DB7

To the best of my knowledge this has never been released in the UK on video or dvd and I was wondering would it now suffer under the censors knife (think it was x-rated on release). Particularly the scene in which Jane Asher's swimming instructor boyfriend is coaxing girls into the pool?

Darn good film that deserves a wider audience.

Also, whatever happened to John Moulder-Brown?

ollie

Hey Db7,
I've been intrigued by this this film for a while now,i have never seen it but would love to :) you dont happen to have a copy (or know how to source one?)do you?.thanks in anticipation.
cheers Ollie.

"Bullseye !!"

DB7

Try sending Aphra a PM. thumbs_u

It's an engrossing but ultimately unsettling snapshot of Swinging 60s London turned sour and very reminiscent of Polanski. Diana Dors makes a brief but memorable appearance as a customer at the baths where Asher & Moulder Brown work.

ollie

Thank's Db7,
will get on it straight away. thumbs_u
cheers Ollie.

"Bullseye !!"

paulsroom

It is possible to obtain this film from American sites, but I don't know where the original comes from. The copies could be privately created. This is not to be confused with "The Deep End" which has nothing to with "Deep End".

As well as "Deep End", which was a perfect film for John Moulder-Brown, he made several international films in Spain, Italy, Germany, Mexico and the UK, but stopped making films in 1987. His last appearance (to my knowledge) was in the Joan Hickson tv version of the Miss Marple series in "Sleeping Murder".

But now he has made an appearance in "Alexander the Great From Macedonia" as King Philip, with Sam Heughan as Alexander. Where this film is now being shown, I don't know. He runs an acting school in Brighton and this may be why he stopped making films. A great shame as I feel that he was a very competent actor. I've managed to acquire a dozen of his films and they all have a very interesting storylines.

Steve Crook

The BBFC site doesn't list it at all, not even as X-Rated. Was it ever released here?

John Moulder-Brown played Philip, King of Macedonia in a 2005 film about Alexander the Great (not the Oliver Stone one)

Steve

Wetherby Pond

It's definitely been released on a UK video label, as that was how I saw it the first time - though I suspect it was a pre-Video Recordings Act release, which would explain its subsequent disappearance and the BBFC website not knowing about it.

I also got the chance to see it on the big screen as part of a Jerzy Skolimowski retrospective at the NFT in the 1980s - but I honestly don't recall any other opportunities to see it since then.

It would certainly have got an X certificate back in 1970 - though I'd guess it would comfortably qualify for a 15 now. (And there wouldn't have been much difference between the two, since the pre-1971 X was effectively 16).

Wetherby Pond

Just to update my own post, I can also confirm that it had a UK theatrical release - it was reviewed by the Monthly Film Bulletin, April 1971, page 71, and recorded as having an X certificate (i.e. over-16s only), so the BBFC website is clearly incomplete - though I believe they acknowledge this with regard to older titles.

The review was by Nigel Andrews, who now writes for the Financial Times. and it was a very definite thumbs up ("a study in the growth of obsession that is both funny and frighteningly exact").

The following issue included Deep End as part of its critics' round-up, suggesting that its opening date was around April-May 1971. This is what the panel made of it (the ratings were one to four stars):

John Coleman (New Statesman) - **
Patrick Gibbs (Daily Telegraph) - **
Nina Hibbin (Morning Star) - **
Margaret Hinxman (Sunday Telegraph) - **
Derek Malcolm (Guardian) - **
Richard Mallett (Punch) - ***
John Russell Taylor (Times) - ***

Out of 23 films surveyed that month, Deep End had the second best critical reception after Five Easy Pieces.

paulsroom

F.Maurice Speed's FILM REVIEW 1971/72 identifies "Deep End" as having a 'floating release' and first shown in March 1970 at The Academy Cinema in Oxford Street, London. I know for a fact that it has also been shown on tv in Brazil! It's possible to get an NTSC video of it from the USA, but I don't know exactly where the source copy comes from.

