Valerie Leon, Super Nurse

The frankly flipping gorgeous Valerie Leon plays a very accommodating nurse in the somewhat heavy handed 1967 Johnny Speight TV satire 'If There Weren't Any Blacks, You'd Have To Invent Them'. It's unbelievable what you used to be able to get on the NHS, isn't it?  

R.I.P, E.P

It comes to us all, of course, but this is a bit much. From 'Epic'.

W Is For Wyngarde

 

‘Epic’ is in many ways an atypical ‘Avengers’ episode: Steed isn’t in it much, and it has a small cast, rather than the usual cavalcade of familiar faces in small roles. If pushed to illustrate the freewheeling surrealism and gently experimental feel of the best of the programme, however, I would cite this episode as a perfect example. Full of striking visuals and with its tongue firmly in its cheek, it also gives a plum role for the genius of Peter Wyngarde to take flight.

The story is fairly negligible, but, for what it’s worth, Emma is kidnapped by a film director called Z.Z vom Schnerck who wants her to star in his magnum opus ‘The Destruction Of Emma Peel’. The film also stars two drunken, washed-up actors called Stewart Kirby (Wyngarde) and Damita Syn, who are more than willing to help von Shnerck abduct and murder if it revives their long dormant careers. Emma is not initially informed that she is in the film or, indeed, that the production will climax with her actual death onscreen.

Structurally and visually, the episode sometimes seems a precursor for both ‘The Girl Who Was Death’ and the UFO episode ‘Timelash’, both excellent episodes of sometimes variable shows. The studio setting gives plenty of scope to the production, not least the opportunity to parody a number of genres and stock characters.

Wyngarde is called upon to play, amongst others, a gunslinger, a 'red indian', Alexander the Great, a gangster and a machine gun toting German in a spiked helmet (another image prefiguring ‘The Girl Who Was Death’) , all of which are an absolute hoot (a thick slice of ham is part of the characterisation, of course – this is Peter Wyngarde doing Stewart Kirby doing the parts). We get to see Wyngarde’s superb facility for getting beaten up and pulling amusing faces, as well as hearing him do a variety of accents. He even gets to play the Dane, reciting the ‘To Be Or Not To Be’ soliloquy from the play that must not be named because it’s unlucky or something.

He’s brilliant, and terribly funny. I love him very much. Do you hear me, Peter, I LOVE YOU!

The Girl Who Was The Girl Who Was Death

Despite Number Six' almost complete lack of interest in the fairer sex, there are an awful lot of pretty girls in 'The Prisoner', one of the prettiest (and deadliest) being hit woman Sonia, as played by ITC regular Justine Lord. 

The Prisoner: The Girl Who Was Death

‘The Girl Who Was Death’ is an unusual bit of television by any standards, even the superlatively weird ones of ‘The Prisoner’. Completely adrift of any continuity, hallucinatory and disjointed, set outside the Village and mostly played for laughs, the episode is, nonetheless, bloody good telly, and one of the most genuinely entertaining of the series.

Originally written as a ‘Danger Man’ episode, ‘The Girl Who Was Death’ is a wild fantasy that parodies the idea of the super capable agent up against equally deadly foes, but also provides some excellently thought out sequences that would grace any serious espionage drama.  

It’s all very psychedelic (in the British sense of slightly frightening whimsy, rather than the American sense of losing your mind and going to a different dimension), and has a joyously ramshackle feel to it, a sort of thrown together quality no doubt caused by McGoohan’s absence for some of the filming (he was away making ‘Ice Station Zebra’, Howard Hughes’ favourite film), and the requirement to use stand ins and back projection to make up for it.

This is an episode of great ‘bits’, and Justine Lord, as the slinky white clad assassin, is a memorable and deadly addition to the ever changing cast. In the end analysis, ‘The Girl Who was Death’ isn’t exactly a ‘Prisoner’ episode, but it’s isn’t exactly anything else, and that’s what makes it so great.

The Prisoner: Dance Of The Dead

'Dance of the Dead' is a strange ‘Prisoner’ episode, a vague amalgam of various themes executed in a fair to middling way, neither a notable success nor a flop. It has good bits, and weird bits (the radio broadcast; the trial), and a great new Number Two (played by frail but feisty veteran actress Mary Morris), but it doesn’t hang together particularly well and, as such, is nowhere as memorable as other episodes.

