies to appeal to audiences and not to placate the overweening ego of over-entitled directors. I first saw this in 1970 when it was selected as one of three films (the others being Cromwell and The Virgin and the Gypsy) to open the new Odeon triplex in Glasgow, and, thanks to my own in-built movie snobbery, haven’t seen it since. So this was a revelation.

Let’s start with the running time. Made now this would be an overblown 150 minutes (at least) stuffed full of extraneous scenes. But let’s start with the opening. The screen is dark. Yes, absolutely dark. What? Is this some kind of arthouse venture? And it remains dark for about 20 seconds though by now sound has been added, a general hubbub of commotion. Are you sure this isn’t arthouse? Had this been directed by Scorsese or Coppola (who, in fact, used a similar device to open The Godfather, 1972) critics would have picked it up.

John Frankenheimer for Grand Prix (1966) and Norman Jewison for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) were praised for their use of the split screen, another aspect ignored here by critics. Yet split screen is not only impressively utilized, but, on occasion, it has a humorous quality, as the screen not only splits in two but accommodates other shapes in between or round about. Did anyone mention the use of the wipe? A cinematic technique scarcely employed in the mainstream since Seven Samurai (1954).

Several narrative plates regarding relationships spin in the air while the movie sharpens focus to concentrate on resolving three major incidents involving airplanes. The first is shifting a jet stuck in the snow during a huge snowstorm and blocking off one entire runway. The airport is already under pressure, what with the storm curtailing other flights and forcing others to dive for cover. Then we have a bomber, planning to wreck the plane mid-ocean to claim on the insurance, but when his plan goes awry and he blows out the toilet of the plane, the crew have to bring it down, safety jeopardized by the jet stuck on the ground.

You always know how disaster pictures are going to end, maybe the only guesswork concerns who will actually survive, and it’s an incredible credit to this movie that I felt the tension constantly rippling through me as we hit the various climactic episodes.

On the ground airport manager Mel (Burt Lancaster) is trying to shift the stuck aircraft while dealing with irate wife Cindy (Dana Wynter) and keeping on track his illicit relationship with PR manager Tanya (Jean Seberg). This is on top of a) wrangling with an airport executive who refuses to expand the airport to meet overwhelming demand and whose only reaction to impending crisis is to close the airport down, b) dealing with local citizens furious that plans are rattling their houses, and c) taking flak from brother-in-law and ace pilot Vernon (Dean Martin).

Up in the air Vernon has his work cut out coming to terms with the pregnancy of girlfriend Gwen (Jacqueline Bisset) – always having used his marriage as an excuse not to get emotionally involved with his string of girlfriends – and with a 70-year-old stowaway Ada (Helen Hayes) and bomber D.O. Guerrero (Van Heflin) and then bringing in the stricken plane.

We’re tossed a few red herrings on the passenger manifest. Spot a nun and a priest in a disaster picture and you’re generally in for cliché overload. Here, instead, they are used for humor, the nun taking a swig of whisky under pressure and the priest whacking a belligerent passenger. And the charming Ada is on land given very sympathetic treatment given the thousands of dollars she’s conned out of airlines over the years, but that’s only to set her up for some harsh treatment on board.

There’s an unexpected twist with the bomber. For a few minutes it looks like the crew are going to win the day but then calamity strikes. Meanwhile, on the ground troubleshooter Joe (George Kennedy), huge cigar constantly in place in the mouth, has taken charge of shifting the stuck plane and in the end has to take drastic action.

And in little telling snippets director George Seaton plays fair with the wives who lose out, Mrs Guerrero (Maureen Stapleton) and Mrs Demerest (Barbara Hale) while allowing Mrs Bakersfield to deliver a come-uppance to her errant husband – she’s been playing away too.

The decision to pack this full of more genuine stars than you ever got in a roadshow – mostly the cast list was padded out with newcomers or stars past their best (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) – reversed this with genuine stars in supporting roles and newcomers in the leading roles) Both Oscar-winning Burt Lancaster (The Professionals, 1966) and Dean Martin after the Matt Helm series and a bunch of westerns were genuine top-notch marquee names. Jean Seberg had just hit a career box office high with Paint your Wagon (1969). After Bullitt (1968) Jacqueline Bisset’s star was on the rise. Oscar-winner George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) was top-billed in Guns of The Magnificent Seven (1969).

