British – Page 2 – The Magnificent 60s

The Reptile (1966) ***

If there is such a thing, qualifies as the thinking person’s Hammer horror picture. More atmospheric than usual, creepy rather than shocking, and with greater emphasis on psychology and loss than you’d expect to find in a Hammer film. No recognizable stars either so something of a risk for the studio. The low-budget probably accounts for the fact it was made to play the supporting feature of a horror bill.

That’s what makes it so interesting. It’s crammed full of character actors getting to play interesting people and it puts the main good guy on the bench as we approach the climax appointing the female lead as substitute in the most perilous segment of the investigation into strange goings-on in the old (but not dark) house.

CGI would have made this instantly more potent and while the special effects are acceptable for the time period, the characterization and the dilemmas posed relieve the picture of having to rely on shocks for impact.

Even these days studios would find it hard to greenlight a movie where the focus is on a parent shielding a serial killer. But that’s effectively what’s happening here.

Dr Franklyn (Noel Willman), the big house resident, is trying to keep safe his cursed daughter Anna (Jacqueline Pearce) who has been knocking off villagers at a heck of a rate. Anyone she attacks foams at the mouth and turns a nasty colour so the villagers are more likely to blame a disease or some kind of ghostly apparition, though obvious suspects like werewolves or vampires don’t come into consideration and a lurking Malay servant (Marne Maitland) doesn’t set alarm bells ringing.

Newly-weds Harry Spalding (Ray Barrett) and wife Valerie (Jennifer Daniel) have inherited the cottage next door to the big house from his brother, the latest victim of the phantom killer. As was standard for Victorian villages, strangers are treated with suspicion, and it’s left to local landlord (Michael Ripper) and local lunatic Peter (John Laurie) to scare the wits out of the new arrivals with tales of multiple deaths.

Franklyn appears a congenial enough gent though he’s apt to be sharp with his daughter, taking serious offence at her playing the sitar. Harry takes on the burden of sniffing around until he’s put out of action by the phantom. Since he’s not dead and therefore not instantly buried, there’s time to check out his body and that’s when marks are discovered in his neck. Normally, that would point to the presence of a vampire, but I guess since vampires weren’t popularized until much later in the century, there’s no reason to go down that route of investigation.

Instead of sitting around like a homebody as Victorian wives were meant to do, Valerie takes over the investigation and it’s she who discovers that the doctor’s cursed daughter periodically turns into a snake. Not only is Franklyn averse to handing his daughter over to the authorities, he’s made her a cosy nest in the warm cellar. Still, he’s wracked by guilt. Audiences these days would be more aware that his snippiness to his daughter covers up the burden of his love. Proof more that he’s coming apart.

The billing gives it away. While the narrative ostensibly revolves around Harry and his wife caught in a web, it’s actually a bold decision to put the emotional onus on Franklyn. It’s a great study, especially for a horror film, of parental anguish. Anna, clearly aware of the discrepancies in her character, also shows unexpected depths.

Australian Ray Barrett was a television stalwart, taking time out from The Troubleshooters (1965-1971) and as the voice of the leading puppet in Stingray (1964-1965). Jennifer Daniel had been terrorized by Noel Willman in Kiss of the Vampire (1963). Jacqueline Pearce (The Plague of the Zombies, 1966) adds good touches.

Director John Gilling (Plague of the Zombies) doesn’t fall into the shocker trap which posits the picture, written by John Elder (Dracula, Prince of Darkness, 1966), as one of the more interesting in the Hammer portfolio.

Worth a look.

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun / Doppelganger (1969) ****

Bring Gerry and Sylvia Anderson into the equation and it’s a straightforward free pass of the cult kind. For the fanboys, the inventors of Supermarionation (Thunderbirds Are Go!, 1966) live on an exalted plane immune from criticism. however, sci fi buffs have tended to be less than impressed by the pair’s first venture into (to use a Walt Disney phrase) “live-action.” So response swings between these extremes. I fit into neither category so I come at this with something of an open mind and for a variety of reasons found it a far more enjoyable experience than I had anticipated, though I hazard a guess that on the big screen the flaws in the special effects would have been more obvious.

Some aspects even have a contemporary chime, the X-ray security screening machines, for example, and the fact that there’s no such actual entity called Europe and if you want to advance a project you have to navigate your way through the representatives of several countries as well as the hovering financial weight of the United States, bristling at being asked to pay more than its share but worried about being excluded.

And there’s no ice-cool scientific boffin. Instead we have the choleric, not to mention bombastic, Jason Webb (Patrick Wymark). Nor do non-combatants scoot through training. The rigors potential astronauts are put through in the likes of The Right Stuff (1983) or Apollo 13 (1995) are nothing to the body-wringing and mind-blowing experience of John Kane (Ian Hendry).

