DB7

Overlooked British Gems of the 1960s
Here are 25 films that aren't illustrious, and for one reason or another passed many people by. These films may have lacked publicity and hype, failed to earn widespread distribution, be low-budget, flawed, but may be worth a second viewing.

Charlie Bubbles (1967)
Albert Finney's sole attempt at directing to date deserves to be. Shelagh Delaney's whimsical script deals with a northern working-class lad made good. A successful novelist, he's fed up with glitzy metropolitan values and decides to go in search of his native northern roots for inspiration. The women in his life are Liza Minnelli and the venerable Billie Whitelaw. The film, rich in resonances of the era that spawned it, lightens its angst with some droll observations.

The Collector (1965)
Back in the days before psycho thrillers became run-of-the-mill, Wyler was delivering genuinely disturbing little numbers like this adaptation of John Fowles' novel. Terence Stamp stars as the socially inept bank worker who extends his love of collecting butterflies to human specimens, and art student Samantha Eggar is the prospective next victim who might just prove too smart for her captor. Kenneth More was also cast as Eggar's older lover, but his whole role was removed in the final edit.

The Deadly Affair (1966)
This gripping adaptation of John le Carré's novel Call for the Dead was the first film collaboration between James Mason and Sidney Lumet. Mason gives a studied performance as the intelligence officer investigating the suspicious suicide of a diplomat, with the ever-dependable Harry Andrews also on bristling form as a no-nonsense copper. Director Lumet expertly weaves Mason's deplorable domestic situation into the equation, coaxing an unsympathetic portrayal from Harriet Andersson, as Mason's promiscuous wife. The impressive low-key photography of Freddie Young sets the mood of bleakness and danger - the process of pre-exposing colour film was first used the process in this movie..

Four in the Morning (1965)
The title's a clever pun, since this overlooked film deals with the time of a young girl's drowning, intercut with the unrelated trials and tribulations of two unnamed couples during one London night. Acclaimed in its day as a sharp slice of British neorealism, talented director/writer Anthony Simmons has done nothing quite as good. There's amazing photography of the river Thames just before dawn, and a tremendous performance from Judi Dench as the washed-out wife kept awake both by a teething baby and a drunken husband.

The Greengage Summer (1961)
Lewis Gilbert's charming adaptation of Rumer Godden's novel suffers only from a disappointingly trite ending. As the 16-year-old forced to take charge of her siblings stranded in France when their mother falls ill, Susannah York radiates the innocent's new-found lust for life and, whether getting tipsy for the first time or suffering from the initial pangs of love, she is truly captivating. As the mystery man who steals her heart, Kenneth More allows her the space to mature, while also revealing a more cynical side in his dealings with his landlady lover.

House of Mystery (1961)
Neat little low-budget spine-tingler told in flashback from writer/director Vernon Sewell. There are plenty of uneasy moments in this haunting story, in which a couple of newlyweds learn the grim secret of Orchard Cottage from the resident ghost.

Hell Is a City (1960)
Made when Hammer wasn't just a house of horror, this brisk Americanisation crime thriller was filmed on location in Manchester. Its real-life buildings and settings - smoky pubs, back-alleys, a Sunday-morning meeting of gamblers on a slag-heap - give the film a great deal of grim authenticity. Director Val Guest demonstrates a flair for docudramatic realism and no-nonsense pacing. Stanley Baker is a tough copper, who is dedicated to cleaning up the streets of Manchester. One of his successes put behind bars for fourteen years for armed robbery has escaped after battering a warden to death.

Jigsaw (1962)
Chillingly compulsive murder mystery that benefits from the reassuring presence of Jack Warner as the dogged detective on the case. Set in Brighton, director Val Guest adopts a black-and-white pseudo-documentary approach that concentrates on the often laborious details of police procedure as the identity of dead woman is ascertained and her killer is slowly unmasked.

The Killing of Sister George (1968)
Sister George is Britain's best-loved soap opera character, played by ageing actress Beryl Reid. But outside the studio she's a hard-drinking, hot-tempered, foul-mouthed lesbian living with an immature young thing she's nicknamed "Childie" (Susannah York). When the studio decides to kill her character off and an executive makes a play for Childie, the soap star desperately clings to her young lover. Director Robert Aldrich brings his fierce vision of human nature to Frank Marcus's play, but his heavy-handed direction means little of the original play's poignancy and wit survives to appear on screen. A fascinating, if flawed, look at relationships.