And there was a heck of a strong supporting cast: Van Heflin (Once a Thief, 1965), Dana Wynter (Sink the Bismarck!, 1960), Barbara Hale (Perry Mason series, 1957-1966). Oscar-winner Helen Hayes (she won in 1932) and Maureen Stapleton (Bye, Bye, Birdie, 1963) proved the pick, the former here winning a second Oscar, the latter nominated. Apart from Van Heflin, Seaton had gone for character actors rather than stars – Wynter hadn’t made a movie in a decade, for Stapleton it was seven years, for Hayes 14 years and Hale one film in over a decade.

You’d be laughed out of town these days if (outside of sci-fi) you tried to saddle a star with chunks of exposition or technical detail, but here the force of the screen personalities of Lancaster, Martin and Kennedy makes you hang on their every word.

They didn’t have prizes in those days for ensemble acting, but if they had this would surely be in contention, as director George Seaton, in his capacity as screenwriter, ensures that no one is left out and even if it’s only with a look we learn everything we need to know about a character’s emotional life.

Given this was – to use Christopher Nolan’s favorite phrase – “shot in camera” this is a terrific technical achievement in terms of the airplane action especially the stuck plane trying to hirple it way out of trouble.

Director George Seaton (36 Hours, 1964) took ill during production and exterior sequences were filmed by Henry Hathaway (True Grit, 1969). A mention, too, for the driving score by Alfred Newman, in his last screen assignment. It was nominated for 10 Oscars including Best Picture.

More than demands a reassessment.

Run Wild, Run Free (1969) ****

Surprisingly absorbing, precisely because of the distinct lack of the soppiness or mawkishness associated with the genre. Nature “red in tooth and claw” scarcely puts in an appearance and even then is a good bit less dangerous than a wanton child unable to understand or control his emotions. Parents are very well-drawn, too, in an era that scarcely ran to much comprehension about child psychology, a mother rejecting her son because she is convinced he has rejected her, a traditional father who lacks the skills to convey his love for his son. And you wouldn’t get away these days with an old fellow taking more than a passing interest in a small bewildered boy with the audience immediately conjuring up images of abuse.

The film also prefigures the Gaia movement. Both the old fellow and his young charge are given to lying prostate on the grass, the better to listen to the beating heart of the Earth. And you wouldn’t think of pinning this one on director Richard C. Sarafian, best known for his biker epic Vanishing Point (1971). Far less imagine how you’d get a whole stack of actors to spend a great deal of time wading through a swamp “in camera” rather than utilizing some form of CGI or to volunteer their fingers to be bitten by a predatory bird.

If you’re searching for the kind of twist that’s so common these days, look no further than the location. Those wild moors look fantastic in the sunshine, especially for compositions that outline characters against the sky, but they’re treacherous too, when the fog comes down and you’re trapped without a signpost home, and they’re not all hard grass or spurs or rock but conceal sections of perilous swamp.

Living on the edge of the moors, small wonder Philip (Mark Lester) is attracted, even as a toddler, to the wilderness. That’s exacerbated when he’s afflicted by muteness after developing a stammer around the age of four. It’s assumed there’s a psychosomatic cause, but we’ve got no time and the parents no inclination to dwell upon that.

He develops an obsession with a wild white pony, one of a herd that runs free on the moors, and spends most of his time out trying to find it. Col Ransome (John Mills), nature lover and amateur ornithologist, befriends Philip, helping him to understand nature, and teaching him to ride – bareback – the pony. Ransome also shows him to manage a kestrel.

Scenes of characters working with horses or other animals are usually limited to bit of nose stroking or whispering to calm said animal down, but here we go into a lot more intricate detail of how to win the cooperation of a horse, the kind of lore that nobody’s got much time for these days. So if you want to ride a horse bareback first off you need to just lie on top across its back and stroke its sides. And for a predator, you have to be willing to accept the occasional peck on your fingers while, again, you evoke a stroking mechanism. You might also be surprised to learn that the easiest way to mend a broken wing is by the use of glue.