His companion space buddy Col John Ross (Roy Thinnes) is well-drawn for a sci fi adventure. He’s worried that exposure to radiation and worse in space has knocked his masculinity on the head, his wife Sharon (Lynn Loring) complaining it has left him sterile. Though it turns out she’s a wily creature, secretly using contraception.

We also get a spy, Dr Hassler (Herbert Lom), and it’s not so much that he has a gadget – a mini camera secreted in a false eyeball – than the detail involved in him retrieving the film. In most movies there would be no gap between the reveal of the gadget and the production of its secrets. But here Dr Hassler has to go through a whole procedure, dipping the eyeball into four solutions and dabbing it with this and that, before he can view a single frame.

The picture breaks down into a straight three-act vehicle. The first section getting to lift off, then the journey including the kind of phantasmagorical event you found in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and which even Christopher Nolan relied upon in Interstellar (2014), and arrival.

Most sci fi movies play fast and loose with audiences, rarely remaining true to the logic of their invented worlds or concepts. This sticks to its original notion even if that means ending up with a distinctly downbeat ending. Initially, the astronauts are searching for a new planet, whose orbit is similar to Earth, but on the other side of the sun. This being the year 2068, distance is no object and they reckon it’s a six-week return trip.

But what the astronauts discover on arrival at the new planet is a nightmare situation, that in terms of ability to drive you mad skews close to enigmatic British TV series The Prisoner (1967) or Lost (2004-2010) before it jumped the shark. Ross and Kane have landed on a doppelganger planet and the movie takes this world to its logical conclusion. It’s the real parallel universe, or multiverse in the current vernacular, except everything happens the same as on Earth.

So the choleric Webb initially accuses the astronauts of cowardice, to have turned back and failed to complete their mission which would have led them to our Earth. Doppelganger literally means mirror image which eventually explains why writing goes left to right and everything is a step out of normal kilter. Identical except not quite. And stuck in a world where everything that seems real is one step away from your known reality. The kind of situation that would have been created by a mad scientist intent on torturing minds.

Ross determines to attempt to return to Earth but that means connecting what remains of his spaceship with a space vessel made on the new planet but the parts that should fit exactly don’t fit because they have designed in mirror fashion. So that’s it for your chances of a happy ending.

Left me with a nightmare feeling, the ultimate what if. As far as stings in the tail go, comparable with Planet of the Apes (1968).

For the concept as much as the clever detail, I’ve given it a higher mark than maybe it deserves.

Isadora / The Loves of Isadora / The Incomparable Isadora (1968) ***

We’re two years away from the 100^th anniversary of the death of feminist icon and pioneering dancer Isadora Duncan, but this movie has been in cold storage virtually since its release, so I’m wondering whether its sudden appearance on Amazon will trigger any interest in this long-forgotten, heavily edited, commercial flop of a movie.

Due to the clumsy structure it’s occasionally heavy going. We start off in Nice in the South of France where Isadora (Vanessa Redgrave) is dictating her memoirs to journalist (not lover) Roger (John Fraser) and the whole picture is rendered in flashback. And there’s something morbid about this structure, because essentially we’re waiting for her to die. Unfortunately, what she is most remembered for is getting her trademark long scarf tangled in the wheels of a moving Bugatti and snapping her neck. So we’re sitting around waiting for her to hop into a passing Bugatti with a Bugatti (Vladimir Leskovar).

The rest of her life was somewhat fractured, consisting of her leaping from one lover/husband – Gordon Craig (James Fox), Paris Singer (Jason Robards), Romano Romanelli, Sergei Essenin (Ivan Tchenko) – to the next so characters appear and then disappear. Never mind her rebellious nature and determination to forge her own way and reinvent dance, her life was peppered with tragedy – all three of her children died, two drowning in the Seine (a fact repeated in a variety of ways to get the full emotional punch) – so there’s more than enough angst.

Her dancing is exuberant and uninhibited – she wore flowing dresses which looked as though any minute they would slip off her slender frame and there was scandal at one point when she bared her breasts during a performance. The first time she hits the stage is exceptionally ho-hum because it’s in a Paris nightclub and she’s a conventional, if very attractive, dancer of the ooh-la-la persuasion. But when she gets into her stride as a serious dancer, then visually it’s a treat, as she commands the stage – and screen- in a series of sexually provocative sinuous movements.

But, unfortunately, once is enough. You’d have to know a lot more about artistic dance than I do – and I guess the bulk of the original and contemporary cinematic audience – to know what changes she implemented and how, apart from her individual style (she danced solo not as part of an ensemble), her act developed and how it impacted on dance. She ran her own dance schools which probably liberated a ton of young women who were in the mood to be liberated.

But, as a biopic, even with 30 minutes knocked out, it’s way too long at the remaining 140 minutes, and the rest of the cast struggle to offer any competition to the lustrous Isadora.

Vanessa Redgrave, Oscar-nominated, is the best reason to watch and she is certainly compelling and, oddly enough, though there is plenty of incident and drama it somehow isn’t dramatically compelling.