This was definitely John Moulder-Brown's best film, and the reviews of the time (I have the Films & Filming one) are glowing about his and Jane Asher's performances. It's a real shame that cinemas like The Academy (now closed) are few are far between. Although the NFT opened branches in Brighton and Southampton (where I can get to easily), they soon closed - presumably from lack of subsidies.

Wetherby Pond

It's a shame, but it was also inevitable - back in the 1970s and 1980s arthouse rep cinemas thrived (= just about broke even) because there was virtually no alternative to what they offered. BBC2 and Channel 4 had more adventurous film programming back then, but that was a drop in the ocean - if you wanted to see anything off the beaten track on a regular basis, your nearest arthouse cinema was literally the only option.

Competition got tougher during the sell-thru video explosion of the late 1980s, and overwhelming when satellite TV was thrown into the mix - with the result that most of the old-fashioned arthouses closed in the 1990s even before the DVD revolution hammered the final nail into their coffin. Economically, they were stuffed - their admission prices were capped by the low price of video alternatives (if you charge a fiver a ticket, two people might as well buy the video to keep), but fewer tickets were being sold while fixed costs - trundling heavy 35mm prints around the country ain't cheap! - certainly weren't falling.

So no subsidy, no cinema - and subsidies are both thin on the ground and come with numerous programming strings attached. For instance, the EU's Europa Cinemas scheme requires a fixed percentage of their opening hours to be devoted to European films. This does include British titles, but the twist is that they have to be new British titles - there's no subsidy available for classic rep of the kind the Academy used to specialise in.

paulsroom

The BBC claims to be World Cinema aware by showing various foreign films on their digital channel, but this is not as frequent as they imply. FilmFour seems like a fair alternative, but I don't have satellite so that's out for me. Channel 4 occasionally surprises me, but infrequently. My only method is to hunt down the videos - with a modest degree of success.

What we really need a film society type channel that shows British and foreign films. "Deep End" cries out to be given the showing it deserves, and there are many more.

nobbywoods

I bought an NTSC VHS copy off eBay a couple of weeks ago and it is still available there. The video looks like a multigenerational copy but is perfectly watchable. I'd rather have a bad copy than no copy at all and for $10 hardly a major investment.

paulsroom

My NTSC VHS copy came without any printed cover, and although it quite a good copy, it's clear that it is not a first generation print.

Sometimes if you wait long enough (or is this wishful thinking?) a dvd is officially issued of a long forgotten film. I have just bought a Region 1 dvd of "The Rocking Horse Winner" (1949). It is a nice clean and bright print, which made it a pleasure to watch - in addition to all of those actors and settings that make films of this period so wonderful. John Howard Davies was really good and I wonder if he watches any of his old films - if he can get hold of them (unless he already has copies).

Hackett

I know it's not British but I watched a DVD over the weekend that I brought for my kids the 1938 "ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER". It is without doubt the best quality DVD I've ever seen. For a film that is well over 65 years old the picture, sound and above all the colour is superb. When I switched it off the end of a Harry Potter film was on the TV. I don't know which one but a large snake/eel was after him in a cave. It's a shame to say but for me the set, lighting and colour was not a patch on the final cave scenes and demise of Indian Joe. I don't want this to just sound like I think the one film is better than the other. More like how better older films can look if they are restored as well as "ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER".

brickker

I just signed up for this site as a thanks for the successful suggestion of finding a copy of DEEP END on e-bay. It worked! They actually had two copies on the block.

Tonite I was watching a long drawn out, fairly corny TV movie with mostly a British cast (except an awkward Dyan Cannon) called "Jenny's War". JOHN MOULDER BROWN is in it. It got me thinking about the movie DEEP END that has haunted me ever since I first saw it in 1970 or 1971. I saw it one night in Washington DC, couldn't get it out of my mind and ended up going to see it every night until it closed. Then poof! it was gone forever. I have many many times wondered if it was available to buy (and if anyone else even saw it)...and thanks to your suggestions, I will have it.

Thanks again.