F*** Me, It's Freddie!

FMIF as Philip Proudfoot in 'Otley' (1968).

We've actually done this film before, but it is well worth revisiting, especially with facial expressions this good. Freddie plays what is called in olden days parlance 'a flaming homosexual', i.e. he isn't scared of what you think of his sexuality. He's also quite a dandy, and at the centre of the intrigue, like a camp mod spider. It's a broad performance, but it works - after all, as you can see from the second screen shot, Freddie has his tongue firmly in its cheek.

Otley

'Otley' is about fifteen minutes too long, but it's a fun film about the rather shabby world of espionage that features a stellar cast of British character actors, led by the great Tom Courtenay as Gerald Arthur Otley, a shiftless moocher and compulsive pincher of ornaments who, by sheer idiocy, finds himself at the centre of a web of slightly incomprehensible intrigue.

A nice mix of comedy and drama, 'Otley' is very sixties (never a problem in my book - or on my blog, anyway), but gives us a glimpse of the 'real' London behind the swing: the markets and bedsits, cafes, pubs and tube stations, people in polo necks and socks that need darning. The grooviest person in it is Freddie Jones, who is so sharply dressed it makes Beau Brummel look like Worzel Gummidge.     

Tom Courtenay is excellent, as always. His light Yorkshire accent, bony face and slightly camp delivery are miles away from the usual leading man, and he's not afraid to appear cowardly and pathetic, which is probably why he never made it big in action films. He's also very funny and, at times, the self-obsessed, duplicitous Otley is reminiscent of a (slightly) more grown up Billy Liar, which makes you wonder sometimes if all the running around and gun play is simply part of some elaborate, extended fantasy. 

The rest of the cast is a veritable who’s who of contemporary character actors, including James Villiers, Alan Badel, Leonard Rossiter, James Cossins, Ronald Lacey, Frank Middlemass, Geoffrey Bayldon and, of course, our beloved Freddie Jones. The last two on the list are still with us (aged 91 and 87, respectively) and, I hope, will remain so for a good few years to come. Romy Schneider makes an attractive female lead, but then she always did, particularly when sporting thigh length white pvc go go boots as she does here.  

Light hearted and full of twists, it’s the sort of film that should be on TV right now but, for whatever reason, never is.  Bloody nowadays TV.

Baby Love

'Baby Love' centres around the familiar plot device of a stranger who enters a supposedly perfect household and shags (or is shagged by) everyone, subsequently exposing how damn dysfunctional they all are behind the smiles and soft focus. 



Lucy is a fifteen year old strumpet in training who is suddenly orphaned when her sluttish mother (Diana Dors) kills herself. Mum's last wish was that Lucy go to live with Keith Barron, one of her few old flames to have actually done well for himself. Lucy's arrival throws the house into turmoil, not least because she has been trained to exploit her sexuality at every opportunity, and spends most of her time flirting, walking around in her bra and letting seedy strangers feel her up at the pictures. After a while, however, Lucy begins to long to be part of the family, only to find that the family rather like her as she is - a sex object that they can project their hetero and homo sexual fantasies onto.

'Baby Love' simply wouldn't get made today, if only for the fact that frequently nude star Linda Hayden was only fifteen years old at the time of filming. This role propelled her into a career in which she almost exclusively played, for want of a better term,  jailbait. In the various retrospective interviews I've seen with her she seems remarkably well-adjusted and good humoured about her ten years as a baby faced slut but, as she went out with Robin Askwith for a number of years, her critical faculties may be slightly impaired.

Some interesting guest stars in this, by the way - the aforementioned Diana Dors, right on the cusp of turning from pneumatic blonde bombshell to frowsy Earth Mother, and, in a small but sleazy role, dirty old Dick Emery.

The ghost of Diana Dors.



'Ooh, you are awful', etc.

W Is For Wyngarde

Here’s a familiar face in a 1968 episode of ‘The Champions’, yes, well spotted, it’s Peter Wyngarde! Our Peter plays a roguish villain called Hallam and takes the opportunity to run the Wyngarde gamut: he prowls, he purrs, he dresses up, he has a comedy fight and pulls some faces. I usually find ‘The Champions’ a bit dull, but Peter - as ever- makes this episode a joy.