She is generally naïve in her politics and her innocence in this department works to the advantage of the character. But mostly, we flit like a mobile time capsule through different periods, each well defined cinematically, and even though it’s clearly much harder to (in visual terms on film) convince as a genuine dancer than as, for example, a pianist, unless you were an expert on dance you wouldn’t know what to complain about.

You end up with a biopic about an interesting woman rather than a fascinating biopic. Vanessa Redgrave (Blow-Up, 1966) delivers another of her flawed characters and holds the screen effortlessly. The same cannot be said of the insipid males, James Fox (Thoroughly Modern Millie, 1967) and a miscast Jason Robards (Hour of the Gun, 1967).

Hard to know what the plans were of director Karel Reisz (Morgan!/Morgan, A Suitable Case for Treatment, 1966) because this isn’t his 168-minute version (the one that was released in the U.S. after disastrous opening weekend was trimmed to 128 minutes and in the UK to 140 minutes). Written by Melvyn Bragg (Play Dirty, 1969) and Clive Exton (10 Rillington Place, 1969) from a number of sources.

Sheds an interesting, but not enough, light on a legendary character.

Carry On Spying (1964) ***

The potential for leering – given the squads of bikinied beauties, cleavage abounding and partial nudity a prerequisite in the standard James Bond picture – could have gone into the stratosphere. So it’s to the producer’s credit that they opted to drop ogler-in-chief and Carry On perennial Sidney James from this enterprise. So, automatically, there’s more of a gentler Ealing or Doctor in the House vibe to the satire.

Given the propensity for inuendo and said ogling, there’s a general perception that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny that women in this series are portrayed as objects existing solely for the pleasure of men. However, as here, women are often in charge and certainly more sensible than the males.

Here dumb Desmond Simpkins (Kenneth Williams), dumber Harold Crump (Bernard Cribbins) and dumbest Charlie Bind (Charles Hawtrey) are easily put in the shade by fellow spy Daphne Honeybutt (Barbara Windsor), she of the photographic memory, and deadly enemy Dr Crowe (Judith Furse) who has the sense to steer clear, unlike James Bond’s deadliest enemies, of cats and heads up an organization called STENCH.

And while generally the focus of the fun is the James Bond series – of which only two at this point had been made – the movie also draws on antecedents such as The Third Man (1949) and, dare I say it, Casablanca (1942) and film noir. And there’s an acceptance that Britain has not shot to the top of the espionage premier league courtesy of one bed-hopping spy but is more likely to drown in officialdom and inefficiency.

We begin with a particularly British joke that a milkman would have access to even the most top-secret laboratories simply because every living person in the country can’t do without their daily hand-delivered pint of milk, thus permitting an enemy secret agent in the most simple of disguises to nip in and steal a top secret formula and blow up the lab.

The four agents are despatched to Vienna, primarily so the movie can take advantage of jokes about sewers and zithers a la The Third Man, and prove how inadequate our quartet actually are. From there, they hare over to Algiers, because that’s the kind of locale where Crump and Honeybutt can infiltrate a club disguised as belly dancers. Naturally, they are captured by STENCH and while enemy agents are often as comfortable in bikinis and the cleavage-showing malarkey here the females, while wearing skintight outfits, reveal no flesh, and there’s – shock! horror! – no ogling.

Typical British small town cinema requiring three changes of program a week to survive. Generally, horror pictures were limited to single showing on a Sunday, but that was when cinemas screened oldies. This one was contemporary and yes that’s Roy Scheider from “Jaws.” The movie expected to be most lucrative played the weekend. Public response to “Paris When it Sizzles” was as poor here as anywhere else, thus the midweek slot.

There’s a very humorous twist on the trope of a spy eating top secret material wherein our quartet need soup and bread to help it go down. However, there’s a clever reversal when Honeybutt’s photographic memory, allowing her to instantly recall the secret formula, makes her prey to Dr Crowe.

There’s a stab at romance, although hapless males Simpkins and Crump are ill-prepared to deal with the advances of, respectively, double agent Lila (Dilys Laye) and Honeybutt. Pratfalls are limited though Inspector Clouseau would have welcomed the comic relief afforded by doors.

This was Barbara Windsor’s first Carry On venture. Most of the rest of the cast were series regulars and pretty much played the characters they always play.

Cleaner fun than it might have been had Sid James headed the cast. One of the better spoofs in the series. Directed as usual by Gerald Thomas and written by Talbot Rothwell (Three Hats for Lisa, 1965) and Sid Colin (Up Pompeii, 1971).

Well up to standard.

The Mind Benders (1963) ****

As far as Hollywood was concerned brainwashing was ascribed to foreigners intent on disrupting democracy as with The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Such inherent hypocrisy will come as no surprise since scientists at McGill University in Canada had been carrying out C.I.A.-funded sensory deprivation experiments in the 1950s. Where the John Frankenheimer paranoia thriller went straight down the political route, The Mind Benders, based on the McGill tests, is more interested in the personal cost, although ruthless politicians and unscrupulous scientists still abound.