While Philip and the Colonel and a young girl Diana (Fiona Fullerton) are happily communing with nature, Mr Ransome (Gordon Jackson) and wife (Sylvia Syms) are scarcely able to work out their feelings at being abandoned by their child. The mother tends to get angry, the father, in a very touching scene, is left desolate after Philip ignores a present the father believes would have brought more solidity to their relationship, and in another effective scene it’s the Colonel who explains that it doesn’t take much for a child to understand how devoted an apparently distant father can be.

Any potential soppiness is killed off when Philip in a wild fit of obsession nearly kills the kestrel and in another sequence of disregard almost kills the horse. Occasionally, Philip speaks a few words to the old man but refuses to express himself in front of the parents. So it will come as little surprise that when the parents finally hear the son speak it’s at the quite gripping climax when all the adults have failed to rescue the white horse from a swamp.

And anyone expecting that cute kid from Oliver! (1968) would have their hopes dashed when Mark Lester displays all the natural truculence and wantonness of a child. He’s pretty good, I have to say, in being forced to confine his emotions to facial expression.

John Mills (Guns at Batasi, 1964) is excellent and Sylvia Syms (East of Sudan, 1964), shorn of glamor, and Gordon Jackson (The Ipcress File, 1965) as her emotionally inarticulate husband, both dump their screen personas in favor of highly believable characters. Fiona Fullerton makes her screen debut.

Richard C. Sarafian does a splendid job. Screenplay by David Rook based on his novel.

Emotionally true.

Saltburn (2023) **

With the arrival of Emerald Fennell’s latest epic Wuthering Heights (or to give it it’s full title “Wuthering Heights” – yes, don’t ask me!) imminent I thought I’d go back to Saltburn and see if my second impression was any better than my first.

Alas, I was right first time. Another “visionary” director disappearing up their own backside, despite having a superb cast at their disposal including Oscar-nominated Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein, 2025, and now Wuthering Heights), Oscar-nominated Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin, 2022) and Oscar-nominated Rosamund Pike (Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, 2025).

There wasn’t enough in a second viewing to convince me to spend a whole lot of my time revising my original review, so what follows is an expanded version of my first attempt.

Brideshead Revisited Meets Carry On Downton Abbey. Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the way it was actually pitched, it’s just so uneven, veering through several different styles without ever finding a target. The shock elements are, unfortunately, just risible. Via the trailer this appeared to be a moody, atmospheric picture about entitlement, the downside, if you like, of Downton Abbey.

Instead, it’s just plain barmy, which might well have worked if its take on the bizarre had been consistent, but, really it’s a contender for the coveted So-Bad-It’s-Good Award with Rosamund Pike odds-on to nab the award for the best Maggie Smith impression. .

Oliver (Barry Keoghan) is supposedly a scholarship student at Oxford, coming from a sinkhole estate in Liverpool, parents drug dealers etc etc. Out of his depth, by chance he latches on to sex god Felix (Jacob Elordi) and is invited to spend the summer at the latter’s stately home complete with sneering butlers and demonic family, all graduates of the Over-Acting Academy.

Turns out we’ve not been watching Downton Abbey at all, but The Usual Suspects, Oliver not an innocent little bookworm after all but an extremely malevolent character who manages – in the absence (luckily) of post-mortem or any forensic examination– to bump off the entire family in order to inherit (don’t ask!) Saltburn in order to, in a bizarre nod to Risky Business, dance naked through it.

The only reason it gets any points at all is Jacob Elordi, who exhibits tremendous screen charisma, and because the barmy extremely self-centred and out-of-it Rosamund Pike does elicit a few laughs and maybe, courtesy of Richard E. Grant, has a haircut to enter some kind of Hall of Fame.

The shock elements are hilarious as though someone of school age has decided they are really going to shock mummy and daddy. So we’ve got Oliver licking up Felix’s leftover sperm in the bath, the various deaths and the stark naked (are you shocked now?) Risky Business homage.