King and Country (1964)
Joseph Losey 's companion piece to The Servant is really another allegory about the British class system. Depicting the Army as a ruling-class plaything, and fiercely anti-war, this is searing and committed with its politics. The intensely dramatic story of a shell-shocked soldier (Tom Courtney) who faces an Army court-martial for desertion at the battle of Passchendaelle. Dirk Bogarde stars as the Army lawyer assigned with the job of saving him from the firing squad.

Man in the Back Seat (1960)
The phrase “quota quickie” was synonymous with cheaply made, under-plotted films notable only for the ineptitude of the acting. It's a rare treat, therefore, to stumble across a taut British B films with an intriguing idea that's been ingeniously executed. Director Vernon Sewell outdoes himself with this haunting story of two crooks and an unwanted passenger obviously has its roots in the Banquo's ghost segment of Macbeth.

Night Must Fall (1964)
Karel Reisz remakes Emlyn Williams's psychological thriller originally filmed by Richard Thorpe in 1937. Finney is the seemingly naive handyman with a penchant for decapitation who moves in with wealthy widow Mona Washbourne and proceeds to wreak his unique brand of havoc. Not nearly as effective as the original, Finney is, none the less, creepily convincing, while his inventive use for the severed heads of his victims is not easily forgotten. Freddie Francis's masterly black-and-white photography is highly atmospheric and Reisz's camera movements and cross-cuts recall the vigorous unpredictability of the French New Wave.

Night of the Eagle (1962)
Director Sidney Hayers superlative yet overlooked adaptation of Fritz Leiber Jr's classic tale Conjure Wife, despite the odd Americanism this is a quality serving of genuinely scary intelligent English horror. Sceptical university professor Peter Wyngarde is hated by other lecturers when rumours of a major promotion circulate. Hayers proves remarkably successful at suggesting an atmosphere of supernatural dangers, rather than relying simply on overt horror.

No Love for Johnnie (1960)
Labour win the general election but Peter Finch MP is overlooked for the cabinet post he was expecting. Instead, his communist wife leaves him; he falls in with shifty communist-leaning MP Donald Pleasence and has a passionate affair with fashion model Mary Peach. Based on a posthumous novel by Labour MP Wilfred Fienburgh, who was killed in a car crash, this seems to prefigure the Profumo affair with its then outspoken blend of sex and politics and remains eminently watchable and wholly plausible, due mainly to Finch's believable portrayal of the ambitious politician with more libido than principle.

Nothing but the Best (1964)
A satire about class life in Britain and how ruthless schemer Alan Bates will stop at nothing to get to the top. Under-rated dark fun, Nothing but the Best is so cynical and morally ambiguous that it will have you guessing whether anti-hero Bates will get his comeuppance at the end. Denholm Elliott steals every scene as an indolent aristocrat who tutors him in the delicate art of being a cad. Scripted by Frederic Raphael, photographed by Nicolas Roeg and directed by Clive Donner.

Our Mother's House (1967)
Director Jack Clayton brings a similar sense of the heightened unease that marked his earlier chiller The Innocents to this screen adaptation of Julian Gloag's novel about seven young children who keep the death of their mother a secret in an attempt to keep their fragile family together. Shifty cockney Dirk Bogarde shows up, claiming to be their prodigal father. The end is pleasingly warm and almost totally unexpected. Set in a derelict house in Croydon, Bogarde and Clayton believed they had failed honourably, but Italian director Luchino Visconti thought it was a “beautiful” film and hired Bogarde for The Damned and Death in Venice on the strength of it.

Payroll (1961)
Well-knit thriller. Johnny Mellors plans to hold-up an armoured security van used by a company for its wages. Billie Whitelaw stars as the vengeful widow of a man killed during the heist, determined to get her own back on the man who betrayed her husband and the leader of the gang who killed him.