The suicide of renowned scientist Professor Sharpey (Harold Goldblatt), possibly selling secrets to the Russians, sends MI5 agent Major Hall (John Clements) to Oxford to investigate sensory perception tests. The guinea pigs have all been volunteers, keen to expand knowledge of human mental endurance. The latest volunteer, Dr Longman (Dirk Bogarde), is on leave recovering from his participation. To avoid branding Sharpey a traitor it is proposed that he was actually brainwashed by long immersion in a water tank and subsequent sensory deprivation.

In order to prove the point, Longman, a driving force behind the research having shifted the focus from sub-zero temperatures to water, is the unknowing guinea pig, a jealous colleague Dr Danny Tate (Michael Bryant) who fancies his wife Oonagh (Mary Ure) suggesting that the experiment would be deemed a success if Longman was turned against his wife. It transpires that sensory deprivation has already had an effect on Longman, his wife complaining his lovemaking has grown rough.

The callousness with which this stage of research is undertaken, the disregard not so much for human life but emotion and love, in a country that prides itself on honor and fair play, sets up a different register to the Frankenheimer film where at issue is the assassination of the most important person in the United States. Longman, fed lies about his wife’s infidelity, becomes a different character, distrustful, aggressive, embarking on an affair of his own, putting in jeopardy the happiness he has constructed.

Ahead of its time in analyzing the importance of the hidden persuaders (as television advertising would later be termed) and lacking a thriller element to drive the narrative, nor devised as a self-indulgent experiment like the later Altered States (1980), nonetheless this achieves tremendous power through the deliberate dislocation of individual life, personalizing in a way that others in the paranoia thriller genre do not the dangers of tampering with the unknown.

And perhaps because it is so British, with the Longman family living in a big rambling house, the children involved in myriad games, the scientist a loving husband, that the outcome is so horrible. Brainwashing was seen as a form of torture, with subjects susceptible to ideas they may have once opposed, almost forming a new identity.

The structure here sucks in the audience. It’s ostensibly initially about spies, outing a traitor, a notion that every British citizen would go along with, the film especially relevant in the wake of the Kim Philby affair the year of the film’s release, when the idea of “spies among us” took root. Then we move on to a scientific account of the deprivation experiment, the first one taking place in the Arctic Circle, footage of a volunteer emerging in a fugue state. When Longman does another experiment, himself the guinea pig, to show what is involved, the various changes the body and mind undergo, it still seems far removed, captivating and intriguing though it may be, from any human horror.

*James Kennaway wrote the movie tie-in paperback based on his original screenplay.*

But when Longman becomes the unknowing victim, the audience becomes privy to the worst aspects of the brainwashing. The personal price paid would put every member of the audience off endorsing its use.

This is a very measured film, cunning in its construction, that puts the viewer at the heart of the story. Without spelling out the psychological terror, the implications are nonetheless clear, a nightmare from which there is no escape, no guarantee the process could be reversed, men turned into different personalities at the behest of government for who knows what end.

Dork Bogarde (Hot Enough for June, 1964) does this kind of role so well, the well-meaning person whose life is thrown into disarray. Mary Ure (Where Eagles Dare, 1968) is superb as the fun-loving wife, fighting for her husband, Michael Bryant excels as the sly friend, determined to win his wife by illicit means. Michael John Clemens only made two films this decade and his portrayal of the MI5 agent, as dispassionate as any scientist, putting country above individual, is almost as frightening as the experiment he provokes.

The idea came from an original screenplay by Scottish novelist James Kennaway (Tunes of Glory, 1960) who had come across the Canadian research. He was adept at placing stories within institutions in some respect with their own sacrosanct traditions and while the army barracks of Tunes of Glory could not be further removed from Oxford academe both reek of unchallenged hierarchy, of sacrifice to a cause.

Basil Dearden (Woman of Straw, 1964) directs this brilliantly, the attractive countryside location in contrast with the gloom of the experimental rooms, the warmth of a happy marriage evaporating in the face of insidious threat. He returned to the theme of identity in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970).

This is one of these films that lives on in the mind long after the viewing has ceased and will strike a contemporary note where identity, and its shifting values, is such an issue.

Pit of Darkness (1961) ****

Occasionally I get to wondering when one of these British crime B-pictures is exceptionally well-plotted, refreshing and above all logical, whether it might have benefitted from grander treatment Hollywood-style. You could easily see Cary Grant or Gregory Peck wriggling around in this one and with a Grant or Peck involved they’d be accompanied by a glamor puss of the Sophia Loren, Deborah Kerr vintage. And that would put the whole movie in an entirely different light and ensure it wasn’t lost for decades, as was the fate of this one.