Jacob Elordi has since come good. He was a believable Elvis in Priscilla (2023), excellent in On Swift Horses (2024) and superb as Frankenstein and possibly still in with a shout of becoming our next James Bond. Barry Keoghan hasn’t come good, at least in the commercial sense, second-billed in Bird (2024) and Bring Them Down (2024) and third-billed in Hurry Up, Tomorrow (2025). For all I know he may be content to plough the arthouse furrow but given his presence – and third-billed again – in the forthcoming big-budget Crime 101 that doesn’t seem to be the case, though it is true it sometimes takes a while for new faces to find a way to fit in.

It’s a shame really because spoofing Downton Abbey or Brideshead Revisited for that matter can be done with considerable ease as the recent Fackham Hall has proved.

Witchfinder General / The Conqueror Worm (1968) ****

For 250 years Europe and America was in the grip of a man-made plague. Ever since Pope Innocent VIII declared war on supposed witches in 1584, tens of thousands were arrested, tortured and hung or burned to death. Although Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is considered the last word on the subject, in fact it treats very lightly the physical degradation visited upon victims and the corruption that was at the heart of the disaster. And sure, cinema has poked its nose into the area of possession, most recently with the supposed final act of the The Conjuring series, and while items like The Immaculate (2024) and The Handmaid’s Tale series focus on female subjugation, none of these exposes the full horror of witchcraft accusation.

The British censor bristled at the violence depicted in this film, and the picture was censored to a degree, while movie critics howled at the film’s “sadism.” Yet though the film is a raw depiction of the terrors inflicted on the innocent – male and female – by a corrupt male hierarchy, it scarcely touches the surface of the tsunami of wanton killing and terror.

So this serves as a welcome reminder of that awful age. While romantic leads Richard (Ian Ogilvy) and Sarah (Hilary Dwyer) are insipid, Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price), the self-appointed Witchfinder General, and his gang of thugs led by John Stearne (Robert Russell) are not, and the enormous delight they take in torturing the innocent is what drives the picture. Set in an England in 1645 riven by civil war, where the forces of law and order are in disarray, Hopkins takes delight in profiting from the lack of opposition to his reign of terror.

While Vincent Price (The Oblong Box, 1969) manages to resist the temptation to be overblown and his subdued performance carries ominous weight, it’s the unusual approach of director Matthew Reeves (The Sorcerers, 1967) that makes this a standout. He’s not making a horror picture, but a historical one. Not just are their nods to a specific time period, he bypasses the Gothic, the movie taking place mostly in daylight rather than nighttime, and his visual composition stands comparison with the best of the 1960s roadshows rather than standard Hammer or AIP offerings.

Hopkins delegates the actual torture to his underlings, retaining for himself the more subtle pleasure of blackmailing women into providing him with sex and walking off with a fat purse from local dignitaries for his troubles.

When he descends on any town or village, there will be a price to pay in human ruin. He picks on the village of Brandstone in Sussex and begins to torture local priest John Lowes (Rupert Davies), driving him to exhaustion by endlessly racing him up and down a room before his accomplices can get down to the serious business of plunging long needles into his naked body. Virtually all the weapons in the witch hunter’s armory are of the Catch 22 category. Nothing you do will present as innocent and then you are headed for the gallows or lowered alive into a bonfire.

Luckily for Lowes, his niece Sarah is sweet on Roundhead officer Richard, applauded for his courage in battle, and he attempts to come to her rescue. Unfortunately for her, he is called back to duty before he can save anybody and it’s only by sacrificing herself to Hopkins that Sarah believes she can save her uncle. That turns out to be the worst of the calumnies Hopkins visits upon the innocent, as once he has had his fun he just condemns the old man anyway, and the daughter to boot. And although audiences might wince at the torture it was only fraction of the pain inflicted on the victims who might well end up confessing to witchcraft just to get the agony over with. In my hometown of Paisley, seven witches were executed a few years after Salem on the accusations of an 11-year-old girl – The Renfrewshire Witch Trials has just been published on Amazon should you be interested – which shows the absolute contrivance of the authorities in ruthlessly hunting out victims on the slightest pretense.

