The shock of the old… Short Sharp Shocks Volume 3, BFI Flipside 47

“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.

 

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.

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.

 

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.

 

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!!

 

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!

 

Not one bland moment... Touch of Evil (1958), Eureka 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray out now!

 

Looking back, it’s hard to understand just why some of the finest filmmakers struggled to make films even, in Orson Welles case, after Citizen Kane’s re-evaluation and legend continued to grow with it placing second in the 1952 Sight and Sound best picture poll and first a decade later. Yet here we have Universal casting for a routine crime caper based on Whit Masterson’s Badge of Evil and telling star Charlton Heston that they didn’t have a director yet but were going to cast Welles as Detective Hank Quinlan. Why don’t you ask Orson to direct? asked Heston and, clearly not having even considered him, the producers duly brought him on board and, unwittingly, guaranteed the film would become something different altogether.

 

Welles hadn’t directed a film in Hollywood since Macbeth in 1948 (shot in 23 days due to budget constraints) and his reputation for pursuing his own vision troubled the studios as with von Sternberg and von Stroheim before him. Here he re-wrote the original script in just ten days and then began rehearsals during which he encouraged his cast to re-write and improvise with Janet Leigh saying: “We rewrote most of the dialogue, all of us… and Mr. Welles always wanted our input… Mr. Welles wanted to seize every moment. He didn't want one bland moment…”

 

Well, viewing this sparkling new HD presentation I can reveal that, unsurprisingly, there are indeed no bland moments in what remains a spellbinding film on so many levels. Let me count the ways…

1.       The dark night rises

 

There’s no way of overlooking the astonishing dexterity of the film’s opening take, as characters move to and fro with two couples in two cars heading in close proximity through a border town at night, one of which has just had a bomb thrown in its boot. Russell Metty’s camera sweeps up and over buildings following the vehicles and focusing on one then the other as the viewer waits for the inevitable explosion which, at various points, could engulf both cars. It’s an audacious single take that Antonioni would be proud of, pure technique that creates a sense of place, establishes characters, motivations and atmosphere from the get-go.

 

According to Charlton Heston, interviewed in one of the extras, the actor playing the border guard who speaks right at the end of the take, just couldn’t take the pressure and kept fluffing his lines. As the sun began to rise and the final take approached, Welles told him to mime his lines and the take was finally in the can. The director was asked why he didn’t just replace the actor and responded by saying that it would be too cruel, and that it would destroy him. Now that’s leadership.

 

The story takes place largely at night and that adds so much to the tensions of the film, it’s too late, you can’t orientate and it’s always darkest just before the dawn. We’re instinctively nervy during the nighttime, extra alert for predatory attack and in search of safety, a security that Welles will not allow and which frazzles the longer the film progresses. The dark silence highlights human extremes and evil is exposed in vivid ways; we are, indeed, touched by it. After Hours, Mystery Train, Night on Earth… anything by David Lynch, there’s an entire sub-genre of films at night at least partially inspired by this film.

Orson Welles

2.       The cast is politics

 

Welles re-wrote the story’s original good cop Mitch Holt as the Hispanic Miguel Vargas, making the character a Mexican "for political reasons. I wanted to show how Tijuana and the border towns are corrupted by all sorts of mishmash, publicity more or less about American relations". This was a bold choice and boy you can imagine how this might go down in parts of the South in 2023…

 

Heston duly darkened his hair and skin and whilst it’s odd to see there’s something about seeing this quintessential all-American hero as a Mexican which is challenging in its own way; he’s the good man whilst the Caucasian cop will be the ultimate villain. People got blacklisted for less a few years earlier.

 

Welles, of course, plays the corpulent Police Captain Hank Quinlan, a man still haunted by the murder of his wife and a recovering alcoholic dedicated to keeping his town clean at whatever cost. Welles is truly disturbing in this role, the prosthetics an eerie foreshadowing of his later weight, whilst also changing his face so successfully that even in 4k HD, you really can’t see the joins. It’s as if the choices he has made have not only darkened his soul but marked him for life too… hints of handsomeness submerged beneath synthetic skin.

 

Joseph Calleia, reflects on his friend...

