What do you get when you take one gay man’s autobiographical reminiscences of his time in the Forces, mixed with biting political comment, slapstick comedy, bloody violence, tragedy, high camp, and peppered with some wonderful song and dance pastiches?

You could get a bloody mess, that’s for certain. But thankfully, Michael Blakemore’s big-screen adaptation of Peter Nichols’ (probably best known for A Day in the Death of Joe Egg) now-legendary revue is anything but. Somehow managing to combine elements of all the above into a cohesive whole without losing focus, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for one to witness a humorous exchange about stolen cars followed by the sobering sight of a disgraced ex-policeman beating his partner with a stick, or a vaudeville stand-up act curtailed by a savage act of machine-gun violence. Then again, I suppose, such are the realities of war- even when, as in this case, the protagonists still largely believe themselves to be living in a time of relative peace.

Nichols’ character manifests itself onscreen in the form of the decidedly heterosexual but undoubtedly naïve and inexperienced Private Steven Flowers (Patrick Pearson) newly arrived at transit camp in Malaya to join a theatrical regiment of the Army, Song And Dance Unit South East Asia, in 1948. Fresh faced and sporting a broad West Country accent, the general inference is that he’s probably never been outside the UK before, let alone to war, and in no way is he prepared for what awaits him- namely an environment which the sinister Sergeant Reg Drummond (Michael Elphick) describes as “the Queens’ own, the Middle Sex regiment”

Here, with the guidance of so-called “Captain” Terri Dennis (Dennis Quilley) a kindly and outrageously gay female impersonator who addresses all men by the female equivalent of their name, even our Lord (“Jessica Christ”) and describes his rank as “of no service in particular, but at the service of you all”, and with a little help from foul-mouthed, bisexual Brummie Corporal Len Bonnie (Joe Melia) he will become accustomed to the lifestyle of the garrison theatre, entertaining the troops nightly with a variety of wonderfully acute tributes ranging from Anne Shelton/Vera Lynn (“All The Little Things We Used To Do”) through Marlene Deitrich (“DankeSchon”) – both featuring Quilley in incredible drag- to Fred and Ginger (“Better Far Than Sitting This Life Out”) where Perason himself gets the chance to shine, accompanied by Drummond’s former paramour, Anglo-Indian temptress Lieutenant Sylvia Morgan (Nicola Pagett) These musical numbers, composed by Nichols and Dennis King (with the exception of “Black Velvet”, a genuine bawdy barrack anthem my own father recalls singing during the Indonesian Emergency in the 1960s), showcase one of Privates’ major strengths: even if the rest of the picture were dreadful, they are so brilliantly executed that you’d still come away humming them. Luckily, the rest is not dreadful- in fact, the complete opposite, with new, commendable levels of excellence coming to light on each repeated viewing.

Cinematically we’re never in any danger of witnessing great technical artistry at work, save for some skilfully executed jungle tracking shots and painstakingly accurate lighting, but such things are not the point of this kind of “movie”- which is not so much a movie as a document, a slice of life. What we thus have, thanks to Nichols’ excellent adaptation of his own screenplay, is a combination of sparkling, witty dialogue, strong characterization, adept interplay, often multi-layered (witness, for instance, the slapstick comedy backstage between three cast members during Quilley’s Shelton routine) and, for a film so steeped in (and based upon) the traditions of “theatricality”, admirable restraint. It would be so easy, for example, for straight actors like Quilley, Melia and David Bamber (in the role of the troupe’s other openly gay character, Sergeant Charlie Bishop) to play their parts as one-dimensional caricatures, but each is so multi-dimensional, layered, textured and full of warmth and humanity that this is never the case.

True, Bishop is a confirmed wimp, a fragile flower who faints when commanding officer Major Giles Flack (John Cleese, excelling in a role that calls for some Pythonesque touches but is essentially his first foray into “proper” acting), a man so set in the old ways of British life that he fails to even realize what alternative sexualities are, let alone that his unit is populated by them, informs him of the months’ worth of intense combative training that awaits: a subsequent montage shows him unable to climb a wall, cross a river on a log beam, crawl under barbed wire without becoming caught, or even march in unison with his oppos, thus placing him firmly in the stereotypical “big girl’s blouse” category. Yet under his lily-livered exterior dwells a man with a complex religious background, a skilled medical training, a wicked sense of humour and an innate kindness of spirit. None of the above should go together on the surface, but of course, in everyday life, such seemingly disparate elements are exactly what create people. Likewise, his relationship with Melia seems unlikely on the surface, but the two love each other in a way that, maybe surprisingly given the film’s late 1940s setting, is not only accepted but encouraged, and is therefore both progressive and touching.

Being in a “theatre of war” of course, any relationships within SADUSEA, be they gay, straight (Pearson and Pagett’s romance soon turns sour when he becomes suspicious of her true intentions, and, having been promoted to Sergeant-Major by Cleese, is encouraged to snub her) bi or otherwise inclined, are, if not doomed, then invested with a certain amount of prevailing tragedy. Initially ebullient, optimistic and cheerful Cockney conscript Sergeant Kevin Cartwright (Bruce Payne) returns from his tour (both of duty and of theatres) minus his genitalia, Quilley ends up hobbling around on crutches, and the woefully inept if well-meaning Eric Young-Love (Simon Jones) loses an eye, yet none of this would have happened had it not been for the nefarious clandestine activities of Elphick and Captain Sholto Savery (John Standing) both secretly paying off their gambling debts by selling ammo to the Chinese Communist enemy. Pretending they are clueless as to this “bewildering series of losses”, they, with the full approval of Cleese (who believes that World War 3 has started, and it is God’s, and therefore Britain’s, mission to avert it), devise a scheme by which ammo can be delivered to troops on the frontline in jungle territories (and therefore ambushed and raided) in the concert party’s tour bus, the shows acting as a cover- the only problem being that no-one has been kind enough to tell the theatricals or their accompanying Gurkhas that they’re effectively being sent out as decoy cannon fodder.

This taken into account, it is easy to divide the film into two distinct halves – the first based more on openly comedic traits, but halted by the alleged deaths of Standing and Elphick on a “hush hush mission”, the second of a much darker nature as the troupe progress away from the roar of the greasepaint and the joy of large theatres towards a succession of hospitals, NAFI huts, mess halls and sparsely attended makeshift camps where, even under the watchful aegis of Cleese, danger edges ever closer- although some wonderful moments of mirth still arise from such circumstances, mainly from Quilley (referring to the Camp On Malam as “Tampon Cotex” when disillusioned at another badly attended performance, or asking a local Gurkha who “does his hair”) and Jones, who is prone to threatening anyone with a “bunch of fives” when they question his rampant heterosexuality or call him “Erica”, but is later revealed to be a virgin whose fiancée has left him for his best mate.

This clearly visible shift in the film’s content, almost directly halfway in, has invited its fair share of unkind comment, particularly from a certain kind of critic (or fan) who like their “cinema”, such as they perceive it, to remain static in emotion throughout, and seem to have great difficulty understanding anything that moves with the free flow and uncertain nature of human experience. Accusations of “over-theatricality” which have also been levelled are similarly irrelevant- it is, after all, a film of a play about a military theatre unit, and onstage is divided into two quite distinct acts with differing atmospheres. But, as I suggested earlier, perhaps the true joy of Privates On Parade is to be found in repeated viewings, where textural depths, hidden subplots and previously oblique references not only reveal, but explain, themselves in greater detail. And yes, as has been pointed out, it is very similar, in theme if not content, to the fondly-remembered sitcom It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, in which Windsor Davies played, like Cleese, an ostensibly intelligent yet clueless CO guiding a vulnerable platoon of camp entertainers through the rigours of battle- but again, this is a pointless comparison when you remember that both productions are based on the real lives of their writers, and most playwrights of the 1960s and 70s had begun their careers in the Services: indeed, Nichols’ own regimental ENSA section also featured such colourful alumni as Kenneth Williams and Stanley Baker. What differed, one supposes, were the postings, and thus the experiences engendered.

The end result, for those lucky enough to see it (despite being produced by George Harrison’s Handmade Films, who seemed to be keeping British cinema alive single-handed in the 80s, its theatrical run was small, its televisual screenings infrequent, and its DVD release undeservedly obscure) is a strikingly accurate display of a whole range of human emotion, as felt by people whose lives had already been torn apart by (depending on their age) either one or two wars, and found themselves trapped not only in an inhospitable, Government-fudged hinterland between battle and peace, but also on the cusp of two very different eras, with the stiff upper lips of the 40s soon to give way to the gyrating hips of the 50s. It was an uncertain world then, and an even more uncertain one now: hence, every confusion, strife, sadness, joy, happiness, thrill, exultation and ice-cold fear felt by the members of SADUSEA is shared by you the viewer, and while the ending may be deemed unsatisfactory by some insofar as that it leaves several ends untied, well, without wishing to repeat myself, that’s real life, isn’t it?

Privates On Parade may be a musical, but only in terms of, like Cabaret before it, having some songs in it, which all occur in environments where such activities would be expected (theatres, clubs, rehearsal rooms) . Reality isn’t a song and dance, even if that’s what you do for a living. Nor is it a comedy, even if you get to see Cleese pull some fantastic faces, slip in the odd silly voice here (“velly solly, no more clicket arrowed”) and there and, perhaps inevitably, indulge himself in a funny walk. But, with the inclusion of such elements in our lives, via the medium of cinema, television, radio, music or indeed live theatre, we get through, and when some resonance is felt, however abstract, the power is irresistible- which is why, after a succession of acts that fall squarely flat, even a whole platoon of non-English speaking Gurkhas find themselves enraptured by Bamber and Melia’s bittersweet Flanagan And Allen homage “Home Sweet Home”, and they’re not the only ones either. And, if Melia’s assertion that “you can come in here as a concert fucking pianist and end up shovelling shit” is an accurate synonym for our day to day existence, then 100 minutes spent every now and then in the company of SADUSEA may render your own personal wars and battles just that little bit easier to face.

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Woman in a Dressing Gown

J. Lee Thompson, who directed, had a string of “kitchen sink” dramas in the fifties, which broadly coincided with similar developments in the theatre, notably John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger which premiered at the Royal Court in 1956. These included The Yellow Balloon (1953), The Weak and the Wicked (1954) and 1956′s Yield to the Night which starred Diana Dors as a murderer awaiting death by hanging, and generally agreed to be based on the real life story of Ruth Ellis. Thompson later went on to enjoy success in Hollywood, but this clutch of films is interesting in the way in which they feature female characters prominently.

The basic storyline of Woman in a Dressing Gown is as old as the hills: a long married couple, woman confined to the home whilst the man is out in the world, glamorous young female work colleague; and the inevitable happens. “Jimbo” Preston (Anthony Quayle), Amy’s husband, falls for the young and available Georgie Harlow (Sylvia Sims) with whom he shares an office at the timber merchants where they both work. We can surely guess how this will all end.

From the start of the film, which pans in from a view of London strangely bereft of cars to the newish post-war council estate where the Prestons live with their teenage son Brian (Anthony Ray), we are quickly acquainted with the chaos which engulfs Amy and those in her wake. Dressed in the eponymous dressing gown, she flits from one thing to another; rescuing burnt toast, misplacing the tea caddy, and serving up an overdone and shrivelled fried egg. Stacks of unironed clothes are piled everywhere, whilst the radio blares out dance music at a volume which makes it difficult for anyone in the flat to think clearly, let alone converse.

Amy is, however, a trier and we are under no illusion that her motives are anything other than well intentioned. She bustles into the bedroom with a tray on which her less than appetising breakfast is balanced precariously, only to find that Jim is already up and about. He and Brian meet in the bathroom, and a close and loving relationship is evident between father and son. When she presses Jimbo as to why he is up and about so early on a Sunday, he reminds her that he has to work “again” as a consignment of timber is due in which requires checking. Amy hasn’t listened to him. Amy’s constant stream of chatter makes it difficult for her to listen to anyone. Jim mitigates her evident disappointment that they will be unable to go out together; something to which she had been looking forward – with a promise that they will go to the pub that evening and that she should have her “best bib and tucker” on for the occasion.