What struck me most about the opening section here, an attitude maintained for about half the picture, was that the actress wife Julie (Moira Redmond) of amnesiac Richard (William Franklyn) didn’t believe for a minute his story that he couldn’t remember where he’d been for the last three weeks. There wasn’t an ounce of sympathy. That struck me as an entirely believable reaction. Rather than going all soppy at his return, she reckoned he’d run off with another woman and only came back because the affair had gone sour.

And it doesn’t help his case that he was found unconscious on a piece of London waste ground where four days before the private detective she had hired to find him was discovered murdered. Then there are the suspicious phone calls, leaving him to deny the existence of anyone called Mavis.

But just when we start to believe him, suddenly we don’t. He seems to be too familiar with the Mavis who calls him and agrees to meet her at a remote cottage. And then we’re back on his side, as he just avoids being blown up in the cottage. But he leaves his hat behind.

And he doesn’t own up to Mavis about being nearly killed and gives a spurious reason for buying a new hat and not keeping the old one. So we’re on her side, something is going on for sure. And then back on his, when someone tries to sideline him in a hit-and-run accident.

In turn, he’s suspicious of everyone, including his wife, and his colleagues at work, especially Ted (Anthony Booth) who seems an unlikely candidate to have won the heart of his delectable secretary Mary (Nanette Newman).

He works for a firm that makes safes and whatever’s going on appears to be linked to a burglary that occurred in his absence involving one of the safes the company made. Eventually, Julie comes round to his way of thinking. Clues lead him to a nightclub, whose mysterious owner Conrad (Leonard Sachs) somehow seems familiar. He encounters Mavis, a dance hostess, and she agrees to help him but when he goes round to her apartment finds a corpse. There’s something distinctly odd going on in the building across the street from his office. On further investigation, he uncovers an assassin. Luckily, our man is armed with the office pistol and the villain is chucked from the roof.

But, still, nothing makes much sense, even though bit by bit memory is returning. He realizes he shouldn’t have been found unconscious on the waste ground, but dead, murder only interrupted by the sudden arrival of a gang of boys.

But in retracing his steps in order to unlock the lost memories he finds himself undergoing a perilous process a second time. He works out that he was kidnapped and locked in a cellar in the club. When he confronts Conrad, that instigates a repeat.

Conrad locked him away and when bribery and the seductive wiles of Mavis didn’t work, Conrad convinced Richard that his wife was in danger if he didn’t go along with the burglary. And Conrad isn’t one to let a good opportunity go to waste, so second time around, using the same threat that worked the last time, he forces Richard to commit another burglary. But this time there’s a catch and one that Richard’s secretary hasn’t known about to pass on to Ted.

So the bad guys are caught, and in the way of the obligatory happy ending the audience is left to assume that the police will ignore his part in the robbery and the death of the man on the roof.

Not just exceptionally well-plotted, but the addition of the marital strife, the suspicious wife, adds not just to the tension but makes it all the more believable and turns the amnesia trope on its head.

Having wished for a Cary Grant or a Gregory Peck, I have to confess I was more than satisfied with William Franklyn (The Big Day, 1960) who managed to look innocent and guilty at the same time. Certainly Deborah Kerr would have managed more in the acerbic look department than Moira Redmond (The Limbo Line, 1968) but I have no complaints.

Interesting support cast at the start of their careers, so Anthony Booth (Corruption, 1968) displays just a hint of his later trademark sarcastic snarl and there’s no chance for Nigel Green (The Ipcress File, 1965) to put his steely stare into action or effect his drawl. Nanette Newman (Deadfall, 1968) has little to do except look fetching. Leonard Sachs was taking time off from presenting TV variety show The Good Old Days (1953-1983).

More kudos for the script than the direction this time for Lance Comfort (Blind Corner, 1964).

Given it’s from the Renown stable. I would normally have expected to come upon this picture on Talking Pictures TV, so I was surprised to find it as one of the latest additions to Amazon Prime.

First class.

Brannigan (1975) ***

File under guilty pleasure. And bear in mind in the early 1970s there was no such thing as the police procedural, certainly not as we know it today, when cops have the benefits of DNA, increased forensics and computer technology. Hollywood in this era didn’t waste time with endless knocking on doors or collecting massive amounts of minutiae in the hope of uncovering a clue.

Generally speaking, cops of this period had two things in common. They were mavericks and they constantly fought authority usually represented by some dumb superior. Normally the narrative consisted of the character taking on the persona of a bull in a china shop and thundering towards a main objective, the more set pieces to demonstrate said bullish tendencies the better, and if in the course of apprehending a criminal he can deliver a catchphrase such as “make my day” or, as here, “knock, knock,” so much the better.

John Wayne had made eight westerns in a row and having turned down Dirty Harry (1971) ventured into the cop genre with McQ (1974) and came straight back for seconds here.

Brannigan (John Wayne) has been shipped over to London to bring back under the extradition treaty Mob gangster Larkin (John Vernon) which would be pretty straightforward except the Brits don’t keep such prisoners in custody – Larkin swans around in a white Rolls Royce – and in any case he’s in custody of another kind, having been kidnapped by some British hoods.

