Arthur Clears The Air

We all take smokeless fuel for granted now but, when it was introduced in the late fifties, it was like the launch of the i-phone 5 or something.

In 1952, approximately 12,000 Londoners had died as a result of ‘The Great Smog’, a pollution pea souper that brought the capitol to a standstill. The Clean Air Act of 1956 followed, decreeing a vast number of ‘smoke control’ areas, where it was illegal to burn coal. Conversion grants were made available to those who wished to install gas or electric heating, and a mind numbing variety of exotically named ‘clean’ fuels were marketed to a largely confused public.

‘Arthur Clears The Air’ is a short film which attempts to make it all a bit clearer but, as this is the last hurrah of the ‘I say, old chap’ era, does so in a completely incomprehensible way, with housewives dreaming of teddy bears coming to life, eerie energy themed masked balls and anamorphic representations of fuel (the personification of Welsh Nuts is a missed opportunity, by the way). The names of the fuels are so perfectly 1961 that you simply couldn’t make them up: Phurnacite, Seabrite, Gloco, Cleanglo...

It’s a sweet little film, but I was none the wiser at the end of it. Mind you, I don’t really ever burn coal, only tyres.

The Unbelievable Becomes True

‘The Day The Earth Caught Fire’ is an apocalyptic sci fi classic from 1961. In it, US and Soviet nuclear testing has knocked the Earth out of orbit, and the planet is now moving closer and closer to the sun. The temperature has become unbearable, and food and water shortages have led to rationing, martial law and nihilistic trad jazz parties. The only way of stopping our inexorable journey towards immolation is to detonate yet more bombs and hope that the shock waves might move us somewhere else. At the end of the film, as the bombs go off, two headlines are prepared ‘Earth Saved’ and ‘Earth Doomed’, but we are not informed as to which is going to print*.

An excellent, methodical, believable film, ‘The Day The Earth Caught Fire’ is hugely dramatic and brilliantly executed, with some fantastic miniature work and a clever tinting effect which bookends the narrative, turning everything orange to emphasise the unbearable heat. It has a good cast, too, angry Edward Judd as a loose cannon newspaperman, Leo McKern as his crusty but avuncular Boss, and comely Janet Munro as Judd’s love interest. This is a sultry film in more ways than one, incidentally, with a frank ‘let’s do it, it’s the end of the world’ approach to sex and some semi-nudity from both Munro and Judd. Happily, McKern keeps his vest on.

The film is also notable for an early appearance from Sir Michael Caine, here seen directing traffic. We can't really see his face, but his voice is absolutely unmistakeable. I like Mike, I like Mike a lot.  

Intelligent, logical, frightening, this slice of Val Guest directed genius receives my highest recommendation. In fact, if I had three thumbs I’d stick them all up.

*The American distributors asked for the sound of bells to be superimposed over the end scenes, presumably to indicate that the world was saved, but this doesn’t spoil the ambiguity at all – had they never heard of a death knell?

The Day The Earth Caught Fire

Travelator

The London Underground is one of the greatest engineering achievements in British history. If, like me, you sometimes take it for granted, then lovely little films like 'The Travelators' (1961) help remind you of the scale and sheer amount of graft that go into its maintenance and constant updating, let alone the original construction.

The film details the building of two travelators at the Bank station. These were the first in Europe, and a huge shaft had to be sunk under the road in one of the busiest parts of London. Scale models were used extensively in the planning and building process. I like scale models very much. If I had to write an episode of 'The Twilight Zone' it would be about a lonely modelling enthusiast who finds a way to live in a scale model, and ends up enjoying it much more than life in the big world. 

Work started on the Bank site in August, 1957, and was completed three years later. The travelators were opened in September, 1960 by the Lord Mayor of London, who was also the first person to officially travelate. After the dignitaries had their photograph taken, the 'moving pavements' were opened up to the general public, who seemed to really enjoy the innovation. People were easily pleased in the olden days, weren't they? I'm not knocking it, it's a good way to be. 

Note misspelling of 'travelator'

Look how clean it all is!

Look how happy they all are!

In case you were pondering the difference between a travelator and an escalator, by the way, it's the absence of steps.

Carry On Creepy

I have an aversion to farce. I don’t like people running around and hiding in cupboards; I don’t like mugging and pulling faces; I don’t like plots that hang on things that make no sense and could be immediately resolved if everyone just stopped running around, hiding in cupboards, mugging and pulling faces and just calmed the fuck down for a nano-second. That said, I like ‘What A Carve Up!’ and that’s pretty much what happens all the way through it.