Jim, we soon discover, is most definitely not headed for work but to the basement flat of his lover Georgie, where he spends an idyllic Sunday and even manages to carve the roast dinner between bouts of lovemaking during which both parties remain fully clothed. The symbolism of domestic settings in Woman in a Dressing Gown is powerful: Georgie’s flat is neat, ordered quiet and uncluttered compared to the chaos of Jim’s family home. The imagery, however, has a darker side. The basement setting of Georgie’s flat mirrors the subterfuge and hidden nature of their relationship, whilst his own flat is above ground in a block. When Jimbo leaves home in the morning it is in bright sunshine; whilst he and Georgie are engaged in their furtive assignation, the rain buckets down outside, as it does frequently when they are together. Before leaving to return home, Jim is told in no uncertain terms by Georgie that he must tell his wife about their relationship, that he must leave her for him. Jim’s dilemma is that, besotted as he is with Georgie and flattered by her attention, he clearly still retains strong feelings for Amy which go beyond mere habit. However, he promises to do so.

Amy suspects nothing. In many ways she is a complete innocent. She seems vaguely aware that her frantic bustling in the house achieves nothing, but whenever challenged, jokingly or otherwise, by Jim or Brian, she laughs it off and reiterates how she has been up and busy since seven o’clock. When Jim tells her in the pub that Sunday evening that he has something important to tell her, her attention is held only for a split second before being distracted by the arrival of neighbours Hilda and Harold. Jimbo fails to tell Amy his news and incurs Georgie’s wrath the next day at work. She fails to meet up with him for lunch, and then informs him she has been offered a job elsewhere and that she is minded to take it. After work, she becomes even angrier and it is evident that we are witnessing an ongoing cycle of events: they have clearly been here before, but this time Georgie puts her foot down firmly. She and Jim are reconciled, but on the clear understanding that this is his last chance to tell Amy, although, when they repair to the pub after this confrontation, she informs Jim, or Preston as she calls him, that she would not have had the heart to take the other job and thereby leave him.

Amy has had one of her periodic, if unsuccessful, attempts to pull herself together. Ironically, the next scene finds her talking to Hilda, who is bemoaning the actions of her husband Harold, and asserting that all men are selfish. “Not Jimbo”, replies Amy. with an innocence tugs at the heartstrings of we who know better. “He may be all sorts of things, but he isn’t selfish.” So she makes a big effort, in her own terms, to have his tea ready for him when he returns home. The ubiquitous frying pan works overtime as she cooks him plaice and chips but of course it is burned: her new method of making crispy chips has made them very crispy indeed. She pours Jim a glass of beer she has bought specially but manages to overflow most of most of it in an effusion of froth. Initially Jim laughs resignedly and it is plain that he still feels a great of affection for his wife. However, the combination of the wistful Tchaikovsky music from the radio and the piles of unironed clothes tip him over the edge and he loses his cool big time.

“Either finish the damned ironing or put it away,” he rails, adding that just once it would be nice to come back to a tidy home. It seems that this is the only way that Jim can tell Amy that he wants a divorce, and eventually he does. Once the words are out a bizarre kind of calm descends upon the flat. We begin to view Amy is a new light: she exhibits a kind of self-knowledge, an awareness of her faults and sloppiness that has been there all along. She guesses with whom Jimbo is having an affair. She muses on how one reads about this kind of thing without ever guessing it could happen to you. Yet in the midst of this self-knowledge, there remains an equal amount of naivety; whilst fully aware of the situation, she immediately begins to chatter and to come up with simplistic solutions and assertions. “It’ll all be all right, I know it will.” Once again, the undone ironing and the domestic clutter becomes a metaphor for the failed marriage.

In the middle of their awkward discussion, Brian and his girlfriend arrive home and both parents put on a show of normality as the teenagers dance to some “really groovy” traditional jazz. For Amy, it is all too much, and she faints in the kitchen as the kettle whistles and the scene becomes blurry. Jim puts her to bed, and, before retiring himself, arranges the covers and fusses over her. In the morning, Amy awakes early and reciprocates these gestures to a sleeping Jim, before finishing the ironing, cleaning the flat, and preparing flawless bacon and eggs for the family. If only the place is clean, surely Jim will want to stay. Her desperation is plain as she follows him out of the house onto the communal landing and pleads with him loudly, desperate for reassurance. Later in the day she forms a plan and telephones Jim at work, insisting that he brings Georgie home with him that night in order that they can discuss things in a civilised fashion.

The next part of the film contains such an inevitably tragic sequence of events that is genuinely difficult to watch with dispassion. Amy plans to win Jim back. She borrows money from Brian, pawns her wedding ring, has her hair done and buys a half-bottle of whisky. The hand of fate does not take long to intervene: she leaves the off licence just as a torrential downpour drenches her. She returns home and tries on her best “special” dress, only to rip it beyond repair. Hilda comes in and persuades her all men are worthless and that they should drink the whisky themselves. Amy is quickly drunk. She still attempts to lay the table, but one of its leaves crashes to the ground along with plates and cutlery. Amy collapses. Brian arrives home and panics at the sight of his mother in this state. Jim and Georgie arrive at the same time, and he rushes to Amy’s side. Her attempts to impress Jim and Georgie have failed miserably. Jim tells her this doesn’t matter, but “It matters to me!!” Amy shouts back, finally finding her own voice.

A big showdown then occurs: Brian finds out what’s going on and snubs Georgie and is slapped by his father, before leaving the flat. Amy tells Georgie some home truths about Jim, and asks her why she couldn’t have left him alone and fallen for someone else. Georgie asserts that she had no control over her feelings. Brian tells his father “Don’t ever hit me again, Dad.” Once Amy’s voice is found, it becomes stronger. She knows that Georgie is the instigator of all this and that Jim would not have the gumption to act on his own initiative. She asserts that she has lived in his shadow too long, that she is fed up with putting him first at her own expense and that she can now function without him. She can get a job. She can exist as an independent person. To their assertion that Jim will leave on the forthcoming weekend, she retorts that he must go now. She will cope, and rejects his offers of a financial settlement. She helps him pack his suitcase although he is in such a flustered hurry to depart that he leaves it behind.

Amy watches the lovers leave through the window of the flat, before closing the curtains and shutting out the world. She and Brian are ensconced in the flat on their own. As she attempts to carry the suitcase across the room and place it outside the flat, it spills open and spews forth its contents on the floor, powerfully symbolising the detritus of their marriage. “He’ll be back for it,” she tells Brian. And he soon is. As he has asserted all along, “it would be different if Amy was a bad person.” Of course, she isn’t. Jim abandons Georgie in the street in a tearful parting and returns home to Amy. Their reconciliation is almost wordless, unspoken as they both replace Jim’s belongings in their rightful place. Brian brews a pot of tea and Jim goes through his notes for a speech he is due to deliver. Normality is restored.

This is, however, no cynical or cosy ending, nor is it a recuperative affirmation of societal norms. It is a powerful and believable tale of real people and real, repressed emotions played out in a bleak and very British landscape. The film would scarcely work in colour, for it is set in a monochrome world of torrential rain and a bleak emotional landscape. Yet the female characters are strong in a bizarre kind of way: Georgie is not presented as a harpy, but as a modern woman who expresses her feelings openly, albeit to her detriment; whilst Amy is, for all her faults, aware of whom she is and what her failings are. In the final analysis the Preston family is reunited through love, not duty. The potential for change is shown, and the eponymous dressing gown discarded. “I shall miss it,” says Jim, but I doubt if he really will.

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For those of us who love horror, there was clearly a golden age.  1930 to 1940 was the decade of elegance in horror, the decade of Universal.  It was the decade of James Whale, the decade of Tod Browning, Boris Karloff’s intimidating sad monster and Bela Lugosi’s charismatic Dracula. Most of us also include Lon Chaney Jr.’s tortured “Wolf Man” from 1941. Universal basically created the horror film genre during this decade before it all fell apart in the 1940’s and 1950’s, devolving into self-parody in the “Abbot and Costello Meet…” films.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Abbot and Costello but seeing Lon Chaney give a sad, empathetic performance as Larry Talbot opposite these two is almost painful to watch.

For almost the next two decades horror, for the most part, languished, drown in an ocean of B movies, giant bug movies and low or no budget “sequels” to Universal’s great monster movies, the horror genre seemed doomed. Periodically a gem would emerge from the coal, such as the aforementioned “The Pit and the Pendulum” or “The Thing (From Another World)” with James Arness or the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.

Then came a revelation. Then came salvation. Then came Hammer! Hammer films, which started releasing movies in 1934, was not originally known as a “Horror” studio.  The horror genre itself was still relatively unknown outside of German Expressionist horror such as the films of F. W. Murnau (“Nosferatu”, “Faust”) and Robert Weine (“The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, “The Hands of Orlac”). Instead, the studio, founded by cinema owner Enrique Carreras and vaudevillian William Hinds, half of the duo of Hammer and Smith, focused on period pieces and historical dramas such as “Henry the Eighth”, “The Private Life of Henry the Ninth” (both in 1935) and “The Mystery of the Mary Celeste” (1936).

The studio, like many of Great Britain’s movie studios, took a hiatus during World War II, releasing no films to the public between 1937 and 1945. The sons of the founders, James Carreras and Anthony Hinds, who had both joined the studio, went off to fight the Axis along with most of the rest of the young men of their generation. Even well-heeled American studios such as Disney and Warner Brothers focused most of their artistic endeavors to anti-Nazi propaganda films during this time, so a small, independent studio like Hammer had no choice but to temporarily close their doors at this time of deprivation and hardship.

When James Carreras and Anthony Hinds came home from the war, they rejoined the studio and set out to make Hammer a world-class studio. With limited resources and no stable of stars, however, Hammer was limited to short subjects and documentaries until 1947 when they released “Death in High Heels”. During the 1950’s, Hammer focused almost exclusively on cheap, easily-made “noir” films such as “The Black Widow” (1951) and “Murder by Proxy” (1954). Because of a distribution agreement with American producer Robert Lippert, many of these films featured American leads. For the 1952 film “The Last Page”, however, Hammer (unbeknownst to them at the time) made their first major step in returning elegance to the horror film when they hired director Terence Fisher.

For horror film fans, the studio’s first big step in that direction was their purchase of the rights to the BBC television “Quatermass” serial, and produced a big-screen adaptation of the first of these, which they called “The Quatermass Xperiment”. The series focused on Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group. Although ostensibly science fiction, the series contained enough horror elements to earn a special place in the hearts of horror fans the world over.

Quatermass also has the distinction of bringing science fiction from the realm of kiddie shows like Captain Video and into an adult realm. Despite a few earlier films like “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, it really marked the beginning of what is now called “serious” science fiction, distinguishing it from the giant bug and monster from another planet films that overtook the genre throughout the 1950’s. The film enjoyed huge success in the UK, becoming half of the highest-grossing double bill of 1955, and was so successful that it spawned two Hammer sequels, “Quatermass 2” and “Quatermass and the Pit”. The series also cemented Bernard Quatermass in the public consciousness as one of Britian’s great science fiction heroes, along with Dr. Who.

The other thing that the film did was to give the studio the much-needed influx of cash to really ramp up their production capabilities, leading to the first of the full-color “Hammer Horrors”, “The Curse of Frankenstein” in 1957. This was the first pairing of duo Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as his misbegotten creature. One hitch that the studio encountered, however, was the monster’s make-up.  The iconic make-up created by Jack Pierce for Boris Karloff in the 1931 film, with the flat head and bolts in the neck, was still the property of Universal, who refused to allow Hammer to use it for their film. This led them to create their own unique look for the monster, which has become iconic in its own way.

I remember when I saw this film on television, being disappointed in the different look of the creature, until I was drawn into the story of the film, and finding myself fascinated and horrified by the small touches, such as the creature’s mismatched eyes,  that indicated his piecemeal creation. The film focuses much more on the creator rather than the creature, casting Victor Frankenstein as the true evil of the film. Deciding to give his creature a worthy brain, Frankenstein lures a distinguished professor to his home and pushing him down a staircase, killing him so that Frankenstein can use the brain. Apparently unfamiliar with the effects of trauma on the brain, however, Frankenstein doesn’t anticipate that the brain would now be irreparably damaged, causing the monster to be a single-minded creature of vengeance and terror.