In terms of authority Brannigan battles the sappy Brits who won’t allow him to carry a gun and do things the Chicago way. Luckily, for the picture, top cop Commander Swann (Richard Attenborough) is not the standard stiff-upper-lip buffoon but as likely to pitch in when the fisticuffs begin. There are a couple of excellent car chases and one stunt of French Connection (1971) quality when two cars go sailing over the gap in a raised Tower Bridge. This is a London mixing glory and grit, posh residences and ancient buildings share screen time with rundown docklands. And the movie has the sense not to go all May-December on us and while a certain affection builds up between the U.S. cop and his driver Jennifer (Judy Gesson), it doesn’t teeter into unlikely romance.

The plot’s clever. While in a sauna having a massage Larkin is knocked out cold and bundled into a sweatbox by two apparent delivery guys and then smooth attorney Fields (Mel Ferrer) acts as the go-between, delivering Mob ransom money to the kidnappers, the price increasing with every failed rescue attempt, until the kidnappers are sitting on a cool million. Naturally, there’s some double-crossing and the cops have one tiny magic bullet to use to their advantage.

So mainly the fun is watching Brannigan charge around in a British china shop, mostly bypassing British rules. There’s a subplot involving a hitman hunting Brannigan and even when in a normal cop movie you might think, fair’s fair, the policeman should be able to defend himself with a weapon, that doesn’t equate with the British rules, so you have our hero able to point out that if he wasn’t armed to the teeth Jennifer would be dead, while Swann does his best to insist that it would be better for the young lass to end up on a mortuary slab than British cops go rampaging around with guns.

There’s some gentle fun in poking at British tradition – the obligatory wearing a tie in certain upmarket establishments – and in Swann having to translate to a waitperson Brannigan’s breakfast order.

Except when standing up for rules, Swann is great value, a good match for the American, both in tempering his ruthlessness, and matching him punch-for-punch in a brawl.

Apart from the action sequences, John Wayne is permitted to grow old gracefully, his dialog rarely filled with barbed retorts or salty words and there’s quite nice acting on the Duke’s part when he’s called upon to demonstrate his special skill, which is “reacting”.

Richard Attenborough (Only When I Larf, 1968) has a ball, and not before time, able to let some of the usual repressed intensity burst out. Judy Geeson (The Executioner, 1970) must have been delighted to find a part that didn’t involve her taking off her clothes and she’s afforded some of the best lines. John Vernon (Topaz, 1969) is his usual hardass but Mel Ferrer (The Fall of the Roman Empire, 1964) has a good stab at a bad guy.

Not in the same league as director Douglas Hickox’s Sitting Target (1972). Written by Christopher Trumbo (The Don Is Dead, 1973), William McGivern (The Wrecking Crew, 1968), Michael Butler (The Gauntlet, 1977) and William Norton (The Scalphunters, 1968).

Erroneously tabbed as a box office disappointment, this was made on a budget of $2.6 million but cleared $7 million in rentals (the studio share of the box office) plus another $1.5 million from television.

Obviously, if you’re in the Clint Eastwood camp this falls short, but otherwise it’s enjoyable stuff.

Secret Ceremony (1968) ***

Few stars were as willing to trade their glamorous screen persona for a decent role as Elizabeth Taylor, here eschewing the trademark hip swivel, low cut dresses and elegant costumes for a clumping walk, frumpy look and eating with her mouth full. After a chance meeting on top of a bus with rich waif Cenci (Mia Farrow) middle-aged prostitute Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) swaps a dingy bedsit for life in a massive mansion, cupboards stuffed full of furs, all her needs met. Cenci seeks a mother; Leonora, whose daughter drowned aged ten, seeks a child substitute.

Soon Leonora is prisoner to a fantasist, her own identity swamped by Cenci’s needs, accepting the role of “mummy” as the price of a life of luxury until she learns that what appears so freely given can be as easily taken away. This cloistered life is creepy. Cenci has rape fantasies. To a pair of interfering and thieving aunts, Leonora pretends to be Cenci’s dead mother’s cousin.

The fantasy conjured is threatened by the presence of Cenci’s poet stepfather Albert (Robert Mitchum) who intends to become the girl’s legal guardian. He talks like a child molester, “the extraordinary purity of my longings,” but given the depth of Cenci’s fantasies Leonora initially discounts inappropriate behavior on his part especially when Cenci wishes to become inappropriate with her. If Leonora stands in Albert’s way it is only to have the girl – and her wealth – to herself.

A psychological drama that appears more like a stage play in structure, skirting around core issues in favor of later revelation, and in essence making a good effort at dealing with behavioral problems which would find greater currency today – inherited mental illness, PTSD, low self-esteem, abuse, and incest. Though the last area is hard to specify, on the basis that, technically, Albert is a stepfather rather than a father, underage sex would appear to be more likely.