When I tried to recall the plot of this one, for instance, I came up with three basic elements: something about a trial, Number Two in a Peter Pan costume and Roland Walter Dutton. I don’t know why I should remember an incidental character’s full name other than everyone keeps saying it all the time. It’s even written down at one point. Brains are funny things, aren’t they? Well, when they’re on your side, that is. There’s nothing funny about your brain turning against you, believe me.

When I re-watched the episode, I was additionally struck by the attempt to present more composed, ‘artistic’ shots, by how very cool Ms. Morris is, and, on a Ms. Morris coolness related note, the final scene in which Number Six says to Number Two ‘I’ll never give in’. The not particularly bothered Number Two smiles and says ‘then how very uncomfortable for you, old chap’. A killer line, and a very perceptive analysis of the situation. Just for a second, I’ll bet Six felt like a right chump.

F*** Me, It's Freddie!

FMIF as an inmate of the Charleton asylum in 'Marat / Sade'. Look at his face: he's having the time of his life. God, I love him. Stay safe, Freddie. 

That's Easy For You To Say...

I suppose that ‘The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade’ could have been called ‘The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade as Performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company Under the Direction of Peter Brook’ but, as the title easily made the Guinness Book of Records, perhaps they felt the point was made. Most people just shorten it to Marat / Sade.

Adapted from a play by avant-garde writer Peter Weiss, ‘Marat / Sade’ is an uncomfortable piece of confrontational drama that refuses any kind of palliative relief: you will be on edge when you watch it; you will stay on edge. Indeed, it will get more and more uncomfortable. You will not enjoy it, but you will not forget it. My wife saw a theatre adaptation in the eighties where the unease was compounded by having cast members standing around the auditorium in a seemingly catatonic state while, above the audience’s heads, someone swung back and forth manically on a trapeze. Now, that might not be your idea of a good night out but, it’s certainly more memorable than a pie and a pint. It’s the sort of thing that people buy expensive tickets for just to walk out in disgust and give ‘The Daily Mail’ something else to moan about other than brown people and, as such, is undeniably a good thing.

Uncompromising and  sometimes hard to watch, there’s madness and violence, rape and murder, as well as some seemingly interminable songs. Most of all, however, there is still genuine power attached to the production, the same power that so divided audiences who saw it performed live. The film version captures as much of this dread atmosphere as it can, and although it can be static, is much more than just a film recording of a memorable production. Best of all, it preserves some fantastic performances, most notably from Ian Richardson, Michael Williams and Glenda Jackson, as well as the wonderful, marvellous, fabulous, unsurpassedly cool Freddie Jones (in his film debut) and an idiosyncratic and brilliantly batty central performance from the purring Patrick Magee as De Sade. Strong stuff, but well worth gulping down.

Marat / Sade

F*** Me, It's Freddie!

FMIF as Man In Bell's Office, 'Accident' (1967).

Primitive Passions

'Prehistoric Women' is a brilliantly bonkers film. It starts off as a jungle movie, then there's a very odd sequence in which an execution culminates in some involuntary (but welcome) time travel. As a result, our big white hunter hero (Michael Latimer) finds himself thrown back into a primitive society where busty brunette cave girls worship a rhino and enslave buxom blonde women. Oh, and all the men work in the mines and are impotent.

The narrative doesn't so much twist and turn as career off the nearest cliff at the first possible opportunity. Martine Beswick is the villainess, Kari. She's lithe and lethal, prone to a bit of bump and grind, and looks like she's about seven feet tall. Her way of life may be primitive and savage, but her underwear is exquisitely made, not an uneven seam or loose stitch to be seen. She's deadly, deranged and dirty - exactly what you want from an evil queen.

In addition to the vicious Ms Beswick there's human sacrifice, a couple of dance routines, reincarnation, a workers revolt and a man dressed up in a gorilla skin (he's not pretending to be a gorilla, by the way, it's just his 'look'). I love it. Think 'She', think 'One Million Years BC' (it uses the same costumes), think 'Monty Python' with a little bit of 'West Side Story' and 'The Time Machine' thrown in. This crazy cocktail is classic declining years, chuck every thing in Hammer, and never fails to make me smile whenever I think of it, and I can be a right miserable bastard.

Prehistoric Women