Nobody Knows What He Does

I don’t know exactly what it is about ‘Sebastian’, but I really, really like it. Ostensibly a somewhat frothy mix of Swinging London tropes and Cold War cliché, there’s an element of truth in its somewhat patchy narrative that I find irresistible. It also has really good music, mainly by the amazing American composer Jerry Goldsmith, with some electronics from Tristram Cary.

Dirk Bogarde stars as Sebastian, a supercilious academic who just happens to be the Government’s top code breaker, presiding over an all-female staff in some anonymous London skyscraper. These days I suppose he’d have Asperger’s or something but, in 1968, he’s simply portrayed as a spiky super genius with commitment issues, some odd bod habits and horrible wallpaper that he hasn’t even noticed.

Into his drab and monomaniacal life drops Susannah York, a dizzy dolly with a penchant for direct action and tiny dresses. When he realises she can make a dozen words out of ‘thorough’ without blinking, he immediately adds her to his pool of clever ladies (women are better are cracking codes, apparently), but his interest in her is always more than professional, which is not particularly surprising as she is absolutely adorable.  Things become complicated when an old flame is forced to sell him out to the Enemy, and things get really weird when the other side feed him LSD and try to get him to jump off a roof on the pretext that he can fly*.

It’s an all over the place sort of thing, half based on the true life exploits of Leo Marks (look him up – fascinating fellow), half seemingly made up on the spot. It struggles to decide what it's really about, and giddily (and endearingly) veers between genres and styles and changes tone from scene to scene. But everyone in it is good, and Bogarde and York make a lovely couple, however unlikely the pairing may initially seem. 

As you may recall, Bogarde grew to despise the ‘triviality’ of his early films so, after the mid-sixties, went all out to star in as many ‘masterpieces’ as possible, with often quite tedious results. ‘Sebastian’ is slap bang in the middle, a frivolous masterpiece, if you will**. I love it, not just because the marvellous Michael Powell had a hand in it, but also because, every time I watch it, frothy and a bit giddy or not, I just really ENJOY it.
  

* This is the only film in which Dirk Bogarde trips his tits off on acid although, in ‘The Mind Benders’, he does trip his tits off in a flotation tank.

** Bogarde described the film as a 'non event', one of many things he and I differ on.

Sebastian

Obviously

When you think about it, 'Dracula Has Risen From The Grave' could have been the name of every Hammer Dracula film, as every Hammer Dracula film relies absolutely on Dracula doing just that. Oh, and being destroyed at the end. Well, semi-destroyed, waiting to rise from the grave again. That said, we would have missed such splendid titles as ‘Taste The Blood Of Dracula’ and ‘The Satanic Rites Of Dracula’, so, overall, I’m happy.

That pointless digression leads us to the actual ‘Dracula Has Risen From The Grave’, a singularly snappy and rather cool offering from 1968. Apart from a bit of a sag in the middle, it fairly whips along, chucking in some gruesome murders, a bit of vampiric folklore, plenty of bosoms (courtesy of Barbara Ewing and Veronica Carlson) and a bloody ending in which the Prince of Darkness ends up impaled on a huge golden cross.

One of my favourite Hammer Dracula films, it’s full of energy, and, in using the Bray Studio ‘city’ set, takes the Count into an urban setting, albeit a nice chocolate box-y one. Christopher Lee has a few lines, but spends most of his time smirking, as if he can’t quite get over how naughty he is. He reminds me of my ten year old nephew, who is also a bit of a twat.

Slaying duties eventually fall to gawky Barry Andrews (the hapless Ralph from ‘Blood On Satan’s Claw), although he is hampered by the fact that, as an atheist, he is unable to say the prayers required to seal the deal. In the end, Dracula’s unwilling and increasingly disgusted acolyte, a Priest, breaks the spell long enough to say the necessary incantations and send the bloodthirsty bewigged bastard to Hell. Again. For a bit, at least.

Dracula Has Risen From The Grave

Witchfinder Pastoral

Over the years, many people have noted that ‘Witchfinder General’ resembles a good old fashioned Western in its narrative structure and themes, and this argument is greatly enhanced by its extensive use of Britain’s wide open spaces as locations although, given that most of the shoot took place in Suffolk and Norfolk, it might be more appropriate to call it an ‘Eastern’.