In an era when permissiveness virtually ensured audience shock, director Joseph Losey makes a decent stab at presenting the impact of sex on the vulnerable, despite her apparent steely exterior Leonora damaged by life as a sex worker, Cenci pretending to be younger as if that can sustain her innocence, not realizing how appealing that would be to a predator.

At once hypnotic and impenetrable, this is director Joseph Losey (The Servant, 1964) at his best, a story that by its subject matter must remain obscure, a mother-daughter relationship that should be twisted but reveals nothing but tenderness, ending for a time the torment of the emotionally unfulfilled, but when bonds appear to be strengthened they are fragmenting. However, the film is let down by the script and the somewhat grand guignol setting. Losey is wonderful at times with nothing to say just a prowling camera, only two lines of dialog exchanged in the first 15 minutes. You would certainly file it under “eclectic.”

The two main performances are electric. This is Taylor at her powerhouse best, her profession not glamorized as in Butterfield 8 (1968) and no male to bring to heel, and her last scene with Cenci is extremely touching. This was a bold role, too, for Mia Farrow after the success of Rosemary’s Baby (1967) turned her into a box office star. She brings believability to a difficult role, especially as she is far from the spoiled child one might expect.

Robert Mitchum fans must have received the fright of their life to see their hero not just with uncomely beard but portraying a sinister character, not an out-and-out villain which would have been acceptable, but fast forward a couple of years and you can see evidence here of the kind of portrayal he would evince in Ryan’s Daughter (1970). Look out for Peggy Ashcroft (The Nun’s Story, 1959) in a smaller role, her first film in nearly a decade.

Check out the “Behind the Scenes” article for this film.

Sands of the Kalahari (1965) ****

You know the score: plane crashes in inhospitable territory (in this case a desert), personalities clash as food/water is rationed, tempers run high and/or depression sets in as attempts to attract attention fail, someone goes for help, someone else has an ingenious idea and eventually everyone rallies round in common cause. That template worked fine in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965).

It doesn’t here. This is not quite as inhospitable. There is water. Caves offer shelter from the blazing sun. There is food – lizards trapped, game hunted with telescopic rifle. But the food is lean, not fattened through farming for human consumption. And you have to watch out for marauding baboons not to mention scorpions. And this group is split, two alpha males intent on exerting dominance with little interest in common cause.

*Producer Joseph E. Levine came up with the poster*
*without close examination of the picture’s content.*

Of the six survivors of this crash, Sturdevan (Nigel Davenport) decides his leadership status entitles him to sole claim over the only woman, Grace (Susannah York). But when he accepts the genuine responsibilities of leadership, he sets off across the desert to get help. That leaves Grace to fall into the hands of O’Brien (Stuart Whitman), so alpha he could be auditioning for Tarzan, shirt off all the time.

It soon transpires O’Brien has a rather unusual idea of survival – getting rid of his companions so that he will have no shortage of food until rescue arrives. It takes a while for the others to catch on to his plan. And then rather than common cause and camaraderie, it becomes every man/woman for himself, a battle for individual survival, a return to the primeval.

The most likely challenger to O’Brien’s authority is Bain (Stanley Baker), but he has been badly injured in the crash and no match for the other man’s brawn or his weapon. So it becomes a game of cat and mouse. Except it’s in the desert, it’s the law of the jungle and the rule of autocracy brought home with sudden force to people accustomed to the comforts of civilization and democracy.

The movie’s structure initially takes us down the obvious route of common purpose – Grimmelman (Harry Andrews) knows enough survival lore to devise a method of water transportation that would permit the group to escape the desert, Dr Bondrachai (Theodore Bikel) formulates a method of trapping lizards, and O’Brien, at least at first, appears willing to take on the role of protector, warding off baboons with his gun.

The change into something different is subtle. While the others are desperate to escape, it becomes apparent that O’Brien has found his metier. We discover little about the lives of each individual prior to being stranded. Whatever O’Brien’s standing in society, it would not have been as high as here, where his superior skills stand out. Reveling in his supremacy, he doesn’t particularly want to go home.

Like any psychopath Bain knows how to manipulate so at first it seems his decisions are for the greater good. And only gradually does it emerge that he blames others for his own mistakes and intends to eliminate his rivals for the food supply one by one. Because he is so handsome, it is impossible to believe he could be so devious or so evil.

The three principals all play against type. Stanley Baker (Zulu, 1963) and Stuart Whitman (Murder Inc., 1960) made their names playing heroic types. Here Baker is too ill for most of the picture to do any good and Whitman plays a ruthless killer. But Susannah York (Sebastian, 1968) is the big revelation. Audiences accustomed to her playing glamorous, perhaps occasionally feisty, gals will hardly recognize this portrayal of a coward, not just abjectly surrendering to the alpha male but seeking him out for protection and guilty of betrayal.