The Quare Fellow (1962)
An insight into the effects of capital punishment on novice warder Patrick McGoohan and inmates of a Dublin prison. The claustrophobic prison atmosphere is expertly conjured up in a well-intentioned, if downbeat, anti-capital punishment protest movie. Stark and moody, the film has several moments of truly black humour, and McGoohan and co-star Sylvia Syms have an interesting chemistry that smoulders. Based on the play by Brendan Behan.

Rattle of a Simple Man (1964)
Harry H Corbett, a shy northern bachelor in London for the Cup Final, makes plans to spend the night with beautiful Soho prostitute Diane Cilento in order to win a bet with his footballing friends. In adapting his play for the big screen, Harry H Corbett was able to break away completely from his Steptoe image and Michael Medwin is also very good as Corbett's big-talking friend. Writer Charles Dyer so overdoes the pathos that what few laughs there are seem rather cruel and out of place.

Smokescreen (1964)
This above-average Butchers B-movie written and directed by Jim O'Connolly has a passable plot involving a little bit of skulduggery in suburban Brighton that's kept moving swiftly and painlessly. Adultery, embezzlement and murder are all taken in his stride by Peter Vaughan as the fastidious insurance claims inspector who suspects that there is more to a blazing car wreck than meets the eye.

The Sorcerers (1967)
The second film directed by Michael Reeves may not have the scope and visceral impact of his masterpiece, Witchfinder General (1968), but this cult film shows the effective use he made of minimal resources. Boris Karloff plays an elderly scientist living with his devoted wife in shabby poverty in London, dreaming of the brilliant breakthrough in hypnotic technique that will restore him to fame and fortune. Seeking a guinea-pig, he hits on Mike, a disaffected young man-about-town (Ian Ogilvy).

Term of Trial (1962)
Made at the height of the “kitchen sink” boom in British cinema, this rather neglected drama boasts one of Laurence Olivier's most uncharacteristic and under-rated performances. As the teacher at an inner-city school who is looked down upon by everyone from his taunting wife Simone Signoret to class bully Terence Stamp. Laurence Olivier is sternly superb as the teacher, while Sarah Miles, in her film debut, oozes sex appeal as the precocious girl.

Tiara Tahiti (1962)
Director Ted Kotcheff's feature debut is an adequate showcase for the talents of James Mason and John Mills. Nobody can smarm like Mason, who breezes through the picture as a cultured crook, seeing stiff-upper-lipped Mills's arrival on Tahiti to negotiate a hotel deal as the chance to pay him back for his being cashiered at the end of the war. Cinematographer Otto Heller gives the island a travel brochure look, but it's the interplay between the leads that catches the imagination.

The Whisperers (1967)
One of writer/director Bryan Forbes's most admired films, this is essentially an effective and moving study of loneliness, which has as its subject an old lady (Dame Edith Evans) teetering on the edge of senility. Her only friends are the `whisperers' - the voices that she insists she hears in her dank and dingy old flat. There's good support from Eric Portman as her errant husband, and, especially from Gerald Sim as a friendly Assistance Board man.

The Wrong Box (1966)
Shambolic, undisciplined, all-star period black comedy of a sort that, in the 1960s, was a common feature of American and British cinematic output. In a script based on a Robert Louis Stevenson story, an elderly John Mills attempts to murder Ralph Richardson for Tontine lottery money. Fortunately it managed to preserve a veritable cornucopia of British comedy talent Wilfrid Lawson's tumbledown butler steals every scene he's in, and Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers and Irene Handl are drafted in for the eccentric cameo parts.

Genevieve's Mechanic

I think "The Killing of sister George" is an excellent film .I found parts of it a bit edgy & uncomfortable to watch when I was young,but the moments of humour gave relief.
Beryl Reid suprised me in the depth of her "serious acting" and delighted in her well known comic ability .
The fact that her character is quite nasty in lots of ways,yet you can still felt sympathy as her world is threatened shows the balance they acheived particularly in her relationship with "childie" which at first seems to be just some sort of S&m parody, but eventually the more desperate affection is revealed.
Favorite scene
The "Death" scene
Gm

Freddy

Who can forget Peter Sellers in the Wrong Box where as the eccentric doctor he was asked to sign a death certificate. He writes with an old quill pen then uses the kitten on his desk as an ink blotter.
Peter Sellers did ad lib some scenes and I often wonder if this was one of them.
Priceless
Freddy

"What larks eh Pip, what larks"

The world wags on.