The idea is extremely straightforward, really, a disparate band of British character actors gather at a creepy old mansion for the reading of a will and, while there, they start getting knocked off one by one. It’s fairly predictable, and the stars are Carry On stalwarts Sid James and Kenneth Connor, which makes for a distinctly down to earth affair, although they are ably supported by horror genii Donald Pleasence and Michael Gough and by the rather tasty Shirley Eaton.

Kenneth Connor fascinates me. His hair is ridiculously curly but also very delicate: it’s like a gossamer afro, an aurora of frizz. He's such an unlikely lead, comedy or not, and he could only really have been a film star in England, maybe Italy. I always liked it in ‘Carry On’ films when he’d sing: the big, warm, expressive voice coming out of his little, frigid, awkward body.

Sid James is a crumpled legend, and it’s interesting that here he plays Connor’s friend and ‘legal advisor’ as a close companion to the Sidney Balmoral James character who spent his life advising (and ripping off) Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock (Hancock had just sacked James as he was concerned that they had become a double act). His character is called 'Sid', of course: it's difficult to think of him as anything else, really, although I did once see him in a film playing an Italian, but can't remember any other details.    

Okay-ish, not bad, easy to watch (just as well given the amount of times it’s been shown on telly), I sort of like it, certainly don’t dislike it. I wouldn’t write a book about it, though, no matter how post modern I was feeling.   

What A Carve Up!

Panic On The Streets Of London

Given its long time prominence as a major world city, it is perhaps surprising to realise that London has been menaced by Giant Apes only twice in its near two thousand year history, as well as slightly chilling to think what could have happened - and might very well happen again...

In 1961, Konga, a chimpanzee from the Congo transformed into a 300 foot tall killer ape by bad science, terrorised the streets of the capitol, eventually ending up at Westminster, as if he were on his way to deliver a petition bearing ten thousand signatures asking that he not be massacred by a platoon of machine gun and mortar wielding soldiers.

Unlike the astronaut / alien hybrid attack on Westminster Abbey in 1953 (a mere two months after the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in the same building) there is, unfortunately, no live documentary footage of Konga's rampage, but the incident did immediately inspire a film version which contains my favourite line in any language from any time: ‘there's a huge monster gorilla that's constantly growing to outlandish proportions loose in the streets!’ As in real life, the filmic response to this poetic statement was, sadly, 'KILL IT!' and poor, sweet Konga was shot to bits by unsympathetic squaddies. Poignantly, Konga reverted to his original form on death: a rather sad little chimp - with five hundred holes in its tattered carcass.

Less than twenty years later, the city once again trembled at the mercies of a prodigious primate, this time of the female gender. The curvaceous Queen Kong was the unofficial ruler of the island of Lazanga until she was snatched away by a British expedition and brought back to London as a tourist attraction, never a good idea. 

Understandably pretty miffed, Her Majesty the Monkey escaped her captivity and, of course, made her way to the Houses of Parliament where, happily, the situation was resolved without fatalities because of her love for a squat, unfunny ape man hybrid,  although an Action Man helicopter was badly damaged. Queen Kong returned to Lazonga by barge and London breathed a sigh of relief, shrugged its shoulders and went back to thinking itself cooler and far more important than the rest of the UK.

Curiously, the city authorities continue to be remarkably complacent about the dangers of another giant ape attack. In the thirty five years since Queen Kong’s short reign of terror, the Thames Flood Barrier has been completed and stringent anti-terrorism measures introduced, yet London remains frighteningly vulnerable to the savage fury of a massive runaway killer monkey. It's bananas.    

Milton!

Milton Reid provides security to Christopher Lee and Roger Delgado in Hammer's 1961 Orientsploitation film 'Terror Of The Tongs'.

Behind You!

As you might have guessed, I watch a massive amount of classic horror films. They entertain me, they fascinate me, they sustain me...but they very rarely scare me. 'The Innocents', however, terrifies me.

Everything about the film is oppressive and doom laden: the beautiful photography, the superb sound, great performances, fantastic sets, brilliant script, all perfectly assembled to be ever so slightly odd, ominous and imperfect to keep you off-balance throughout, quietly dreading what comes next. I've always found ghosts scarier than monsters, kids scarier than adults, Peter Wyngarde scarier than almost anybody, so 'The Innocents' ticks virtually every box on the creepy checklist for me.

In short, it's a masterpiece and,  rather than dissect what happens or blather on and give it all away, I urge the uninitiated to see it as soon as you possibly can - but for Christ's sake don't watch it alone, or in a darkened room where faces can suddenly appear at the window from outside. Really. We screamed like little girls.