Even though this picture is set in the days before gender equality and the independent woman was a rarity, Grace’s acquiescence to the powerful male is disturbing, in part because it takes us back to the days when a woman was impotent in the face of male dominance. Such is York’s acting skill that rather than despise this woman, she earns our sympathy.

While for the most part Harry Andrews (Danger Route, 1967) and Nigel Davenport (Sebastian, 1968) appear in their usual screen personas of strong males, here their characters both are changed by the circumstances. Theodore Bikel (A Dog of Flanders, 1960) has the most interesting supporting role, the only one who takes delight in the adventure.

Director Cy Endfield (Zulu) – who also wrote the screenplay based on the William Mulvehill novel – delivers a spare picture. There is virtually no music, just image. Aerial shots show tiny figures in a landscape. The absence of character background frames the story in the present. As a reflection on the animal instinct, how close to the primordial a human being still operates, no matter how enlightened, this works exceptionally well, and melds allegory with thriller.

Man in the Dark / Blind Corner (1964) ***

Hammer Scream Queens rarely make an impact outside the genre, so it comes as something of a surprise to find Barbara Shelley effortlessly making the transition from The Gorgon (1964) to a slinky femme fatale spinning a deadly web around three men. While British femme fatales tend not to go all-out full throttle in terms of seduction and revenge, that suits the set-up here which is distinctly slow-burn. In fact, you might be persuaded to accuse the production of time-wasting or padding-out the story with its occasional diversions into song numbers (though that is a trope of these B-features) until you discover later on that there’s a very good reason for listening to the dulcet tones of pop singer Ronnie Carroll.

While there are echoes of Faces in the Dark (1960), blind composer Paul (William Sylvester) here is a far more sympathetic character especially once audiences latch on to what he as to put up with. And where Wait until Dark (1967) majors on terror, here the approach is much more subtle. And while audiences might wince at Audrey Hepburn’s predicament, here they will be appalled to see Paul’s wife Anne (Barbara Shelley) virtually taunt him by not just parading her secret lover Ricky (Alexander Davion), a penniless artist, but caressing him and pecking his cheek with kisses as if to test her husband’s radar.

Not only is Paul the forgiving type – turning a blind eye to his wife’s regular late nights – but he is devoted to Anne and considers himself lucky that she has stuck by him and it never occurs to him that his wealth plays a significant part in that bargain, Anne, a little-known former actress, unlikely to enjoy such bounty any other way. He’s so in love with his wife that he knocks back his secretary Joan (Elizabeth Shepherd) who has a good idea her employer is being played for a fool.

Under the guise of Ricky painting her portrait, Anne manages to legitimately spend a considerable amount of time with her lover and fine-tune her plans to rid herself of Paul. There’s a fairly easy option. Paul is an alcoholic and given to standing in an open balcony. He could easily lose his footing and topple over should there be someone around to give him the initial nudge.

Ricky is pencilled in as the murderer. And though he initially baulks at the idea, the prospect of both losing Anne and resolving at the same time his financial problems is too tempting. By now, Paul is aware of the tryst, having been alerted to the couple smooching in a restaurant, by his best pal and manager Mike (Mark Eden). Once we realize that Paul has been taping his wife’s telephone conversations, you are misdirected into thinking he will be better prepared. But this isn’t America or even sleazy Soho and there’s not a gun to hand or even a knife so Paul is vulnerable to an assailant and even as weak-minded an individual as Ricky seems to grow in confidence the minute the tussling begins.

Even then Ricky is so incompetent Paul needs to coach him into how to get away with the perfect murder and once we get to this stage it’s clear there’s something else going on and we’re in for a torrent of twists, delectably delivered. Ricky is informed that he’s a patsy, that Anne is in love with Mike and that in a courtroom she will act her socks off as the innocent victim of an overzealous lover – “a choked sob will escape her – she did that in The Act of Cain” or “she might fall into a crumpled but not unattractive faint” as she did in Murder Undaunted.”

When Anne arrives, accompanied by Mike, to check on Ricky’s handiwork, the game is clearly up. But Paul has police hidden in the bedroom to hear what amounts to Anne’s confession. All three are locked up and Paul heads off into the sunset with his secretary.

Barbara Shelley creates a sizzling tension of her own and is a superb femme fatale, dangling three men on a string. Alexander Davion (Paranoiac, 1963) and Mark Eden (Curse of the Crimson Altar, 1968) don’t get a look-in though simply by being stoic and then clever William Sylvester (Devils of Darkness, 1965) manages to hold his own.

Quite a different proposition to Tomorrow at Ten (1963), also helmed by Lance Comfort, where the tension is upfront. You’d say this was a weighted piece of direction, with much of the pressure in the early stages reliant on whether Paul will see through his wife. Those scenes where she toys as much with her lover as her husband are unique. Written by the team of James Kelly and Peter Miller (Tomorrow at Ten) plus Vivian Kemble (Olympus Force, 1988).

Takes a while to come to the boil but well worth the wait.

Catch it on Talking Pictures TV under the title Blind Corner.