It’s also a road movie, or rather a dirt track movie, as there are no motorways here, just bridleways and open country. It traverses an awful lot of ground for a film set in the seventeenth century, and it’s mostly done at breakneck speed, on horseback.

The use of Suffolk and Norfolk is a masterstroke, as these counties pastoral landscapes and pretty, unspoiled villages perfectly evoke the pre-industrial period. There’s also something about the empty, flat landscapes that suits the film perfectly – the isolation of people living in a rural setting where villages are miles apart and towns few and far between. It is perfectly redolent of an England with a population of under five million (it’s just under fifty five million today), a place where many people lived their whole lives in the same, isolated place, completely disconnected from the rest of the county, the country, the world. Ironically, of course, this insular way of life perfectly suited predators like Matthew Hopkins in that it allowed him to do awful things in relative safety, i.e. word was slow to spread and the authorities, caught up in the Civil War, weren’t particularly interested in his methods, only the results.Why am I thinking about Jimmy Savile again?

There are two common misconceptions about the end of Matthew Hopkins career as a Witchfinder. The first is that, eventually, he was put to death for, funnily enough, witchcraft; the second is that he escaped censure for his crimes and had a long and happy retirement. Both are incorrect: despite a year long reign of terror and the deaths of almost 300 women, Hopkins did escape prosecution, and he did retire (to Manningtree in Essex) but he died almost immediately afterwards. Astonishingly, he was only 27 years old.  

Island Of The Burning Damned

‘Night Of The Big Heat’ was known as ‘Island Of The Burning Damned’ in the USA, a ridiculously hyperbolic title for what is, unfortunately, a terribly tedious film.

Set on the remote Orkney Isle of Fara (actually uninhabited since the sixties), the premise is quite intriguing: the island is experiencing an incredible heat wave which has put all the phones out of order, killed all the sheep and left all the men with enormous sweat patches. That sort of weather is unusual enough for Scotland, of course, but it’s absolutely unheard of in November.

Stupefied from the heat, the villagers mainly gather around the local pub and bicker with each other. Peter Cushing is there, inexplicably wearing a jacket that looks like it’s just had a bucket of water thrown over (take it off, Peter, just take it off). Visiting rude twat scientist Christopher Lee is up to something strange, but is too rude and twattish to let the islanders in on it. The pub landlord (Patrick Allen, always good value) is also a writer, and his life is complicated by the arrival of his ex-lover, who is posing as his secretary and spends most of her time exposing parts of herself to him. As if it wasn’t bloody hot enough. It doesn't sound a lot on paper, but I had high hopes for it.

From here on in, however, the film very, very, very slowly degenerates into something extremely dull indeed. There are half a dozen deaths and, ultimately, a dynamite attack on an extraterrestial race who resemble rocks with lights in them but it’s all done at such a draggy pace that even the supposedly exciting climax is like watching the proverbial pigment grow parched. In the end,  it starts to rain and the hot rocks, having travelled thousands of light years to take over our world, are killed by it. Yes, that’s right, aliens who can be killed by rain decided to start their invasion of Earth in Scotland. Idiots.

From the same crazy fools who brought us the magnificently titled ‘Island of Terror’, ‘Night of The Big Heat’ has no particular real reason to be so dull, it just is. Perhaps the temperature got to them all.

Some notes on Patrick Allen:

Allen is a proper old school actor. He’s not particularly good at the dramatic stuff, but he has a wonderful, sonorous voice and a very expressive physiognomy. His straight face is so straight it’s almost funny, which is why he keeps it mobile. I never believe that he believes it, he's just glad to be there. In this film, there’s a scene where he’s driving along and he just seems full of childlike joy, as if he can’t quite believe that someone is paying him to kiss girls and attack aliens and pretend to be driving along. There’s no method for Patrick, his motivation is that it’s his job, and it's fun. He specialises in capable, rough hewn types who ladies like and men respect, the sort of man who can tie knots, rig up a generator, make a boat out of a fallen tree and smoke a hundred cigarettes and kill a dozen Germans before breakfast, all whilst wearing extremely tight trousers. I miss him.