Playing a mute monster, however, wasn’t Lee’s idea of a terrific career move. Apparently, on the first day of shooting, he stormed into Peter Cushing’s dressing room, shouting “I have no lines!” As the story goes, Cushing responded “You’re lucky… I’ve read the script.” But Lee gradually accepted the role that he was playing, and seeing what his acting abilities could bring to it, lines or no lines, and it is said that he would often entertain the rest of the cast by singing beautifully while in the full monster makeup. The film received a suitable “X” certification, which meant appropriate for viewing only by those over the age of 16. The critics, for the most part, found the film inappropriate for viewing by anyone; critical comments included “Depressing and degrading for anyone who loves the cinema”, “disgusting” and “horrendous”.  The writing was on the wall, however. Despite (or maybe because of) the critical reception to the film, it grossed more than ten times its production cost of£75,000 pounds.

Almost immediately, Hammer began production on the next film that would cement it as the premier horror studio for the next decade or more:  “Dracula” (1958, titled “The Horror of Dracula” in the US). The film, like “Curse of Frankenstein”, was again presented in bloody Technicolor, and reunited the team of Peter Cushing (Van Helsing) and Christopher Lee (Dracula). Like the earlier film, “The Horror of Dracula” was, at best, kissing cousins with the Bram Stoker novel. One interesting side-note on the film:  when it was originally released in 1958, it was given an “X” certificate, only appropriate for those over the age of 16, while, upon it’s re-release in Great Britain in 2007, it was given a “12A” rating, appropriate for those over the age of 12.

Lee and Cushing would again be united in “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (1959), Hammer’s “The Mummy” (1959), “The Gorgon” (1964), “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors” (1965), “She” (1965), “The Skull” (1965), “Scream and Scream Again” (1970), in separate segments of “The House That Dripped Blood” (1971), “I, Monster” (1971), “Dracula 1972” (1972), “Horror Express” (1972), “The Creeping Flesh” (1973), “The Satanic Rites of Dracula” (1973) among others, making them, perhaps the second most identifiable horror duo next to the redoubtable Abbot and Costello.  The two also bookended the “Star Wars” saga, with Cushing playing Grand Moff Tarkin in the first trilogy and Lee playing Count Dooku in the second.

Throughout the sixties, Hammer continued to lead the horror genre, with numerous sequels to their Frankenstein and Dracula, as well as created their own versions of the Mummy, the Wolfman and Mr. Hyde, and sequels to those. As the sixties became the seventies, however, and these old monsters and formulae started to lose their appeal for mass audiences, Hammer began to tighten the budgets on their films and rely more heavily on blood and, eventually, nudity for ticket sales rather than well-told stories. Ultimately, however, with more and more of the large, well-heeled studios starting to churn out horror films, Hammer could no longer compete in the market. “To the Devil… A Daughter” (1976) starring Richard Widmark as an American occult novelist trying to rescue a young girl from a group of Satanists led by excommunicated priest Father Michael (Christopher Lee) would become the last of the “Hammer Horrors”. 1979 would see the release of the final Hammer film, a comedic reinterpretation of the Alfred Hitchcock film “The Lady Vanishes” starring Elliott Gould and Cybill Shepherd.

But, like Frankenstein’s creature, Dracula, and Karis the mummy, it appears that the great studio of 1960’s horror may be “not quite dead”. After many years and many owners, the Hammer film library and name finally went to the Dutch conglomerate Cyrtle Investments, the group behind Big Brother, which finally began producing films under the Hammer banner once more.  2010 saw the release of Hammer’s first feature horror film in over 30 years with “Let Me In”, a generally well-made and well-accepted remake of the Danish vampire thriller “Let the Right One In”. With the most well-known stars in the film being Chloe Moretz and Elias Koteas, the film coasted to moderate success on the success of its superior Danish predecessor and the American popularity of vampires in seemingly all forms of media.

They followed that in 2011 with “The Resident”, starring Hilary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan also found Hammer reunited with one of its great old names, one of the stars who made the studio’s name in horror to begin with: Christopher Lee in the role of August.  The film follows the old suspense stand-by plot of “landlord stalks and terrorizes pretty new tenant”.  Also in 2011 came “Wake Wood” starring Aidan Gillen and Eve Birthistle. This film, made in Ireland, marked Hammer’s return to British horror. The film focuses on a grieving couple whose daughter was killed by dogs, when an occultist (Timothy Spall) offers to perform a ritual with them that, he says, will bring their daughter back for three days. As the review on the website eatmybrains.com says, “things go badly”.

What may ultimately earn Hammer its place at the horror table in the twenty first century, however, is “The Woman in Black”, starring Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe and Ciaran Hinds, due for release in the US on February 3, 2012 and in the UK a week later.  The film follows a young lawyer (Radcliffe) as he leaves London to settle the affairs of a recently deceased woman and discovers that the village is being terrorized by the ghost of a woman who was unable to save her son from drowning. The DVD/home video revolution is another thing that is helping Hammer with its comeback. The film “Wake Wood”, for instance, which had no theatrical release in the US is enjoying a moderate amount of success in the states on DVD. As a fan, I can only say “Welcome back, Hammer, to the world and to the world of horror”. Also, as a fan, I can only hope that Hammer learned its lessons from its earlier rise and fall, and won’t make the same mistakes again.  In other words, Hammer, please do not bring us “The Blood of Wake Wood”, “The Satanic Rites of Wake Wood” and “Wake Wood Must Die!”

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This quote from John Maxwell Edmond’s epitaph appears at the beginning of Went the Day Well?, accompanying images of the peaceful, idyllic Buckinghamshire countryside as we assume the point of view of a vehicle travelling towards the small village of Bramley End. Our journey comes to a halt at the churchyard, where we are greeted by the affable figure of sexton Charles Sims (Mervyn Johns) who doffs his cap and informs us of the ancient history of the church before adding, knowingly, “but it won’t be that that’s brought you here….It’ll be these names that’s on this grave here” and the story of how German troops who came to the village because “they wanted England, these Gerry’s got, and this was the only bit they got.”

The action then jumps to Whitsun weekend, 1942, “just as quiet as it is now”, and we witness the presence of a motorised column of sappers heading towards the small village of Bramley End. At this stage we have no indication that the troops are anything other than British and, therefore, benign. “We’d have laughed if you told us we’d got a real, live German right under our very noses” says Sims, and this theme of innocent acceptance of the situation at face value is a powerful theme throughout the film. The villagers of Bramley End find it hard to accept that Germans are in their midst, despite some glaring clues, until the enemy finally give themselves away and revert to type – and then some.

That Bramley End is a backwater is clear from the fact that the villagers are genuinely shocked to see sixty soldiers appear in their midst. The troops quickly set about arranging billets for their men, with the affable C.O. Major Hammond (aka Kommandant Orlter) doing the rounds of village bobby and vicarage, cheerfully explaining that the sappers  have been given a “job of work” to do, and that they must work uninterrupted throughout the weekend. In a twist that later becomes bitterly ironic, the Vicar Reverend Ashton informs the men that there is to be a wedding the following day so the troops will not be able to use the church for Church Parade. Of course the ‘Royal Engineers’ will indeed be in the church on Sunday, and Tom and Peggy’s wedding will be postponed.

The billeting sequence serves to introduce us to the main protagonists of the film: as well as those already mentioned, we meet the other Land Girl Ivy Dawking (Thora Hird in her first major screen role), Mrs. Collins and Daisy (Patricia Hayes) from the village shop, Joe Garbett (the village bobby), Marie Lahr as Mrs. Fraser (the lady of the manor who house is dutifully stocked with evacuee children from London), and an assortment of Germans, including John Slater as a Sergeant), whose viciousness is bubbling away just beneath the surface at all times – as witnessed by the manner in which one of their number tweaks the ear of George Truscott (played brilliantly by a youthful Harry Fowler) who he discovers nosing under the covers of their equipment.

We also meet the ‘squire’ of the village, the universally respected and obeyed Oliver Wilsford (suavely played by Leslie Banks), who is quickly revealed to be that most un-English of beasts, a Quisling who has been alerted by Berlin to the imminent arrival of the Germans masquerading as Tommies and who is soon receiving his orders obsequiously from Kommandant Orlter and conning the local Home Guard commander into spilling the defence plans for the village. The ground is laid for a sequence of innocent acceptance of both the troops (initially) and Wilsford (by some, right up to the end of the film).

It is this tension between the normality of a village far removed from the front line of the war, and the fact that it has unwittingly ventured right into their midst, that makes the first half of Went the Day Well? so gripping. The absent minded Mrs. Collins leaves a telegram she is supposed to deliver to Mrs. Fraser in the village hall where the bulk of the Germans have been billeted; John Slater’s character has to accompany her back there to retrieve it, only to find it in use by the men for scoring their card game – and worse, they have filled it up with continental scribblings: a “seven with a line through the middle” and, even worse, “one of those elongated fives.”

It is Nora Ashton, spinster of the parish and daughter of the Vicar, who first spots this anomaly when the telegram is finally delivered to Mrs. Fraser’s later that evening, but she and Mrs. Collins’ suspicion is quickly pooh-poohed by Fraser. Nora is no fool, however, and her suspicions remain, to be heightened further the following day when George Truscott, once again poking his nose where he has no business, discovers a bar of chocolate which has the damning legend “Chocolade – Wien” emblazoned upon it in an aggressive, Teutonic script.

Unfortunately for the good folk of Bramley End, Nora is besotted with Oliver Wilsford, and she rushes to him with the evidence. Wilsford’s initial reaction of horror is swiftly substituted for an explanation that is less than plausible to all but the heavily infatuated: namely that Major Hammond is posing as a German to test the observatory powers of the British public, and good old Nora has passed with flying colours. However, Wilsford is worried and immediately radios to the Germans to instigate Plan B: i.e. revert to type, reveal yourself as the brutal Germans you really are and stop pretending to be nice, kind British soldiers (a role for which you were singularly unsuited).

The second half of Went the Day Well? starts with another idyllic scene of English life, which serves as an effective contrast of the brutality to follow.  We are attending a service in the 13^th Century church, conducted by Reverend Ashton, and where the village is done out in their finery to mark the wedding of Tom Sturry and Peggy Pride which is to follow. Ashton’s service is rudely interrupted by Kommandant Orlter who yells at him to be quiet and reveals himself not be Major Hammond and the “sappers” to be crack German parachutists. Reverend Hammond performs the first act of true heroism when he rings the church bell – the well known signal for German parachutists – having refused to submit to the enemies of Christianity in “this house of God.” He is shot in the back by Orlter for his pains.  We are no longer under any illusions about the ruthlessness of the enemy, a point which would have needed little reinforcing in 1942, but one which is made increasingly clear from this point on nevertheless.

What is equally clear from the film is that this German ruthlessness must, sometimes reluctantly, be met with equal callousness in defence of freedom and the British way of life. Each German outrage is met with a correspondingly vicious response. At this point in the war, with the horrors of Dunkirk fading from immediate consciousness and the successes of Montgomery in North Africa indicating that defeat was not an inevitability, Britons were coming round to the view that fire must be met with fire and that Total War applied to both sides.  Fortunately it never had to be proved, but there can be little doubt that the British public would have fought tooth and nail to defend their country had Germans ever landed here. So the further treachery of Wilsford, who insists on accompanying P.C. Garbett in an escape attempt, only to club him to death once they have reached the churchyard is mirrored by Sims having killed his German guard by dropping a massive metal plate on his head; the death of the Vicar is paid for when Mrs. Collins lulls her German house guest into a false sense of security by chatting with him about how she doesn’t believe all the rumours about “babies on bayonets” and apparently colludes with the immorality of his having “two fine sons” outside of wedlock, only to throw pepper in his face and club him to death with a chopper. She in turn suffers her own end by bayonet when attempting to get through to Upton on the telephone only to be ignored by the telephonist who is indulging in idle gossip with a friend.

