“Dead letters, sir. Doesn’t that sound like dead men?”
The BFI’s ongoing mission to explore strange old worlds
continues with another splendid set of shocking shorts for the Flipside series.
What we have here are two Blu-ray discs of strangeness and charm ranging from
Orson Welles in Ireland to Dexter Fletcher’s junkie dreams via a very
disturbing slice of “found-footage” horror. As a whole the stories twist and
turn in delightfully unexpected ways, and each leaves its mark even in the most
relaxed of viewing environments: a home invasion of unexpected impacts.
As with the previous two sets, BFI Flipside series that
revisits the heyday of the supporting programme, with a series of very
off-the-beaten path British short films presented in High Definition for the
first time, all the better to absorb the uncanny atmosphere of three decades
and more of filmmaking in the inner reaches. As before there’s a fabulous
booklet* and extras including specially commissioned interviews with some of
the directors of these films.
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| Michael Laurence amd Orson Welles take a trip |
Return to Glennascaul (1951) kicks off in fine style
with Mr Welles being interrupted on the set of Othello to recant the strangest
of encounters in the darkened roads of western Ireland. Written and directed by
Hilton Edwards it is a tidy tale that was nominated for an Oscar for Best Short
Subject.
We find Orson driving through some mean weather on a dark
and tempestuous night when he comes across a man (Michael Laurence) who’s car
has broken down. He offers a lift and the man accepts before describing a
similar road-side incident some years previously when he’d been invited for a
cup of tea or something stronger… by a mother and daughter who lived in
a large house near his own. After staying longer than he wanted to he returns
the following morning to find his uncle’s cigarette case which he’d left on
their mantlepiece only to find the building dilapidated and long empty… and more
mystery awaits.
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| John Laurie |
Strange Stories (1953)
Here are two odd tales told by John Slater (later Detective
Sgt Stone of Z-Cars!) and Valentine Dyall, the first of which is an adaptation
of The Strange Mr Bartleby a short story written by Herman Melville
after Moby Dick and which was later turned into a film with John McEnery as the
titular Bartleby and Paul Scofield as the man who employs him. Here John Laurie
is the man who would “prefer not to” after being recruited by Norman Shelley at
his solicitor’s office. There’s an added character in a young woman (Naomi
Chance) who employs the lawyer to track down a missing man. It's an eerie tale
and Laurie is perfect as the inscrutable and exasperatingly alien Bartleby.
There’s a second story with a young couple, Charlie (Colin
Tapely) and Marie (Helen Hunter) attempting escape to Tasmania after the
accidental killing of a man they owed money to. Whilst the captain of the merchant
vessel they book is suspicious it’s their own paranoia and guilt that makes the
journey a painful one.
Strange Experiences: Grandpa’s Portrait and Old Silas
(1956)
These are two, blink and you’ll miss them minisodes – as no one calls them – featuring the urbane Peter Williams sat in a comfy chair reading these tales of the mildly unexpected.
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| George Votsis in old Covent Garden |
Maze (1969)
Things get decidedly groovier 13 years later with this
free-running tale of mysterious London connections all soundtracked by a band
made up of members of the legendary prog band Family. The music is fab
as are the locations as we follow a series of ace faces, an immigrant dishwasher
(George Votsis) starts from Covent Garden when it was still a vegetable market,
through the West End to a restaurant where a blonde woman (Stephanie Cleverley)
who we’d seen arguing with a man near Bow Street, is finally reconciled. It’s a
very neat construct and was put together by Bob Bentley for his degree show at
the Royal College of Art’s Film and Television School.
There’s so much going on it’s a delight of atmosphere and
expectation its rediscovery heralded by Bentley: It is a wonderful thing to
share this ancient film. I had imagined it lost in the labyrinth itself, never
to be seen again, but it has re-emerged from the subterranean depths and into
the light, like Proserpine, Empress of Hades.
Skinfliker (1973)
Disc two gets off to an uncomfortable and hard-hitting start
with Tony Bicât’s experimental film about the kidnapping and killing of a government
minister by a group of dissidents, who aim to document everything on camera in
an echo of mythical “snuff” films as well as a precursor of the ‘found footage’
horror genre.