It’s a shame that neither Ian Ogilvy (The Sorcerers) nor Hilary Dwyer (The Oblong Box) are equipped to show the depths of despair of their characters, but in some sense this is not their story, except as examples of victims, and the tale really belongs to the venal butchers who took advantage of a climate of fear. These days, it shows up almost as a quasi-documentary and that’s to its benefit.

Written by the director and Tom Baker (The Sorcerers) based on the bestseller by Ronald Bassett. For its U.S. release, AIP snuck in a poem by Edgar Allan Poe which explains the U.S. title The Conqueror Worm.

Interest in this movie is unfairly attributed to the cult status it acquired after the premature death of the director – this was the last of his three films – but in fact it sits easily in the well-wrought historical movies of the period, handsomely mounted and unflinching.

Dingaka (1964) ****

Whether you appreciate this will depend on whether you were attracted by the prospect of an early offering by South African writer-director Jamie Uys (The Gods Must Be Crazy, 1980) or by the star wattage of Stanley Baker (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965) or perhaps by the promise of the salacious. Hopefully, it was the first, because you would be disappointed on the other two counts, Baker not making an entrance until halfway through the picture and not much of an impact thereafter.

Surprisingly relevant due to its depiction of people in the thrall of a higher power – whether you take that in a religious or political context makes little difference – and in the cultural conflict between an indigenous tribe and the “civilized” white man. But there’s also a noir tone here, the fatalism that often prevents the “good criminal” in a noir picture from escaping the judicial consequence of an action that could be seen as moral.

And if you think you know your African music through interpretations by the likes of Neil Diamond and Paul Simon, then here’s a far better introduction. Song is a constant whether for ceremonial purpose, worship, entertainment and work or for making more bearable time spent in jail or hard labor.

And though it’s not spelled out there’s a Biblical element, the old “eye for an eye,” done away with in modern civilization through courtrooms, juries and due process whereby the act of killing is carried out remotely by the state rather than the victim’ relatives.

An African tribesman Masaba (Paul Makgopa), furious at being dethroned after a six-year reign as the local fighting champion, seeks a cure for the loss of prowess from a witch doctor (John Sithebe). He is told to eat the heart of a small child. Soon after the daughter of Nkutu (Ken Gampu) is found dead. The distraught father beats the witch doctor until he points to Masaba. In revenge for Nkutu assaulting the witch doctor, revered as a local god, Nkutu is cursed, resulting in the almost immediate death of his wife.

Nkutu pursues Masaba to the city and strangles him to death. He is taken aback to be arrested since, according to tribal law, he is well within his rights. Of course, that’s at odds with civilized law. When the judge learns of the murder of Nkutu’s daughter and advises that the state would take care of any killing in the way of punishment that had to be done, Nkutu is puzzled. “You must not hang him. He did not kill your child. I must kill him. It is the law.”

It turns out Masaba has survived, giving Nkutu, on meeting him in court, a second chance to kill him, which fails.

“Big hard cynical lawyer” Tom (Stanley Baker), grudgingly doing pro bono work, has his work cut out since Nkutu refuses to give him instruction, is defiantly unremorseful, and can’t provide any proof that Masaba murdered his daughter beyond that “his eyes told me that he killed her.”

But since Nkutu only attempted murder then he gets off with a relatively light sentence, though it still involves back-breaking work. But at least it’s outside, providing the opportunity to escape and go home and kill Masaba properly. Meanwhile, Tom has chanted his tune and tries to help Nkutu by confronting the witch doctor.

Eventually, Nkutu learns the witch doctor was the murderer and despite fear of being eternally cursed challenges the witch doctor’s authority and kills him. And given this takes place away from civilization it’s unlikely that anyone’s going to come asking questions.

Outside of the drama and the culture clash, the director keeps this perpetually interesting by adding in authentic aspects of local life. There’s a milk tree, a man cures hides by spinning them on a rock that dangles from a tree on a rope, access to the otherwise inaccessible witch doctor’s lair on a mountaintop is via a series of vertigo-inducing ladders, prison guards have spears not guns. The use of music adds atmosphere.