This theme of ill-fated bad luck resonates strongly through the first phase of the villagers’ attempts to warn the outside world of their fate. Their resourcefulness is great, but appears doomed. Ivy and Peggy’s attempt to send a message via a box of eggs for the paper boy’s mother fails when he is driven off the road by Mrs. Fraser’s cousin and the eggs crushed; Mrs. Fraser’s subsequent effort to send a message with her cousin by means of a note in her pocket fails when the missive is used as a wedge for a rattling car window, and ends up being chewed beyond recognition by the dog.

In the midst of all this, the Home Guard, who have been out on manoeuvres, return to the village on their bicycles, hoping to get back in time for the wedding. Whilst on exercises in the fields, one of their number has heard the two rings of the Bramley church bell, but has been laughed at and ignored by his comrades. It is a similar kind of sequence of tragic misfortunes that is reminiscent of Thomas Hardy, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles in particular, as if fate has taken a hand and is dooming the inhabitants of Bramley End. The value of Wilsford’s treachery to the Germans is further underscored by the ambush and annihilation of the Home Guard as they approach the village – but not before one of their number manages to kill one of the enemy before he dies himself. Interestingly, the Home Guard are shown to be a normal body of fighting men who happen to be in reserved occupations, rather than the elderly, comic and risible creations which exposure to Dad’s Army has bequeathed us. A further turning point is achieved, and we are now open to the possibility of relief for the villagers and victory for decency and order – with some joyful killing of Germans along the way.

Everyone is capable of redemption in this film, unless, of course, they are a German. Bill Purvis, the poacher, is known for what he is by the entire village, and he manages to outsmart Joe Garbett, albeit with the assistance of George Truscott, who he has taken on as a kind of apprentice. George, of course, straddles the line between good and bad throughout the film, being the nosey poacher’s boy on the one hand and the cherubic altar boy on the other. George is desperate to use his new-found skills to attempt to reach Upton and help: in this he is initially thwarted by Mrs. Fraser, who tells him that the villagers need to avoid quixotic gestures and rely on morale, asking him if he knows what this is. George replies, classically, “Yeah, it’s what the wops ain’t got!” Different times….

Eventually George sneaks away anyway and tells an initially disbelieving Purvis of the horrors going on in Bramley. Purvis is eventually persuaded of the truth buy the sound of gunfire, and allows George to get away and through to Bramley by sacrificing his life: another act of everyday heroism. It appears at first as if George has fallen foul of the same laws of fate which have thwarted previous attempts to rouse the alarm, but he does get through to Upton and alerts Harry Drew the baker and C.O. of the Home Guard, earlier duped by Wilsford and Orlter. Meanwhile, a party of villagers have overpowered their guards in the church and broken free to the village and have also managed to alert the army by reaching the post office and the telephone.

Crucially, Nora Ashton has realised that Wilsford is a fifth columnist and prepares icily for her revenge. Whilst the defenders have withdrawn to the Manor and arm and prepare themselves for the upcoming ‘Battle of Bramley End’, Nora equips herself with a revolver and finishes the double-dealing squire in short order, expiating personal as well as national outrage. Mrs. Fraser dies a hero too, picking up a grenade and running from the room just before it explodes, thereby saving the lives of the children in her care. After a fierce battle, the Home Guard and regular troops regain control of the village and order is restored.

Went the Day Well? has been dismissed as crude propaganda designed to bolster morale on the Home Front, to counter national feelings of fear about the threat of German invasion of these shores. This argument leaves something to be desired: British troops had already achieved some victories in North Africa at this point, dispelling the myth of German invincibility; the dire threat of 1940 and the aftermath of Dunkirk was fading, and the Germans had by now opened up their fateful second front. If anything, it is a celebration of British resolve, courage and determination to match ruthlessness with ruthlessness. It said that Britain could win and would stop at nothing in so doing, and that was a fairly accurate assessment of what subsequently happened. And the fact that the film, made in 1942 but assuming a putative post-war victory, portrays that confidence manifestly.

Went the Day Well? succeeds as a film, not a piece of crude propaganda. It has a storyline which it makes credible on its own terms; it has a tight, well-plotted script which keeps the viewer hooked; it has great characterisation and acting; and it is shot beautifully, evoking an England that has almost disappeared but is still just about recognisable, in a similar way to Powell and Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale. You can watch this film over and over again and not tire of it, or lose attention. That’s a pretty good measure of success.

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I’ll be the first to admit, readily, that there’s not an awful lot to be said about The Meaning Of Life (the film, not the concept) that hasn’t already been said, but with a film so multi-layered, it’s always worth saying it again in a different, maybe more personal, way. Face it, for most people of my age, this was the defining Python film- we were too young to really take part in all the furore surrounding the Life Of Brian and its Muggeridge-induced backlash (although I remember it, and I saw the film on Phillips VCR 2000 in 1981) were barely out of our prams when The Holy Grail hit and weren’t even glints in our parents’ eyes at the inception of And Now For Something Completely Different, but we were just into double figures (ah, lovely quaint old term) by the time this hit retail video (teens at the time of its first TV screening) and Python were still very much a functioning entity then, so to gather round your mate’s house and watch this in its entirety was quite an event. The Flying Circus may have belonged to our Dads and Uncles, but this was our film. It still is.

Being the age we were, we probably weren’t quite sharp enough to detect all the subtle inferences and references contained within, such as the blatant satire of Thatcher’s recently deregulated health service displayed very early on in the ‘Miracle Of Birth’ segment: at 12, the “machine that goes ping” would have stuck in our minds and the rest would have gone over our heads. Nor would we have noticed just how much sheer vitriol, bile, hatred and spite drips from practically every sketch- we were too busy laughing with sheer incredulity at the fact that we were watching a large group of kids younger than ourselves playfully leaping up and down a Yorkshire street singing a song entitled “Every Sperm Is Sacred” and wondering how the makers got away with it (bearing in mind, this was the 80s, we’d only known what sperm was for an average of between four to five years, and it generally didn’t get mentioned on television, or, to our knowledge, in the movies- at least not in the films we were allowed to watch) But now, through an adult’s eyes, and with the benefit of some 30 years of hindsight, every implicit broadside, jibe and barb is glaringly visible.

Sure, in true Python tradition, it’s still ridiculously daft (best evinced during the “fish” sequence in the middle of the film, in which Chapman rather worryingly appears to be wearing something he might have donned during one of his private sexual encounters) but the zany madcap nonsense they excelled at between 1969 and 1975 is now replaced by scathing satire. What’s all the more incredible is that this is a film based on the opinions of not one man, but a team of six: Chapman, Cleese, Gilliam, Idle, Jones and Palin’s bugbears are, for once, perfectly in tune with each other (disagreements having been rife during their earlier years), their sheer fury and disillusionment with the world united as one. Every major institution of the establishment gets it in the neck from start to finish: the health service, organised religion, school, sport, employment, the Army, marriage, America, sex and even death. And yet it’s still all ball-breakingly, side-splittingly, bum-achingly funny.

To list the film’s highpoints in turn would be pointless for anyone who’s already seen it, and would ruin the whole experience for anyone who hasn’t, but special mention must be made of Terry Jones’ exquisite choreography for the Sperm sequence, which is worthy of Bob Fosse or Dickie Attenborough at their best, and can, when in the right frame of mind, leave the viewer agape at not only what a genius the Welshman can be when he’s allowed to express himself, but the sheer cinematic scope of his vision. Like Lindsay Anderson (with whose Britannia Hospital the film shares not only an era but a definite sense of style and underlying theme), he captures the disparate elements, largely in decline at the time of production, which once made British cinema great- such as artistic flair, science fiction, a love of the grotesque (the infamous Mr Creosote being the prime example), and, in the Death segment, chilling horror- and turn them all into prime comedic material.

Cleese’s portrayal of the Grim Reaper in that very sequence must also come in for high praise, achieving a rare balance of terror and humour not seen in many other productions. It’s impossible to be truly scared of him, as we know it’s him under that cloak and scythe- for a start, no-one else would intone a line like “you Americans, you talk and talk, you say things like ‘now let me say this’ and ‘I just wanna tell ya something’, well you’re all dead now” or “you Englishmen, you’re all so fucking pompous, none of you have got any balls” with such jagged venom- but at the same time, his delivery carries such a sibilant, dishevelled rattle of doom, set once again to some sublimely bleak photography and remarkable settings (Jones, unlike many other British directors, is not afraid to damn the unions by travelling hundreds of miles beyond London and the Home Counties to find the best locations) that it’s still unsettling viewing. For a man who had already found his niche as a director, Gilliam is subdued here as a performer (a drag turn and some of his usually fantastic animation aside), but Palin (“LEAAAAAAAAAAARNING THE PIAAAAAAAAAAAANO?”), Idle and Chapman, the last-named excelling both as a ranting Protestant reformist and the unctuously smug singer of the song “It’s Christmas In Heaven”, are at their fiery peak.

Although it did well businesswise, and scooped- unusually for an English-language comedy picture- the big prize at Cannes, its episodic nature, coupled with the fact that despite its explicit sex and violence, it never generated the same scandal as the Life Of Brian, has meant that The Meaning Of Life has come in for some unfair criticism over the years, not least of all from the Pythons themselves- Cleese has never been particularly fond of it, even though at least three of his most acclaimed performances are contained within. Then again, as his counterparts have suggested, if Cleese himself had turned up for further writing, Idle’s idea of linking the stories by having the same character appear throughout every sketch may have come to fruition, and there would be more of an a narrative, rather than what remains essentially a sketch film, based around a very loose concept, whose constituent parts are thus forced to stand up on their own. Taking this as a given, the results are inevitably mixed, but still commendable:  at the very worst, they drag a little, at their best, they’re stupendously electrifying. It’s also been called overlong, although how many other films come with their own supporting quickie (directed by Gilliam and allegedly more expensive than the actual movie) boosted by a cast of “those” actors that always played pensioners’ bit parts in the 80s (most notably also seen in Ray Davies’ Return To Waterloo) and whom no-one can remember the name of, which also manages to return nearly an hour later to encroach on the main feature?

Personally, I think it’s just the right length: the DVD also features a director’s cut with some ten minutes’ worth of deleted footage, including a rather ribald sketch about Martin Luther and extended footage from the Autumn Years sequence, which may, on repeated viewing, add further depth to the existing film or be seen as unnecessary surplus, but it’s been shoehorned into the print so shoddily that it’s hard to integrate it into your memory of the film as you know it. My memories of The Meaning Of Life remain intrinsically good ones, particularly at this time of year when there always seemed to be something Python-related on the box to galvanise you into re-watching whatever you had of the entire back catalogue, and while it may have been surpassed by the Holy Grail as my personal favourite, its finest moments, such as Cleese’s assembly speech and sex education lesson, are still sublime enough to make you wish you wrote them, which in turn has inspired future generations of comedians to write something.

Furthermore, without its blatant leanings toward the gruesome and grotesque (although the same accolade could be awarded to their-then contemporary heirs such as the Young Ones and Comic Strip), the open lunacy of 1990s and 21^st century comedy from Big Train to The Mighty Boosh may not have been possible. If only the protagonists of those shows were as likeable as the Pythons, the missing pieces would fall into place. Of course it has faults- some of the targets are dated now, there’s not nearly enough Carol Cleveland in it (unless you watch the deleted scenes) and several subtexts (capitalism is bad, multinational corporations need overthrowing, Americans can understand meaningless minutiae concerning hats or dinner but can’t get to grips with matter and energy, or even realise that they’re dead) are now not only old hat but have proved as pointless as those which they set out to lambast, particularly in the light of Idle’s descent from comic pioneer into profit-motivated mogul- but most of that’s simply association after the fact, in the same way that Sting’s cameo in Christopher Petit’s Radio On was perfectly acceptable at the time, only jarring years later after his fall from musical grace into utter twatdom, and besides, how many films are totally flawless from start to finish? Not many.