It’s got rough edges and an uncomfortable restless energy
that reflect the almost banal humour of the situation and the protagonists’ amateurish
terrorism, all the more frightening and neither they nor we know if they’ll be
able to follow through.
The film itself went through a similar test with Bicât
challenged by the BFI who asked if he had any experience of film making; “I
said I’d seen a lot of films. ‘So why should the BFI Production Board give you
money to make Skinflicker?’ Because, I said, I love the script and only I know
how to make it.” Turns out he was right and you won’t forget this in a
hurry.
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| Banal tortures, boardering on the slapstick and yet... |
COI: Broken Bottle and Don’t Fool Around with Fireworks
(1973)
As is often remarked, it’s amazing that my generation
survived into adulthood what with all the dangers to life constantly
highlighted by public information films. The titles speak for themselves and we
did take heed… hence the people at the BFI wouldn’t be around to tell the tales
via Flipside!
We also had to worry about boot boys, skinheads and large
groups of lads by the chippie but some risks stood out for themselves.
The Terminal Game (1982)
We’ve been worried about AI for a lot longer than the Daily
Mail might suggest and this slice of near-sci-fi shows just why as a computer
programmer investigates a colleague’s suspicious death against a backdrop of
irresponsible big business and uncontrollable new technology… Geoff Lowe, you
saw the future and it doesn’t work…
Some great locations here too including the darkly sentient St
Alphage House on the Moorgate to London Wall Highwalks, now mostly lost to new
buildings as we keep on building forward.
Music is provided by the excellent Colin Towns who I saw
playing keyboards with Ian Gillan in 1982!!
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| St Alphage's Tower, looking increasingly like a computer |
Wings of Death (1985)
This is the short that first impressed Derek Jarman with the
exceptional Dexter Fletcher whom he subsequently cast in Caravaggio, although
he clearly failed to watch him in Bugsy Malone and Stephen Moffatt’s The
Press Gang!
There are echoes of Chatterton in the opening
shot, as Nichola Bruce and Michael Coulson’s film explores the fevered dreams
of the young addict played by Fletcher as he tries to escape his fate. It’s
fraught with a twisted magical realism that bears comparison with Lynch as well
as Jarman, as Fletcher’s character finds weirdness in everyone, he meets even
the little girl playing with her “dead” dollies on the stairs, and the hotel receptionist
eating like a pig and resembling his mother.
It's a standout on the set and reminiscent of so many shorts
that accompanied longer films up to this time, often at the Scala in Kings Cross
and which would leave us slightly out of joint as we staggered back into the night
air after a viewing, a little bit more eager to get home than when we arrived…
Dexter Fletcher
Shockingly special features!!
A Vandyke Production: Roger Proudlock and Strange Stories
(2023, 7 mins): the BFI’s Vic Pratt looks back on the tiny post-war independent
film company that produced Strange Stories
Getting Lost (2023, 20 mins): interview with Bob
Bentley, writer and director of Maze
Touch a Nerve (2023, 26 mins): interview with Skinflicker
director Tony Bicât
Actor Henry Woolf’s personal pencil-annotated copy of the
Skinflicker script by Howard Brenton
A Game of Two Halves (2023, 28 mins): interview with The
Terminal Game writer and director Geoff Lowe
Playing Music (2023, 8 mins): renowned composer Colin
Towns looks back on his score for The Terminal Game
The Terminal Game original trailer
Wings of Death: Behind the Scenes (2023, 7 mins):
co-director Nichola Bruce’s chronological edit of her 8mm footage of the shoot
Flying High (2023, 31 mins): the directors of Wings
of Death look back on the film
Rare photographs taken on the set of Wings of Death
by Steve Pyke
Image galleries for Maze, Skinflicker, and Wings
of Death
Newly commissioned sleeve artwork by renowned illustrator
Graham Humphreys
*First pressing only: Illustrated booklet with an
introduction from the BFI’s Vic Pratt, William Fowler and Josephine Botting, an
essay on Skinflicker by Sarah Appleton, notes and credits for each film
and for the special features
So, yet another must-watch set and you must-buy either direct from the BFI’s online store or the shop itself on the Southbank.
Always look on the Flipside of life!
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