Clare Binns, Ritzy Cinema alumnus – usherette, tickets
seller, projectionist, programmer and beyond – in her interview here about the
Brixton venue points out the significance of diverse programming especially at
a time when streaming services push their top content at us in every decreasing
algorithmic circles. The importance of independent cinemas, production houses,
publishers, distributors etc has never been greater as informed recommendation cannot
be replicated – yet – by AI. There is an art to finding things and, as the BFI’s
Flipside series continues to show, a bunch of uber geeks raiding the archive
and sharing is a winning formula.
This double disc set is the 43rd disc in the
series and follows on from the first volume of Short Sharp Shocks that
was one of the BFI’s biggest sellers last year proving that there’s a sizable amount of folk who want to experience
the shock of the new even if they are sometimes old and very strange… there’s
not a single film on here that isn’t worth re-discovery and some, such as The
Mark of Lilith (1986) represent a moment in feminist film making that
certainly deserves wider recognition: Derek Jarman was a fan and there’s plenty
of contemporary value in the film’s polemic.
We start with more deliberate mysteries with a couple of
Ronald Haines’ Quiz-Crimes from 1943-4 in which Detective Inspector
Frost challenges the audience to solve the murders of showgirls, golfers, along
with Soho kidnaps and botched boarding house killings. The films plug into the
whodunnit fad which has been ongoing for well over a century now and make the strangest
of aperitifs for film programmes then and now, pulling eth watcher into
mysteries as surely as the dramatic tensions of the main features.
They’re followed by the purely threatening The Three
Children (1946) a public information film warning drives, parents and
children about the perils of road death at a time when three children were
killed every week in traffic accidents. It’s very reminiscent of safety films of
the seventies with the threat personified by a human figure warning you to
avoid deep water or strange film makers…
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| John Le Mesurier |
Probably the person you’d least expect would need to Escape
from Broadmoor (1948) is John Le Mesurier, but here he is alive with menace
as Langford, a psychotic professional thief aiming to make a score at the scene
of a previous crime in which he shot a woman. He’s being pursued by Inspector
Thornton played by frequent detective John Stuart, a veteran who started off in
the silent era with Hitchcock in The Pleasure Garden and Elvey in Hindle
Wakes. Langford’s sure there’s more to be had and he takes along his apprentice
Jenkins (Antony Doonan) to what they hope will be an empty house… only to find
a rather confident housekeeper (Victoria Hopper) running unwanted commentary as
they try to break the safe…
Director John Gilling ramps the atmosphere and tension up
as Le Mesurier effortlessly transitions from hard and cocky to uncertain and supernaturally
scared…
There are more uncanny happenings in Theodore Zichy’s
quirky Mingoloo (1958), in which an artist, Mark Langtree (Anthony F
Page) wakes from a vivid dream featuring a Chinese dog which he is compelled to
sculpt with the help of his assistant Linda Burrows (Therese Burton). Mark’s on
his uppers and has a deal that will keep him afloat with a foreign government
to decorate a building. One of their number, Mr Leventa (Reed De Rouen) just so
happens to run a night club and dodgy business and decides that the plaster pup
could be very useful.
He arranges a date with Linda thinking she’s made the
statue and ends up gifting her £1000 for the dog, even as she gets too squiffy
on champagne to sign the paperwork. The next day Mark is too cross to listen to
Linda after the dog gets napped and he gets slugged… It’s a daft but engaging
story and more dreams will come that enable a denouement. Made on a shoestring,
it’s fun and Zichy? He’s quirky.
My old girlfriends’ dad used to manage clubs in
Lancashire which is how he came to know Screaming Lord Sutch who, aged about
three, she found having breakfast in their kitchen, not in his make-up but with
his long hair and sunken eyes enough to frighten her into running straight out
into the street. We get to see his gothic charm in the video for the 1963
near-miss, Jack the Ripper, produced by Joe Meek which tastefully
summarises Jack’s murderous career with the Lord showing how much The Damned
Dave Vanian owed him for make-up and style.