The fact that anything of artistic note got made in this country after the removal of the Eady Levy, never mind one as broad in scope as this, is a minor miracle anyway, and if you look, you’ll see at least one Python member involved somewhere, so if anything we should be thankful that The Meaning Of Life exists. Sadly, the death of Chapman in 1989 (just when the possibility of a new collaboration was being mooted) effectively spelt, a few hastily-assembled sketches for a BBC2 theme night in the late 90s aside, the end of the team as a creative force, although rumours persist of forthcoming commissions from American television and another live tour. Should they or shouldn’t they? Maybe. Will they or won’t they? Dunno. Closure in the form of a final endeavour would be good, but if this remains, after 30 years, the full stop, at least it was prefaced by a wonderfully executed sentence.

And if it really is Christmas every day in heaven, I sincerely hope it bears no resemblance to the consumer-orientated pissup we’re forced to endure now. A glass of single malt Scotch and a selection of decent British films (or, for that matter, “Jaws, 1, 2 and 3” – maybe that’s the elusive fish of which they spoke?) will do me any day, and this one, along with several other Python-related titles, may well be among them. Or at least they usually are in my house.

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Spring and Port Wine (1970)

The film opens in silence with a panoramic view of a Bolton which is clearly undergoing changes, although its mills and factories are still prominent alongside the clearly visible demolition sites. The silence is quickly shattered by two contrasting sounds which symbolise the divisions which are to permeate the film: on the one hand a raucous party to celebrate someone’s engagement, on the other the clatter of machinery as Rafe Crompton – on his own – finishes of his week’s work and receives his pay packet. The following scene is of the mass exodus from the factory, seemingly all of young people, vivacious, joyous to be free of their workplace for the weekend.

The next few scenes are exposition and set up the premise of the film and introduce the main protagonists. Daisy Crompton (Diana Coupland), Rafe’s wife, is a gentle and easygoing soul who has trouble balancing the household accounts and relies on eldest daughter Florence (Hannah Gordon) to bale her out. We are introduced to neighbour Betsy-Jane Duckworth who is engaged in a raucous argument with two TV men who are attempting to repossess her set; a clear contrast between the ordered environment of the Cromptons with the chaotic world of the Duckworth’s is set up and will come into play at various points in the film. Daisy’s inability to lend Betsy-Jane the £6 needed to stave off repossession leads the latter to launch some fierce invective against her neighbour, the gist of which is that Daisy is utterly dominated by her husband who has sole and rigid control of the finances. Although this situation would still have been widespread in the Britain of the late sixties, these accusations clearly affect Daisy deeply, and lead her to borrow the £6 from eldest son Harold (Bewes) in order to allow her to make the loan to her less than gracious neighbour.

The rest of the family arrive home:  younger daughter Hilda (Susan George) and younger son Wilfred (Len Jones). We are quickly aware that the children are deeply resentful, sometimes scornful of their father, yet equally terrified of him. Their attempts at rebellious behaviour – smoking, loud pop music on TV – are quickly subdued by their fear, and Rafe’s patriarchal dominance is emphasised by the manner in which he collects their housekeeping, before locking it firmly away in the cash box to which only he has access. Despite mutterings behind his back by all the children except the loyal Florence, everyone complies, although Harold does attempt to withhold a pound, only to be informed by his father that “I’m not one of those…Whatever it is you think I am.”

The tension between Rafe and his family is centred in the unlikely guise of a herring. Our first view of the Crompton’s home is of Daisy expertly gutting and filleting several herrings, the tradition of fish on Fridays still strong in those days even among those not of the Catholic faith. When Hilda comes in she remarks that she doesn’t much fancy herring, an aside which seems then completely innocuous. Where Rafe is concerned, nothing is ever that simple. When the family sit down at table following the ritual handing over of their earnings, Hilda’s casual statement reiterating her preference for something other than a herring, and Daisy’s laid back proposal of a fried or poached egg in its stead, is quickly countermanded by Dad as we see him flex his muscles for the first time. His enquiry as to whether there is something wrong with the previously neutral fish is met with Hilda’s reply that she just doesn’t fancy it. Bad mistake Hilda. “How any child of mine can say she doesn’t fancy it, I don’t know…” he thunders. Hilda’s attempt to leave the room is stopped by Rafe’s withering command to be seated: “Only pigs leave their troughs as it suits.” He orders the edict that the herring is to be served up for breakfast, lunch and tea until the recalcitrant daughter finally bows to his will and eats it. She is reminded, in no uncertain terms, that no-one in the house has ever bested him, and that she is sorely misguided if she tries to be first.

To the accompaniment of much eye rolling and sighing from his children, Rafe reminisces about some hunger marchers encountered by Daisy and himself, presumably during the Great Depression. Young people today don’t know they’re born is the rhetoric and the children, especially Harold, come out with the appropriate sarcastic put downs: but it is clear even at this stage that the encounter had great personal significance for Rafe as a symbol of something we are yet to discover. Hilda’s cavalier dismissal of “fresh herring fried in best butter” affects him deeply since it “makes little of the lives millions…like me have had to live.”

This is a crucial theme of Spring and Port Wine and sets up one side of the tension between the generations. It is very true to life that Rafe is unable – or unwilling – to articulate this to his family, who perceive him simply as a crusty tyrant dwelling in the past. This is true, of course, but we don’t discover the reason for this until events have spiralled almost out of control and are only resolved at the film’s conclusion.

As the film progresses, Rafe’s domination and iron will are given further prominence as the events unfold which will eventually provide a resolution. Florence’s suitor, Arthur Gasket (Keith Buckley), is offered the job of factory manager by the retiring incumbent (a typically bumbling cameo by Arthur Lowe) with the proviso that he marries. His less than romantic proposal to Florence is made under full scrutiny of the Crompton family, and Rafe is typically withering, reminding his eldest daughter that members of his family decide “when they get married, and to who.” Rafe’s made to measure Crombie overcoat arrives, provoking a customary mix of admiration and resentment: Hilda wonders if he should not have spent less on himself and bought Mum a new coat too, only to be informed that “your father would lay down his life for me.”

Tension is introduced when Hilda breaks down sobbing and is comforted by Arthur, leading Florence to suggest he has picked the wrong sister, to be reassured with “I’m fond of Hilda but I love you.” Several people remark that they don’t know what’s come over Hilda lately, or that they have noticed recent big changes in her behaviour, but the film is plotted in such a way that we are led to believe that this is due to her being thrown over by her last boyfriend, a subject of great amusement to the immature Harold, which causes further grief. Hilda’s stubbornness echoes that of her father, and Rafe is appreciative of this: “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Naturally, his own stubbornness prevents him from acting on this knowledge until it’s almost too late.

The scene in which Florence and Arthur visit their new home, and presumably make love for the first time, demonstrates nicely the tension between the new world of permissiveness and the old world of duty and restraint which lies at the core of Spring and Port Wine. Although the scene is extremely restrained by the standards of other contemporary films, it is all the more effective for that restraint. The tension on Florence’s face portrays the dichotomy between her natural desires and the strong sense of duty to her father whom she feels she is betraying by her actions. She will never be able to look her father in the eye again, she tells Arthur. On their return home, Daisy asks her “Was it everything you expected?” and both women are clear what is being referred to.

Rafe’s pig-headedness and absolute authority are exemplified in the scene where Wilfred feeds the herring to the cat in order to end the ongoing piscine saga. Ironically both parties have, unbeknown to the other, resolved to give way. Wilfred’s action, however, revives Rafe’s fanaticism – in this case to the truth at all costs. He bullies and browbeats the boy to the point of collapse, and Wilfred’s dissolution signifies, it seems, that of the rest of the family. Hilda leaves the house, closely followed by Arthur and Florence. The Cromptons, it seems, have finally had enough.

Hilda has decamped to the Duckworths and it is while she is here, avoiding the crude attentions of Ned (Frank Windsor), that her friend Betty clues her up to what is really happening – she can’t stand herrings, she’s gone off eggs and the smell of smoke makes her feel sick –and advises her to check her calendar. Hilda tells her mother and resolves to leave for London, asking Daisy for a loan until she can withdraw her factory savings. The established order starts to crumble as Daisy first enlists Betsy-Jane’s help to pick the lock to the bureau where Dad’s cashbox resides, and then loses her nerve and sends her neighbour to pawn the new Crombie instead. We know this will all end badly and, sure enough, Dad is persuaded to wear his new coat to a performance the Messiah. When he fails to find it, he comes downstairs to an empty house and finds a note from his wife expressing remorse.

Having been informed by Betsy-Jane that she’s seen a woman without a coat heading for the canal, Rafe is galvanised. He has earlier talked about men who threw themselves into the canal during the depression. He locates Daisy there, who begs forgiveness, and finally the truth about Rafe’s life emerges: why he is the way he is, why money and family and truth are so important to him. He reveals the truth of his own childhood, where debt collectors and bailiffs were forever hammering on the door, how as a child returning home from school he was forced to enter the house by the back door to avoid unwelcome visitors, how his mother lied to his father constantly about the direness of their position and finally, how he had arrived  home from school one day to find two bailiffs playing cards in the parlour while his mother attempted suicide over the gas cooker in the kitchen – all for the sake of a few pounds.

Rafe and Daisy return to the house like lovers, unaware that the entire family are planning their departures. Rafe reveals to Daisy that he is sure Hilda is pregnant, reminding her there have been times when she has gone off herrings. He vows to stand by his daughter and give her all the love and support she needs. The rest of the family are amazed by the transformation in Rafe, who welcomes their efforts to leave, wishes he were in their place, offers to go in their stead since he is “more used to roughing it than them.” Harmony is restored, naturally, and the family is restored but there will be changes: Rafe symbolically hands his keys over to Daisy. There has been a shift, and a sharing, of power.

In the end, order is reasserted to the Crompton household, but there are accommodations and acceptances on both sides: Rafe recognises his family as individuals and will treat them as, in the words of the ever-astute Daisy, “God made us.” For their part, the children will be more understanding of their father’s bitter past experience and more appreciative of what he has built to ensure their security. The story of how the sixties morphed into the seventies, with the violent upheavals of the earlier decade gradually assimilated into the mainstream, is personalised and made credible by the metaphor of family life and struggle contained within Spring and Port Wine. It is made all the more understandable for that.

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The opening scene establishes both the film’s age and the script’s take on Police competence: a Policeman phones through to a colleague with a Scotland Yard report of a car stolen in London. There’s a description of the car, but when asked for the registration number, he replies: “This is a stolen car!” Er, right, so the registration number won’t be helpful because…?

After another Policeman is shot when he stops a car matching the description, news headlines reveal that the thief was also a Bank Robber and identify him as a man named Weinhart (Clifford McLaglenn). The Gazette, which had missed out on this vital information due to an incompetent reporter, Charlie (Bernard Miles) who is promptly fired, offers a reward of £500 for Weinhart’s capture. Unfortunately, Charlie’s error means that neither a description nor a photograph of the wanted man is included in the paper, with the result that the switchboard is promptly overwhelmed with silly calls.

While ‘Mac’ Macpherson (Alastair Sim), the office stalwart, organises a collection for the luckless Charlie, cub reporter Jim Martin (James Mason) asks the editor for the chance to follow up on the big story – as does his girlfriend, Janet Graham (Virginia Cherrill), who is usually confined to writing the ‘Tiny Tots’ children’s page. Martin is told that he needs ‘more experience’; while Janet is patronised by the entire male staff, including Martin – “Crime reporting’s not a woman’s job”. Not that her actions over the course of the story do much to further her cause – she breaks confidences, sulks, argues, and follows or confronts people with apparently no clear idea of what she’s trying to accomplish.

Cherrill, just divorced from a short-lived marriage to Cary Grant, and on her way down from starring with Charlie Chaplin in City Lights, often seems weary of the whole thing – or perhaps she was just very tired, as a result of Al Parker’s directorial style. Late Extra was made for Fox Pictures at their Wembley Studios, on a shoestring budget and within a very tight time frame, but director Al Parker’s habit of adding improvisations he had just thought up stretched the schedule to the limit. Told by his exasperated producers to get on with it because they would be demolishing the sets in two days, Parker had to have the cast and crew film non-stop for 36 hours to meet the deadline – “pausing only for tea-breaks and, in the case of this actor, to shave,” as James Mason remembered it in his autobiography.