And the acting is good, and as a consequence of this Ken Gampu enjoyed a Hollywood career in such films as The Wild Geese (1974) and ended up with over 80 film credits. Stanley Baker’s character is well drawn, exchanging barbs with his wife (Juliet Prowse) his cynicism in part due to the couple’s fertility problems.

Now warned about the limitation of Baker’s involvement, if you are happy to examine the tale as presented – one of struggle against both malicious and just authority – you will be rewarded.

YouTube has a decent print and not one marred with advertisements.

The Wild Angels (1966) ***

Riders stretched out across a sun-baked valley – you could be harking back to the heyday of the John Ford cavalry western instead of the biker picture, the first in the American International series, that sent shockwaves through society and laid the groundwork for the more philosophical Easy Rider (1969) a few years later. Long tracking shots are in abundance. You might wonder had director Roger Corman spent a bit more on the soundtrack, the bikers just worn beads instead of swastikas, and been the victims rather than the perpetrators of violence how this picture would have played out critics- and box office-wise.

The Wild Angels set up a template for biker pictures, one almost slavishly followed by Easy Rider, a good 15 per cent of the screen time allocated to shots of the Harley-Davidson riders and scenery, and a slim plot. Here Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda), trying to recover a stolen bike, leads his gang into a small town where they beat up a bunch of Mexican mechanics, are pursued by the cops, hang out and indulge in booze, drugs and sex, and then decide to rescue the badly-injured Joe (Bruce Dern) from a police station. This insane act doesn’t go well and after Joe dies they hijack a preacher for a funeral service that ends in a running battle with outraged locals and the police.

*One of the weirdest posters of all time – at first sight it looks like Nancy Sinatra is holding the decapitated head of Peter Fonda in front of her.*

There’s an odd subplot, given the lifestyle of freedom and independence, of Monkey (Nancy Sinatra) trying to get a romantic commitment out of Heavenly. Conversely, Heavenly, rejecting the traditional shackles of love, finds himself trapped by grief, eventually and quite rightly blaming himself for Joe’s death, and apparently turning his back on the Angels to mourn his buddy. The decline – or growing-up – of Heavenly provides a humane core to a movie that otherwise takes great pride in parading (and never questioning) excess, not just the alcohol and drugs, but rape of a nurse, gang-bang of Joe’s widow (Diane Ladd), violence, corpse abuse, and wanton destruction.

A ground-breaking film of the wrong, dangerous, kind according to censors worldwide and anyone representing traditional decency, but which appealed to a young audience desperate to find new heroes who stood against anything their parents stood for. In a decade that celebrated freedom, the bikers strangely enough represented repression, a world where women were commodities, passed from man to man, often taken without consent, and racism was prevalent.

Roger Corman (The Secret Invasion, 1964) was already moving away from the horror of his early oeuvre and directs here with some style, the story, though slim, kept moving along thanks to the obvious and latent tensions within the group. If he had set out to assault society’s sacred cows – the police, the church, funeral rites – as well as a loathing of everything Nazi, he certainly achieved those aims but still within the context of a group that epitomized some elements of the burgeoning counterculture.

In retrospect this appears an ideal fit for Peter Fonda, but that’s only if viewed through the prism of Easy Rider for, prior to this (see the “Hot Prospects” Blog) he was being groomed as a romantic leading man along the lines of The Young Lovers (1964). Bruce Dern (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) was better suited, his screen persona possessing more of the essential edginess while Michael J. Pollard (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967) was the eternal outsider.

Rather surprising additions to the cast, either in full-out rebel mode as with Nancy Sinatra (The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, 1966) or hoping appearance here would provide career stimulus as with movie virgins Diane Ladd (Chinatown, 1974) and Gayle Hunnicutt (P.J. / A New Face in Hell, 1968). Sinatra certainly received the bulk of the media attention, if only for the perceived outrage of papa Frank, but Hunnicutt easily stole the picture. Minus an attention-grabbing role, Hunnicutt, long hair in constant swirl, her vivid presence and especially her red top ensured she caught the camera’s attention.

Charles B. Griffiths (Creature from the Haunted Sea, 1961) is credited with a screenplay that was largely rewritten by an uncredited Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, 1971).