CLAMBAKE

Anybody know if 'Jigsaw' is available on Video/DVD I saw this in 1962 and thought it was an excellent thriller with a real twist at the end Jack Warner plays the Detective..........Dexter

Fellwanderer

Doesn't appear to have ever been released.

Try asking in Looking for a Video/DVD (Film) - you may strike lucky!

FELL

All the best
FELL

A signature is no substitute for a life

Marky B

Some good choices there - Jigsaw was an excellent film with Jack Warner and Ronald Lewis doing the detective honours and Michael Craig's Payroll was shot on Tyneside,pre Get Carter.
Ta Ta

I am special. The heavens always open for me.

Jackdaw

Great list of films there.
I'm fairly sure that I've seen them all,and I particularly remember certain things about some of them:-

THE DEADLY AFFAIR -Marvellous performance by Harry Andrews, and a beautifully played scene with him beating seven kinds of the proverbial out of Roy Kinnear, with the latter's little girl present.Very poignant.

FOUR IN THE MORNING - With Ann Lynn.The wonderful,gorgeous Ann Lynn,who used to enchant me,and my schoolmates with her TV appearances in the early sixties.Did she have a nose job?What did she see in Tony Newley?Did she really pose naked for Augustus John?So many questions.

SMOKESCREEN - Deryck Guyler as the station master at Hellingly station,strangely transplanted to a location between Eastbourne and Lewes and on a line visible from Beachy Head!By the way,location spotters may be interested to learn that Hellingly station is still entirely intact,complete with its platform,and can be found on the Cuckoo Walk,a couple of miles from Hailsham.

NOTHING BUT THE BEST - An appearance by The Eagles.No,not that lot,but a British instrumental band from Bristol who were also involved with the music for SOME PEOPLE (1962).

HELL IS A CITY - Excellent atmosphere,almost a documentary feel to many of the scenes and a nice frustrated relationship between Stanley Baker and Vanda Godsell.

THE COLLECTOR - Extremely uncomfortable viewing.I don't know when this movie was last shown on one of the main channels,but I would think that it is an unlikely candidate for showing in the near future, owing to its subject matter.

JIGSAW - Again,a movie with excellent atmosphere and great location shots on the coast to the east of Brighton.

Unfortunately,at the present rate of TV airings of British movies of the 60's on the main channels,we are unlikely to see many of these in the near future.

Cheers

Jacky

jacobean

Deadly Affair was good once it got going. Loved the Bossa Nova soundtrack and the slick chase across London about halfway through.

Another good one was The Pleasure Girls from 1965 starring Ian McShane. This was a brilliant social look at sixties London and was mainly about a girls struggle in the modelling industry. Not even a speck of cocaine seen throughout the whole film!

Aenima

Passed by is a right!!! Most of these I haven't seen. I was lucky enough to get a copy of The Collector not so long ago and loved it. Our Mothers House has been shown on TCM of late and is a fantastic film. Would love to see The Wrong Box.

Cheers,
A

I'll 'av 'arf

mysteriesofedgarwallace

Some absolute crackers listed above, of which 'Jigsaw' is the pick of the bunch, with 'Man In the Back Seat' a close second. Here are some more:-

1962 Seven Keys
1962 Strongroom
1963 Calculated Risk
1963 The Hi-Jackers

mysteriesofedgarwallace

Two more, on a spy theme this time:-

1963 Ring of Spies
1964 Master Spy

smudge

Ring of Spies is a cracker ! Long overdue for a repeat/DVD release.

SMUDGE=

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...

mysteriesofedgarwallace

Agreed, based on a true story.

I very much enjoyed Master Spy, which was on BBC2 a few weeks back; Very Edgar Wallacey I thought, with lots of familiar faces. Highly recommended.

Diane Blackwell

I've got The Pleasure Girls and it certainly is a good film - I was particularly interested to see Anneke Wilks in her pre-Dr Who days.

Another one I think has a certain charm is Saturday Night Out, starring Colin Campbell and a variety of others. Doesn't get an airing very often.

sanndevil

THE BEAUTY JUNGLE (1964) starring the lovely Janette Scott.