The film progresses with the editor (David Horne) receiving a phone tip-off about a ‘big story’, but somehow he fails to realise that it is connected with the Weinhart case. As he takes down the address, he is overheard by his assistant, Carson (Ian Collin), who has become involved with Weinhart and his accomplices because he’s in desperate need of money. Told to pass the assignment to Martin, Carson changes the address before he hands it over, to throw the reporter off the trail. With Janet tagging along to learn “how a real reporter works”, Martin goes off to investigate and, while he searches for the right address, Carson tips off Caporelli (Andreas Malandrinos), a restaurant owner who is hiding Weinhart in his cellar.

When Martin and Janet finally track down the right flat, there’s no reply – and they see something seeping under the door. “Is that blood, or is that blood!” exclaims Martin, before rushing off to snaffle a ladder from an unfortunate workman on a ledge. Climbing into through the flat window, he discovers that their source is dead – “looks like suicide”. Martin insists that Janet continues to wait outside the flat, and while she’s there a young woman arrives in the hallway. The woman is clearly scared and makes Janet promise not to say anything about her being there.

Martin has a ‘scoop’, and phones his story through to the paper. But he’s not sure about it really being suicide, and when Janet hints that she has information that might help, he persuades her to spill what she knows (so much for promises). She explains about the woman visitor and reveals that she followed her to Caporelli’s restaurant in Soho. Martin is eager to investigate further, but Janet pleads with him not to endanger the woman. There’s an argument and Martin storms off, but Janet must have made her point as he goes back to the Gazette’s main office, rather than following up on the lead.

No-one in the office seems to do much in the way of work – there’s a lot of idle chatting, sitting around on desks, and a demonstration of a golf shot (with Macpherson’s prized umbrella); but little in the way of phone calls or clattering typewriters. Nevertheless, the film’s producers did attempt to add a touch of authenticity to the press background, with the appearance of real-life journalist Hannen Swaffer to the cast. His name might not mean much today, but Swaffer was once so famous that he had a waxwork at Madame Tussaud’s, and was described by Lord Beaverbrook as “the greatest personality that has walked down Fleet Street in our time.”

At the Gazette though, Jim Martin seems to be the only reporter chasing a story. Shortly after he gets back to the office, the Police, in the form of Inspector Greville (Donald Wolfit), arrive to ask about the original phone call, and confirm to Martin and his editor that the death Martin discovered was murder – but insist that the fact be suppressed for now.

While they’re discussing it, Janet decides to go back to Caporelli’s – obviously she thinks it’s okay for her to snoop around asking questions, even if she doesn’t want Martin to do so – and asks MacPherson for permission to leave the office, telling him where she’s headed. Carson, who always seems to be in the right place to overhear things he shouldn’t, follows her. A few minutes later, Martin discovers from MacPherson where Janet was heading to, and also goes after her.

Caporelli (already suspicious) is warned by Carson to keep an eye on Janet and Martin; while Janet discovers that the woman who visited the flat is Caporelli’s stepdaughter, Sylvia (Antoinette Cellier). Martin makes his own enquiries – none too discreetly – of the waiter, Jules (Cyril Chosack) and Caporelli himself. Later, after the reporters have left, Jules becomes suspicious and follows Caporelli into the cellar, where (with Carson-like timing) he overhears a conversation with Weinhart. Remembering the promise of a reward, he phones the newspaper and tips them off that Weinhart is going to meet someone at a factory in Camden. But Carson is back in the office and – guess what – overhears again. When the Police raid the factory, it’s the waiter who is found there – dead. (Due to the similarity of their names, the role of Jules is sometimes mistakenly attributed to Cyril Cusack, but neither his looks nor his accent bear any resemblance to the more famous actor).

Back at the newspaper offices, the murdered woman is identified from a photograph (which Martin took from her apartment) as a girlfriend of Weinhart’s. Carson wants out and goes to see Caporelli for the £200 he is owed for his share of the robbery – and Martin follows him and overhears. Inspector Greville meanwhile has finally figured out that the leak must be from the newspaper office, and – discounting the editor as a suspect – sets off on the trail of Martin and Carson.

Sylvia in turn discovers Weinhart’s whereabouts (it’s a busy cellar) and, scared now for Carson’s life, phones Janet at her flat with the information. Janet promptly tells Carson, who she meets on her doorstep – he has gone round to her flat with the idea of planting money and a note that would implicate Martin in the plot – and he tries to prevent her leaving. But Martin catches up with him and a knock-down, furniture-smashing fist-fight ensues, while Janet calls the Police to report where Weinhart is.

Then, of course, rather than waiting for help – or assisting Martin – she rushes off to Caporelli’s, blunders about the closed restaurant drawing attention to herself, and is promptly taken hostage by Weinhart, who drags her into the cellar as the Police burst into the restaurant, and bars the door. While the Police try to smash their way in from the restaurant, Martin (who has left the unconscious Carson to come to, pick himself up off the carpet and run) finds another entrance in an alley. In a very badly-lit scene (perhaps due to the hectic shooting schedule) Weinhart shoots at Martin, but the Police, who have taken an axe to the door, rush in and arrest the cop-killer.

Martin is taken to hospital and Janet (who has presumably forgotten how to use a phone in all the excitement) rushes back from Soho to Fleet Street to get the story to the Gazette. As the presses roll, MacPherson accompanies Janet to the hospital to check on Martin’s progress, and gives them his prized umbrella as an early wedding present when they tell him they are going to marry.

This was James Mason’s first film, and he had star billing. He had been signed for the role when Al Parker met him at a backstage cocktail party and, struck by Mason’s good looks and distinctive voice, asked if he had ever been in films. Since he had only been acting professionally since 1931, Mason still had a lot to learn, but even so he seems much more natural in front of the camera than some of the other players – perhaps he picked up a few tips from the always-excellent Alastair Sim. Still learning the film ropes himself at this point, Sim nevertheless lent sterling support and some light relief.

Late Extra is a film very much of its time, and is early enough that the influence of silent film techniques is still in evidence – most notably, where the villains of the piece are shown in shadow, looking shifty. There are also some minor plot points that are never explained – how did the string on Jim and Janet’s ‘communication cord’ come to be severed if neither of them cut it?

Even so, some of the observations – such as the landlady’s remark to Janet that there’s “nothing but politics and horrors” in the newspapers – still ring true. Then there’s the cast: James Mason, Alastair Sim, Virginia Cherrill, Donald Wolfit and Bernard Miles, plus Michael Wilding in a small, uncredited role. Not a bad line-up for a cheap ‘Quota Quickie’ – and at 69 minutes, at least it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

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Does it have to be set at Christmas? No. Does it have to be something regularly shown on TV during that season? Possibly. But most of all, does it have to have some kind of innate warmth, something cosy yet eerie, which aesthetically radiates and resonates with the environs of twinkling lights, fir trees and olde gaslamps, best watched through a haze of port and mincemeat gluttony? Er, yes. Trouble is, as a writer, I find myself struggling each year to find such titles, or at least ones I can be bothered to write about- which explains why this December I’ve chosen Night Train To Murder, a film which some may feel is really scraping the barrel. Not that I’m one of them, I hasten to add- but it’s definitely an “odd one”.

Initially made for television, and only screened theatrically later the next  year as support to even lesser features, its notoriety stems mainly from the fact that it represents Morecambe and Wise’s last onscreen outing together before Eric’s death from cancer not long afterwards, and, that as final throws of the dice go, most are of the opinion that it isn’t actually very good. Well, I won’t bullshit you, chaps and chappesses, it definitely ain’t no classic. Indeed, it’s a strange, stilted feature, its unevenness reinforced by its seemingly being shot on both film and videotape at different times and by an anachronistic theme tune (over which the mirthsome twosome interject several jokes) more redolent of a 70s cop picture than the mid-40s in which it is actually set. In fact, as either a horror movie or a thriller, the film’s as an entity is anachronistic- its subject matter and style, as well as a supporting cast boasting bitparts from the likes of Edward Judd, Frank Coda and Penny Meredith, all belonging somewhere between 1961 and 1975 rather than the Voorhees-addled early 80s.

It’s also one of the few movies I can think of which manages to seem both overlong and too short at once, featuring both padding and paucity sometimes within the same scene. Yet somehow all these quirks, idiosyncrasies and shortcomings make it all the more fascinating, as if its flawed nature were in some way a reflection of the pair’s tumultuous friendship. And with its blend of scares and jokes, its country house setting a staple of so many great thriller-chillers, and the requisite amount of antique furniture on show, I think it more or less qualifies for inclusion as “seasonal”. So there you go. Plotwise, it’s no great deviation from the tried and tested Old Dark House formula- an elderly relative has died, meaning several family members are summoned to hear the reading of the will, after which strange murders, unexplained accidental deathings and elaborate “accidents” abound, with secret panels, eyes behind paintings, clanking suits of armour and femme fatales (the extremely phwoarrsome pairing of Lysette Anthony and Pamela Salem in this case) aplenty – except that directorially, while he may have excelled at episodic television, McGrath is no James Whale, William Castle or Peter Sykes.

Be fair, though, he probably wasn’t asked to be- remember, Night Train is simply another vehicle for Eric and Ernie, with whom he had worked for some considerable time, so anyone expecting cinematic gold or Ealing-worthy genius is probably barking up the wrong tree. Ergo, when Morecambe’s eligible, tres glamorous niece (Anthony) is approached by Fulton Mackay, playing, surprise surprise, a family solicitor called Mackay (did he ever play anything else except in Fraggle Rock?) and asked to visit said mansion, the plot doesn’t exactly thicken- in fact, it’s pretty thin to begin with and reaches somewhat of a plateau thirty or so minutes in- but as homages (in this case to a genre the duo were particularly fond of, hence their ongoing comedic usage of Peter Cushing) go, it’s pretty spot on. And, despite what I said earlier about anachronism, there is just about enough nastiness and grue, particularly in one scene involving blood dribbling out of an eyeball, and another involving the hanging of another relative (Richard Vernon) on a pointy thing, to occasionally distract the viewer from the cosiness.

As expected, M & W play themselves all the way through, quite literally- only this time it’s 1946 and they’re an ailing music hall act on their last legs (now there’s irony for you) treading the boards on an endless circuit taking in the delights of Carlisle and Darlington, “changing trains at Crewe”, calling all pianists Ambrose, and staying in a litany of down-at-heel hotels, where, of course, they get into bed together nightly without being in any way gay or camp. Like they always did, only this time their asexuality is made even stranger by the fact that Salem clearly wants Eric to give her one and isn’t afraid to blatantly say so- and vice versa. And you know what, though Morecambe’s frailty is visible, and not all the gags work, when they do (look out for the faulty gramophone, and that old classic song “Charlie Chan, You’re A Different Man (Since You Backed Into The Electric Fan”) they’re hilarious- while on the horror and suspense fronts, there are still, even within such an obviously family-oriented film, several sudden jolts and scares which would have given me the willies at a tender age. And that’s to say nothing of a fiend in a creepy mask, an eerie, 6”7 Karloffian butler (Roger Brierley), a ‘man of a thousand faces’ worthy of Lon Chaney himself,  a truly surreal false reality gag involving the comedians relating the story to the viewer of the death of the actor playing “Big Jim”, and a supposedly haunted “Scottish” mansion (probably actually in Berkshire or Middlesex, but again, that’s all part of the magic), all thrown in for added atmosphere.

Sometimes, watching Night Train To Murder almost makes you feel as if you were conducting your very own search for a hidden inheritance, digging for treasure ‘neath its unfathomable, half-TV, half-movie veneer- but if you take off your analytical head  and commit yourself to the principle of sheer enjoyment, while retaining an eye and ear for the absurd, you’re guaranteed to find something of interest, and seriously, the more you sit back and let its strangely detached atmosphere wash over you, the more of a uniquely dreamlike experience it becomes- possibly because by all laws of logic, such a film shouldn’t exist, and after its 72 minutes are up, you still can’t quite believe it does. Plus, if you’re a Bonzo Dog Doodah Band aficionado, or just a lover of vintage popular song, there’s also a quite macabre rendition of “Little Sir Echo” to look forward to, though I won’t tell you how it figures into the storyline.