Joseph Calleia as Sgt. Pete Menzies delivers a stunning performance too as Quinlan’s loyal right-hand man who has honestly assisted his friend through the years. Calleia manages to convey a mix of febrile weakness as well as bravery and steals a fair few scenes in the most human ways; a visceral conduit to the audience as we’re sucked into this violent world of betrayal and midnight corruption.

 

Balanced against this is the blonde purity of Janet Leigh who plays Vargas’ American wife, Susan again the epitome of upstanding American values and a quick-witted, woman of agency who still finds herself suffering the indignities of kidnap, blackmail and molestation all because her man is perhaps too intent on pursuing his prey without spending enough time making sure she is safe. What happens to Susan represents the dark paranoia of the times with the brother of Vargas’ crime lord Manolo Sanchez (a tense, sweaty turn from Victor Millan) aiming straight for his weakness just as Quinlan eventually arrives at the same conclusion in the most horrific of ways.

 

3.       Mercedes menace, Marlene magic

 

The film is unsettling throughout, it’s dark, confusing, juddering… things happen out of nothing, the natural rhythm is slightly off, no doubt down to Welles’ coaxing and the pacing, editing and improvisation he encourages. A man follows Vargas through the shadowed streets and runs out of the darkness and attempts to throw acid at him; this world is out of kilter and there is nothing stopping the worst things from happening. As Susan is staying at the supposedly safe motel over the border, the only man standing between her and a gang of Sanchez’ hoods is a night manager player with weird intensity by Dennis Weaver; his palpable terror only reinforcing how alone and vulnerable she is. The gang party, play rock ‘n roll, take drugs and circle ever closer to their prey… with Mercedes McCambridge providing a brutal cameo as the butch gang leader who wants to stay and watch as the men break into Susan’s room…

 

Janet Leigh you should avoid motels in future...

McCambridge had been part of Welles’ cast for War of the Worlds in 1938 and she’s joined by a number of Orson’s pals, Joseph Cotton as a coroner, Zsa Zsa Gabor as a club owner and, most memorably, Marlene Dietrich as Tana a gypsy madam in what she said was Elizabeth Taylor’s wig*. In her autobiography she said the shoot had been only one night and that “I don’t think I’ve ever performed so well as on that day…” The budget amounted to what she called “a hand-out to a beggar” and so she, Mercedes and the rest responded to their friend’s call for help and the quality of their performances speaks volumes of the respect and loyalty the director clearly commanded.

 

4.       Vision, requirements and specification

 

The studio hacked the film to buts but the director wrote a detailed 58-page memo detailing everything in the film he wanted re-instated and put right. This was used to restore the film when it was re-edited according to Welles's original vision, as outlined in his memo, in 1998, showing the value of not only having clear vision and terms of reference but also documenting requirements and deliverables if any project managers are watching/reading.

 

This then is something like a definitive edition – so far – of this major work and as usual comes replete with Eureka’s special set of extras:

 

·         Hardcase featuring artwork by Tony Stella | 4K (2160p)

·         UHD Blu-ray presentations of all three versions, presented in Dolby Vision HDR: the Theatrical version (95 mins), the Preview version (109 mins), and the 1998 Reconstruction (110 mins).

·         Four audio commentaries, featuring: restoration producer Rick Schmidlin (reconstructed version); actors Charlton Heston & Janet Leigh, with Schmidlin (reconstructed version); critic F. X. Feeney (theatrical version); and Welles scholars James Naremore & Jonathan Rosenbaum (preview version) New video interview with critic, broadcaster and cultural historian Matthew Sweet

·         New video interview with critic Tim Robey

·         New video interview with author and critic Kim Newman

·         Bringing Evil to Life and Evil Lost and Found – two video pieces, featuring interviews with cast and crew, as well as critics and admirers

·         Original theatrical trailer

·         PLUS: A 100-PAGE BOOK featuring writings by Orson Welles, François Truffaut, André Bazin, and Terry Comito; interview excerpts with Welles; a timeline of the film’s history; two new essays by critic Richard Combs; and rare stills and imagery.

 

 

You can order the set direct from Eureka here or via all good retailers, no home should be without one!

 

*Marlene (1987)

No backdrops for Charlton