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| David Allister not quite dead |
Things get more seriously weird and contemporarily
resonant on the second disc which kicks off with The Face of Darkness
(1976) which is written and directed by Ian FH Lloyd and features genuine forces
of darkness intervening in British politics for the first and far from last
time… surely non one expects the last five years to be devoid of devilment?
Edward Langdon plays Lennard Pearce an MP with a law-and-order
private members bill which will bring back hanging (avenging his murdered wife)
and a clamp down on our freedoms. The numbers are against him in Parliament but
he has a plan to rouse the Undead (David Allister) a being long ago buried by a
medieval Inquisitor (John Bennett) and a peasant helper (Roger Bizley). The Undead
will do as he is bid but in the strange ceremony bringing him back to consciousness,
Langdon fails to remove his tongue allowing him the leeway to follow a broader course.
He meets Eileen (the excellent Gwyneth Powell, headmistress of Grange Hill
and much more) the mother of his intended victim, a schoolgirl and in
unsettling scenes plays magic tricks for her schoolmates before drawing a
perfect circle and placing a box inside for his “Pandora” to open and blow them
all up.
Lloyd is featured in an interview on the disc and admits that the resurgent IRA had informed his writing and as with everything in the disturbing allegory, there’s much to be wary of as politicians plough ahead with myths of their own, sowing anger, fear and division. The timeless nature of evil and the immutability of history are but a couple of themes in the entertaining, intelligent and unsettling film.
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| Geraldine James |
Talking of unsettling, Robert Bierman succeeds in scaring
the modern watcher with the home-invasion horrors of The Dumb Waiter
(1979) in which a young Geraldine James (star of pretty much everything since…)
is pursued by a nameless man who is determined to attack her no matter what. Locations
are shot around West London with commercials director Robert Bierman creating an
edge of the seat thriller in his first fictional film. James is superb and so
is the young director as he creates a dark atmosphere through expert editing
and beginner’s improvisations!
Just as dark but more educatively so, David Evans’ Hangman (1985) is a health and safety film designed to make building workers aware of the risks at their workplace. The beefy Hangman – played by a mainstay of period hardmen characters as found in Bergerac, The Bill, Minder and many more, here uncredited – speaks direct to the workers in the audience as he tests them on the workplace dos and don’ts. It’s a little like the Quiz-Crimes only viewers are being asked to prevent their own manslaughter rather than identify the guilty parties post-facto.
The final film is perhaps the most interesting, The
Mark of Lilith (1986) was essentially the graduation project for a number
of students at the London College of Printing with, a budget of £7,000,
including a huge amount of of begged, stolen and borrowed kit and their fellow
students goodwill, Bruna Fionda, Polly Biswas Gladwin and Zachary Nataf were
able to make a work aimed at deconstructing the vampire genre as well as asking
questions about feminism in film.
Zena (Pamela Lofton) is a lesbian film student looking
onto the genre and the role of legend in fuelling such stories, especially the
passage of female gods from good to bad in myth. She meets Lillia (Susan
Franklyn) and actual vampire who has grown dissatisfied with life with her pain
in the neck boyfriend Luke (Jeremy Peters) whose “Gothic and go” has got up and
gone. Lillia wants to be real and more seen… Zena agrees and the two characters
set off in search of more substance.
All three of the directors are interviewed as part of the box set’s extras, the film was an important mark in their careers.
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| Pamela Lofton, looking for Lilith |
Sat in her taxi searching for Zena, whose presence she’d
sensed on screen, Lillia tells the driver to take her to the Rizty… nineties
code for independent and free-thinking cinema! There were cheers in the venue
when the film showed and there are cheers now we can see this and the rest of
this superlative package from the BFI.
Short Sharp Shocks is out on 25th October and you can order direct from the BFI – do it, do it now! The first pressing only includes a fulsome booklet with many interesting essays from filmmakers and historians Vic Pratt, William Fowler, Josephine Botting, Jon Dear, Jonathan Rigby and Caroline Champion so, be quick about it!
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| Screeming Lord Sutch considers electiral reform... he lost all his deposits standing a record 39 times for parliament with his Monster Raving Loony Party. |
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