Nor will I tell you the ending, disclose the quite frankly bizarre final few jokes, or throw in a few more of the oblique references which make the film a goldmine for culture-spotters: frankly, I think I’ve gone into enough detail to alert you to the film’s merits and warn you of its pitfalls (although I will add that for ironic incongruity, nothing quite matches watching two people, one soon to die and the other now also long-departed, singing the line “we’re really glad to be alive” to an audience designed to look as if they’re not even glad to be in the room….)

If it is a Christmas film, it’s a quite unconventional one, even within its own nostalgic paradigm, but on reflection, I like my festive season to be a strange, haunting and unclassifiable experience. Sure as hell beats throwing up in the Thames. Nearly 30 years on, it’s quite apparent that Night Train To Murder, while not that good, isn’t that bad either: there are a lot worse things you could watch at this time of year, most of them on television, and whatever its faults, it’s probably the most unusual and interesting coda to anyone’s career I can think of. Old chaps, your legacy remains safe and unsullied.

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So says Joker Finnegan (Basil Sydney), ringleader of a Chicago gang who decides to take a break from the underworld with his cohorts in London, England in “Crime Over London.” London seems like the perfect place to get away from it all, being in a country that is seemingly  “too normal and too healthy minded” according to one of the gangsters. Yet as peaceful as London appears, there is also the opportunity to pull off everything from petty to grand larceny, which is exactly what Joker Finnegan has in mind for his gang. But instead of just going about it willy-nilly, he is smart enough to create a plan that he hopes will be successful while at the same time rendezvousing with Pearl (Margot Grahame), a gang moll love interest of his who also has a vested interest in Jim, one of the gangsters.

The movie opens with an ocean liner pulling into a British harbor, the gangsters landing, well dressed as Chicago gangsters would be from the 1930′s. But there is no Al Capone, Sam Giancana, or Lucky Luciano among them; instead, there is ‘Joker’ Finnegan who is with his boys to have a break from the hard and challenging work involved in crime. The underworld comes to London but not without warning when Finnegan’s legal file is wired to Scotland Yard and winds up in the lap of Inspector John Gary (Paul Cavanagh). John has a tough case to crack ahead of him while he is speaking to a gentleman from New York who happens to be of Russian heritage. Maybe it is the presence of Russians that increases the atmosphere of suspicion throughout the movie. One thing is for sure, however, and that is Sherwood’s Department store is the prime target of Finnegan and his gang, to take place on the store 25^th Anniversary Jubilee.

Far from being bored in London, as one of the gangsters told Finnegan when they were on the train, opportunity for crime rears its head earlier than Finnegan expects when Jim (John Darrow) decides to rob Greenshaw Jeweler and steals a number of diamonds from a customers hand then uses tear gas to knock out both her and Mr. Greenshaw. True to form, Jim gives the diamonds to Pearl. Jim is in love with her even though she is really more of Finnegan’s love interest. She is even more easily manipulated by Finnegan when he gets her to confess that Jim plans to frame him during the department store robbery, something that he could not tolerate. Pearl does her share though, in the department store job and infiltrates it so that Finnegan and his gang can pull off the job successfully without too much suspicion from the authorities.

Back at Sherwood’s Department store, the employees prepare for the Jubilee. A model of the store, a typical high rise building, is decorated in garlands. This is a big model, big enough to have a miniature version of the store inside, and the two employees who are discussing the Jubilee speak very highly of their boss, Mr. Sherwood (Joseph Cawthorn). Being a generous, thoughtful store owner, Mr. Sherwood is seen making his rounds to the departments and the offices, giving his greetings and aiding them and the customers in any way possible. Even when one of the office workers mentions to Mr. Sherwood that his wife is ill, the store owner hands the man a paper with a recipe on it that will cure her quickly. The employee places the paper in a collection of other recipes given to him by his boss, sure to put it to good use. With the customers, Mr. Sherwood firmly believes in the motto “The customer is always right,” even if the customer turns out to be a priggish older woman who is requesting bath soap in the women’s toiletries department made just for her. The employee attempts to please her with a bar of lavender soap but that simply will not do; neither does a bar of Venus soap with the image of the Roman goddess on the wrapper please her since she feels that that is too immodest for her. But the incident provides fodder for sharing with Inspector John Gary, who is in charge of taking down Joker Finnegan’s plot to rob the department store. John is caught between a rock and a hard place while he is busy trying to solve the crime of a dead man and his relationship with Joan (Rene Ray), his love interest. Yet she also has another admirer, Ronald Martin (Bruce Lester) who is the nephew of Mr. Sherwood and works in the fur garments department of the store. Ronald would do anything for her; even get her a job at the store as a pianist when the regular pianist fails to draw crowds of people in to the store to show some interest in the merchandise. Joan is not only a talented musician but also far more attractive than the last woman who played the piano. Not surprisingly, men and women with disposable income are more inclined to shop where there is a pretty, charming young lady playing music to serenade their shopping experience. A shopping experience should be a pleasurable one, no matter how old the shopper is.

Hiding out at Pearl’s home in London, Joker Finnegan and his gang carefully plan the crime that will take place at the department store. Another American gang member by the name of Reilly (Joseph Cawthorn) is in London and is a dead-ringer for Mr. Sherwood meets up with Finnegan, who hires him to take the place of the department store owner. Reilly enters Sherwood’s department store on the day of the Jubilee once Finnegan has the real Mr. Sherwood and his hired help locked up in the cellar of his house. With Reilly posing as the man who is about to celebrate the store’s 25^th anniversary, he will also play an important role in allowing the gang to have access to the cash room they plan on entering during the celebration. None of the employees suspect anything, and Reilly thinks he can play the part perfectly except for one small minor issue: on the day before the Jubilee, Mr. Sherwood tells Ronald that he want to make him a partner in the business. Ronald is so excited at the prospect of owning a share of the business that he calls up Joan late at night to tell her he has a surprise for her. He does not wish to give the details over the hone but would prefer to tell her in person at work the next day. Joan is of course excited and wishes good things for Ron since she cares for him very much.

The relationship Joan has with both John and Ronald is curious since she is clearly friendly with both of them, even appearing to be fonder of John at first, but eventually develops a special fondness for Ronald, especially when he brings her home from work one rainy evening. Joan enters her apartment and with the lights out, a shadow of what appears to be a man is in front of her, but is really a statue. With the presence of fear temporarily lifted, Joan finally tells Ronald that she thought there was a man in her room. Ronald just smiles at her and responds, “Well, isn’t there?” as he holds her close and kisses her. At this point, Ronald is sure that Joan loves him and wants to marry her, except for one thing: when Jim is shot dead by Finnegan, Ronald immediately becomes suspect by John Gary and is arrested under circumstantial evidence. John Gary does not even know about Jim or his identity, still trying to track down Finnegan to find out what he is up to. John has his hands tied with the case and employs the rest of the detectives in his division to visit the nightclubs and gambling joints to see if they can get any leads on the case.

At one nightclub, the gangsters play a game of poker. Everyone around them is simply enjoying themselves, even the man who is patiently sitting at a table and waiting for his wife to come join him. Sniffy (David Burns), one of the gangsters, tries to get the man interested in a game of poker, but politely declines the offer. This is a nightclub that attracts the wealthy and prominent citizens of London, as shown when a rather important guest arrives; a banker. The club’s manager, Mr. Finley (Torin Thatcher), tells one of the wait staff to “Find a nice table for Mr. Braddock.” Mr. Braddock eventually attracts the eye of a Miss Dupres (Googie Withers). Miss Dupres is a gold digger and decides to spend some time with the wealthy gentleman to see if he is someone she can easily pick up.

But the poker game is the central theme at this club, and soon enough, Finnegan has his pigeon: the nephew of the department store owner. Ronald is eventually persuaded to join the poker game, and finds himself being taken to the point where he wonders if he is playing with professionals; in this case, professionals being gangsters. The cards are marked, and the poker chips start to add up for Finnegan and his gang. Pearl fetches 10 pounds worth in poker chips for one of the gangsters before leaving the club and returning to her apartment. She strongly suspects that Jim is going to be a target soon and rings him up. Jim is half asleep in his chair by the phone, and by the time he does answer it, it is too late. Pearl hears the gunshot over the phone and screams. Ronald makes the mistake of visiting Jim to pay him for the money he owed him from the poker game, and is arrested by John. Joan is of course distraught when she hears what happened to Ronald and persuades John to release him, for she knows that he is innocent. Yet Ronald is also the only one who can help John Gary find and arrest Joker Finnegan, for he knows one small factual piece of information that Sherwood’s imposter Reilly knows nothing about: the fact that Mr. Sherwood offered a business partnership to him.

John visits the luxurious home of Mr. Sherwood and is welcomed inside, left alone with Reilly in his office. Reilly sits behind Mr. Sherwood’s massive, elegant desk, willing to take the risk of crossing Joker Finnegan by writing a short note on the whereabouts of the real Mr. Sherwood and giving it to John Gary. Maybe it is because Reilly wants to go straight (he still has 3 years to serve in an American penitentiary for a previous crime committed) or it could be that he no longer wants to associate with Finnegan’s gang (finding a real job at this point on his life might not be so bad; he could after all try asking Mr. Sherwood for a job at his department store). Whatever the case, John reads the note, takes it and puts it into his pocket but unfortunately for him, three of the gangsters see it happen, point their guns at him, and tells him to hand the note over to them. As with the real Mr. Sherwood, John Gary soon finds himself in the cellar of the house, locked up, trying to devise a plan of escape to prevent a much bigger crime from happening. Once John breaks out using items available to them – one which includes a large heavy metal can – everyone is free, and the investigator and Mr. Sherwood head towards the department store.

While Finnegan and his gangsters are busy up in the cash room of the store, the Scotland Yard police arrive, shuffling all customers out for the store so that nobody gets hurt. The only one who remains is Pearl, lingering by to watch the entire event unfold. The Jubilee shortly turns into a full-fledged crime scene with guns firing from both the toy and china departments, plates, cups and toys being targets like it is a shooting gallery at a carnival. Finnegan escapes the scene but not successfully; he goes out much the same way that Jim did, but at Pearl’s hands.

Even though “Crime Over London” takes place in London and has its share of British actors, a number of American actors also comprise Joker Finnegan’s gang: David Burns, Edmon Ryan, and John Darrow. Being from Chicago, it is only fitting that a few of the characters look and act like they are from the other side of the pond, especially with Darrow as the double-crossing gangster. Joseph Cawthorn manages to pull off a dual role successfully, manipulating his voice to sound like he fits in perfectly with the British. Directed by Alfred Zeisler and written by Ludwig von Wohl, “Crime Over London” is more of a crime/comedy blend rather than straight Britnoir in its plot. There is no moment of boredom nor shortage of humor in “Crime Over London” for the viewer and Finnegan’s gangsters are more likely than not to entertain those who appreciate films about mobsters and their activities both at home and abroad.

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You see, I realised the other day, after having watched this film for the umpteenth time, that whilst it remains not only my all-time favourite British movie but my favourite flick per se, I had never thought before of reviewing it for this site. Strange, possibly, when you put it like that, but at the same time understandable, as we journo types are supposed to approach these things from a certain degree of unbiased objectivity (or so they keep telling us) Therefore, any attempt to review your all-time favourite film may well be a daunting task, as you find yourself constantly resisting the impulse to wax lyrical about things personal only to you.

Then again, I’ve never been one for all this ‘impersonal disinterested detachment’ bollocks (for a start, show me the book where it’s actually written in stone that this is the way we should conduct ourselves) and believe firmly that if a film, TV show, radio broadcast, live concert or piece of recorded music doesn’t provoke some emotion, however small, in you, than it’s irrelevant and may just as well not exist. Producers may fund movies to make even more money, but that’s not why we the audience watch them. And without an audience, again however miniscule, there is no film, and those merely interested in the acquisition of huge piles of cash can go back to being merchant bankers, which ironically rhymes with what they actually are.

