F*** Me, It's Freddie!

FMIF as Detective Superintendent Clegg in a 1977 episode of testosterone and bullshit fuelled Patrick Mower vehicle 'Target'. His character is less than impressed to find out that Hackett (Mower) has been using his abnormally flared nostrils to sniff around Clegg's attractive daughter (Pamela Stephenson) and decides to take action. 

Freddie being Freddie, however, he manages to fit in a cup of tea before nailing Hackett's balls to the station wall.

Not For The Squeamish

'The Squeeze' has a bit of a reputation as an under-appreciated classic but, for me, although it has its moments and a great cast, it simply isn't dynamic or consistent enough to be anything other than an interesting also ran. The superb Stacy Keach plays Jim Naboth, a Scotland Yard detective turned private investigator turned skid row alcoholic. When his ex-wife is kidnapped as a prelude to a million pound security van heist, Naboth gets dragged back into the game, ultimately overcoming his problems temporarily to prove more than a match for his ruthless opponents.

As well as Mr. Keach, who maintains a good but rather too generic English accent throughout, we get Edward Fox, Stephen Boyd, Alan Ford, Roy Marsden, Carol White and, playing a real bastard, Island favourite David Hemmings. Freddie Starr plays Naboth's best mate in a stilted and uncomfortable performance that was inexplicably praised at the time, perhaps simply because Freddie confounded expectations and didn't do it dressed as Hitler.    

It's an interesting story, sleazy and violent, but it has far too many characters and is too fond of going off at tangents, which is fine if you are Raymond Chandler, but just seems untidy here. The film is building nicely to a climax, for example, when for no particular reason, it takes a ten minute diversion for a scene set in a massage parlour which is amusing, but completely diffuses the tension and derails the narrative. Director Michael Apted seems too keen to give it a documentary feel, so there are very few 'compositions' - it's all filmed on the hoof, and seems slightly scruffy and muddled, as if the action is always at the corner of the screen.

Somewhere in 'The Squeeze' there is a first rate crime film waiting to get out, or, at least, a bloody good episode of 'The Sweeney', but it's thirty years too late to do it now. Don't be put off by that, though, it's still worth watching, if only for some of the trousers.  

The Squeeze

Chilling Story

Highly controversial on its release for being 'too soon'. 'The Black Panther' is an unadorned account of the true life and crimes of Donald Neilson, the robber, kidnapper and killer who was Britain's public enemy number one in the mid-seventies. A very capable man in some respects, Neilson was also a psychopath, and his long string of crimes reflect his love of violence and obsession with military planning and living in the woods like a proto-Rambo.

The film is deadpan, matter of fact - but the crimes themselves are bloody and cruel and, for all their advance planning, seem chaotic and impulsive. His most infamous deed, the kidnapping and eventual murder of seventeen year old heiress Lesley Whittle, is by necessity at the heart of the drama, but the real life complexity of the case is difficult to portray, and the film loses a little focus as it wades through the comedy of errors, coincidences and missed opportunities that led to her death (the high ranking detective in charge was subsequently reduced in rank to uniformed police constable). 

Neilson was finally arrested after vaingloriously trying to hijack a police car. There was a struggle, and the coppers and members of the public kicked the shit out of him as a crowd stood by watching and eating chips.  

Neilson served his life sentence, and died in Norwich prison in 2011.

The Black Panther

 

Interesting Postcards

Mildmay Convalescent Home,

Worthing,

Sussex. 

Mildmay may not look much fun to us, but then we're not recovering from a serious operation (my apologies if you are, indeed, recovering from a serious operation and still think it looks rubbish). In its defence, on the 24th June, 1977, June wrote to her family in Jersey stating that Mildmay is 'a most wonderful place' and she was actually there so she'd know, I suppose, unless, of course, the staff were burning her with hot knitting needles and forcing her to write nice things, the animals.

Modernist Public Houses Of The Realm

Milton!

'Ooops, wrong arm. Keep filming, I'll sort it...' 

'That's better'

Milton Reid as he appears in no budget Bond rip off No. 1 Of The Secret Service' (1977). Milton plays a bad ass with an earring and an eye patch and a bare chest, although later he dons his familiar brown jerkin, trousers and cowboy boots.

I wonder if he charged for supplying his own costume, or whether he put the saving forward as a reason to employ him?

Come Back, Mrs. Noah

How can one describe 'Come Back, Mrs. Noah', a 1977 sitcom written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft ('Dad's Army', 'Hi De Hi', 'Allo fucking 'Allo) about an annoying old biddy (Molly Sugden) who accidentally ends up in orbit when her fat arse presses the launch button on an experimental rocket?

How about 'it's shit'? 

A much, much worse than it sounds cross between 'Space 1999' and 'It Ain't 'alf Hot, Mum', it's set in a 2050 where Britain is once again the dominant world power (yeah, right) and starts off by not being funny in the slightest before quickly becoming so pathetic that even the writers tire of the show and, realising there isn't going to be a second series, end it by simply flinging the rocket containing the ageing cast even further out into the universe, a sort of cosmic 'fuck you' to a load of shitty, shit smeared space junk. Good riddance.    

Milton!

Big old, good old Milton Reid as yet another henchman in Stanley Long's rather pointless 'Adventures Of A Private Eye'. Here, he is unconvincingly neutralised by a knee in the bollocks. Unconvincingly? Everyone knows Milton had balls of steel. 

He's wearing the costume he seemingly wears in all his post 1976 appearances: a strange, round neck big buttoned blouson affair paired with matching brown trousers tucked into cowboy boots. In this film he supplements the basics with a pair of shades and a red carnation.

He doesn't have any lines as such, but he and large sidekick Jon Robinson are an impressively heavy set of heavies, although not much good in a chase. 

Valerie Leon, Nose Holder

Valerie Leon is the link between several venerable British entertainment institutions, including Hammer films, the Carry On series, the James Bond franchise and dear old Morecambe and Wise.

Here she is in part of their 1977 Xmas special, a Cyrano De Bergerac skit also featuring Penelope Keith and Francis Matthews. Val has little to do apart from to show a bit of cleavage and hold Eric's false nose, but she seems to be enjoying herself.