Further irony will therefore be engendered when reviewing a production such as this, particularly when you realise that to fully understand its subject matter, you’re going to have to deconstruct the concept and percept of rich privileged bastards born into such wealth and privilege. Of course, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with having some money – I myself would quite like some, and I’m no socialist, but I’m no capitalist either, and to any unabashed lover of film for film’s sake, it’s anathema. Yet privilege, riches, gentry and “nobility”- all social constructs- lie at the very heart of The Ruling Class (well, they would do, wouldn’t they? The clue’s in the title) and, whilst outwardly presented as a satire on such things, Peter Medak’s cataclysmic epic (based on an equally powerful play by Peter Barnes) does more than just ridicule, scorn or point fingers, with even its most despicable characters (here represented by William Mervyn and James Villiers, the latter an actual member of the aristocracy) painted as sympathetic. We are, after all, only human.

The same ambivalence prevails throughout the storyline’s central tenet. While initially, the portrayal, by Peter O’Toole at the very peak of his powers, of Earl Jack Gurney- a delusional, deranged Lord who believes himself to be none other than Jesus Christ, the God Of Love- seems to hint at the old adage that “the nobs are all bonkers”, there is far, FAR more lurking beneath the surface than that. In questioning the very nature of duty and inheritance – Jack doesn’t want to return to power, and would quite happily have spent his remaining years idling in an open clinic, but is forced into it when his father (Harry Andrews) accidentally auto-erotically asphyxiates himself to death- Barnes suggests that not only are those in power often the worst-equipped to lead, but also the least inclined.

Yet his family’s primary concern is not the fact that their new head is obviously, as his therapist Dr Herder (Michael Bryant) puts it, a “paranoid schizophrenic”, but more that he seems obsessed with concepts of love, peace, saintliness and even (heaven forfend!!) equality, even suggesting to butler Tucker (Arthur Lowe, whose lifelong devotion to Andrews has been rewarded with a princely £30,000, leading him to start disrespecting his “betters” and doing as he pleases), that he should burn his coronation robes. “He’s not just mad, he’s bolshy!!” declares his Uncle Charles (Mervyn), a comment which suggests, in a very barbed way, that whilst insanity may be permitted in the Gurney family, humanity may not. It is, however, this very humanity which to an extent ‘saves’ Jack, albeit temporarily: a family plot to have him married off to sire an heir and subsequently incarcerated in an asylum backfires when his intended, music hall artiste Grace Shelley (Carolyn Seymour), a former mistress of his uncle, sees his inherent kindness and falls in love with him.

Initially posing at Mervyn’s request as Marguerite Gautier, Lady Of The Camelia (the fictional character from La Traviata to whom O’Toole believes himself to be married) in order to ensnare Jack, thus reaping financial rewards, into wedlock, she soon finds her affection growing into something very real indeed- even if she has to make do with him riding a child’s tricycle round the bedroom on their wedding night. The night their son, also called Jack, is born, is a crux moment: Mervyn is all for having his nephew certified the minute the new progeny utters his first gaga googoo, but, at the instigation of his wife (Coral Browne) who hates her husband, loves her nephew, and also fancies the doctor a bit, Herder temporarily releases an already certified loon (Nigel Green) prone to sticking his fingers into live sockets and declaring himself ‘The Electric Messiah’ under supervision into the ancestral pile for the night to literally ‘shock’  O’Toole back to sanity so he can hold onto his title.

The implication is that that both of them cannot be God at the same time, and it seems (after a surreal and unexplained sequence involving a man dressed as a gorilla) to have worked, with a cowed and crushed O’Toole finally relenting and admitting “I’m Jack”- but unfortunately for all concerned, it is Jack the Ripper, not Jack Gurney, whom he now believes himself to be, and in the second half, with the ‘cured’ Lord (still prone to sudden barely controlled fits of vocal irrationality) now preparing to take his seat in the House, and cousin Dinsdale acting as his ally in the Commons, the scene is set for much murder and mayhem.

Again, the more sadistic, authoritarian, Victorian and evil Jack becomes, the more ‘normal’ everyone from his fellow Lords to the local village Hunt are convinced he is: a final attempt by his uncle to have him sectioned by the Master Of Lunacy fails miserably when said doctor (Graham Crowden, again, tellingly using the question “are you the God of Love?” as criteria) turns out to be a fellow Etonian, and the two bond together in the school boating song. In the cruellest of twists, both uncles (the other a dithering, blathering Bishop played brilliantly by who else but Alistair Sim), who, because of Barnes’ depth of characterisation, you still feel sorry for in spite of their cruelty to Jack, end up confined to said asylum after strokes, as does Herder (grief-stricken after the murder of his lover Browne) whilst Lowe, framed for the killing and his Leftist sympathies fully exposed, is carted off by bumbling flatfoot coppers Jimmy Grout and James Hazeldine and subjected to endless interrogation for numerous other crimes, his fate unknown. This leaves literally no-one left to stop Jack- except of course his doting wife….

Such a multi-layered plot might sound difficult to take in on the printed page, but due to the propulsive rhythm of Barnes’ original story and Medak’s clear direction, which fully embraces all the arthouse techniques of the British New Wave but never loses its linearity, this is never a problem. A two and a half hour film could also be in every danger of overwhelming the viewer, and true, there are more human emotions running amok onscreen over 155 minutes than some can comfortably cope with, but it is the film’s very ability to run such a gamut that, for me, leaves it unequalled and unsurpassed in the canon of British cinema.

Why? Well, the late 1960s and early 1970s, a true golden era, had already by this stage seen more ‘pushing of the envelope’ and playing with format and formulae than ever before, but even by those standards, The Ruling Class is adventurous. Moments of sublime dialogue and interplay turn quickly to monologue, the fourth wall is broken so often that the bricklayers go on strike, characters burst openly into song (admittedly in parodies of tunes from other shows, such as The Varsity Drag, My Blue Heaven and Dem Bones, but song nonetheless, a format not every viewer enjoys) and ribald comedy morphs at the drop of a pin into troubling drama- although admittedly there is more of the latter in the film’s second half as Jack’s faux-‘recovery’ progresses. Every single member of the cast, even those with smaller roles, is perfect, Sim in particular excelling with a mixture of world-weariness, hand-waving nervousness, utter ineptitude and encroaching senility that leads to one of the film’s funniest sequences (“Yo dee, er, I mean, ye do”, etc) and Lowe relishing every slice of insurrection and subversion his character is called upon to display.

Yet, even with such a peerless ensemble cast on display, there’s still no avoiding the fact that from start to finish, the movie belongs to O’Toole from the moment he steps into it. The first ten minutes function almost as a monologue, with Andrews in the role of the previous Earl speaking in the Lords, speaking to Tucker and, prior to his somewhat embarrassing death, which infamously leads his brother Bertie (Sim) to later ask “bb-b-ballet skirt, Charles? Wwwwwwhat was he dddddoing in a bbbballet skirt?”, speaking to himself- but repeated viewings, with the benefit of hindsight, show this to be a quite deliberate prologue, designed by Barnes to deliberately contrast the ‘bad’ Establishment of old with the newer world Jack wishes to deliver his family into.

On occasions when he feels threatened, plotted against or vulnerable, and unable to place negative thoughts “into my galvanized pressure cooker- flooom!!” the great Irish actor portrays Jack as a truly sympathetic human being with whom the viewer identifies explicitly, a poor lunatic driven insane by the rigours of public school, university and the emotional detachment of titled life, and whereas this very entitlement might make it easy to ignore his plight, especially as millions among the working and lower classes suffer far greater trauma on a daily basis, you get the feeling that he’s only too well aware of this, which is yet another reason why he wishes to cast his inheritance aside in order to live a more equal – and therefore godly- existence aside his fellow men.

Yet even this very idea is problematic in itself, as his saintliness can only find practical expression if people accept his word unconditionally (“what he believes- is”, quoth Bryant when explaining his patient’s dementia to his bewildered Uncle) and that honour is only conferred upon a member of the very aristocracy he outwardly seeks to reject- if he were a working class man, his delusions would have seen him incarcerated in a high security asylum ages ago, rather than remaining a voluntary patient in an open clinic. That, and the simple fact that he can’t actually perform any miracles: when asked to show his family one, he states that “you see a million living human beings in the world every day yet you still want your conjuring tricks and fancy flimflams” before failing, against a background of some of the most emotionally powerful incidental music ever set to film, to raise a table several feet in the air.

He can see it float, but nobody else can- except the drunken Tucker, who sees him as some kind of Socialist ally. And at this point, it finally hits you, if it hadn’t already done so, that underneath all of Jack’s ostentatious eccentricities, fantasies and protests, behind his self-empowering diatribes and ability to sleep upright on his “Watusi walking stick” (a crucifix) lurks a very frightened, helpless person- the same one that lives inside us all, and that what outwardly manifests itself as almost playful idiosyncrasy is actually a shriek of pain in an unforgiving world- a shriek which O’Toole lets out vocally on two occasions with the most incredible ear-splitting gusto imaginable. Gawd alone knows how such a character would react in a film set in 2011…

All Jack wants, after all, is to be understood and appreciated for what he believes himself to be- and he could have lived his life harmlessly in this idiom were it not for the machinations of his family. As Arthur Lee sang, “We’re all normal when we want our freedom”, or, even, as Vivian Stanshall put it, “We ARE normal and we want our freedom!!” On a more satisfactory note, it should be stressed that almost all conspirators involved, who begin as human and slowly decline (like we all do) eventually receive the ‘come-uppance’ awaiting them: sadly, the one person that stands behind Jack throughout and actually grows in humane stature is his new wife, Grace- so whilst no-one is safe from the fickle finger of fate here, hers still seems possibly the cruellest. I’ll let you decide.

On the other hand, perhaps the most damning aspect of Barnes’ worldview is that no visible or tangible alternative is presented: Grout, the one man who has the potential to see through everything and bring the charade to a close, completely bungles the operation, arresting the wrong man and telling Mervyn and O Toole that meeting them has “shown him what noblesse oblige really means” before he and Hazeldine tug their forelocks and return to duty. Order is restored, Jack grows ever colder, more detached and more insane but this time with the full backing of the powers that be (who, in a scene that chills the blood, he sees in the Lords before him as rotting zombies), and worrying utterances are heard from the nursery. The safety of a further privileged generation is guaranteed…

The Ruling Class didn’t do too well on its initial release, most probably due to its length (that, and the fact that its American distributor seemed determined to make it fail from the start, his actions eventually leading the producer to punch him in the nose) but scooped several awards, most notably for O’Toole’s performance and Medak’s direction. Truly, the Hungarian is in full inventive swing here, taking the template he had developed during Negatives and A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg and applying it across a far wider canvas with a majestic sweep, and whilst its rural setting lends it an air of the costume drama, it is undoubtedly a film of the post-psychedelic 70s, with several subtle touches, such as the echo on Jack’s voice as he capers across the garden, the Electric Christ sequence, and its sudden scene-shifts from reality into Victorian fantasy, confirming this and earning it a place in a very special pantheon indeed.  In the years that have passed, its audience, mainly found through television, has grown and grown: it remains readily available on DVD, although in a sadly unadorned package.

Oh, bugger objectivity. The last time I put this on, I cried out loud because I realised that I was witnessing a pinnacle of creativity not only still unsurpassed in this country, but in all probability never likely to return. In short, The Ruling Class, like no other film with the possible exception of O Lucky Man!, is the apotheosis of everything this country’s celluloid industry once aspired to- and achieved, and nowhere else will you see another production so capable of making you feel, hear, see and experience so many different emotions within one sitting. It is a drama, a comedy, satire, a musical, a horror movie, a political statement, an arthouse piece, practically everything a film can be with the exception of a suspense thriller- and there’s even a nod to that in the subplot concerning Lowe’s political affiliations. It is British Cinema. Watch it.

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