Basil Scores

Basil Kirchin's typically wistful theme for 'Negatives'. Lovely.

Having A Wild Weekend

It seems odd now, but The Dave Clark Five were one of the biggest names in sixties pop, particularly in the US where they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show eighteen thousand times and had sixty number ones or something. The DC5 didn’t really bother with things like musical progression, and they didn’t get all hairy and weird like The Beatles, so they may have seemed safer and more palatable to our predominantly more conservative transatlantic cousins. Their music, a pretty basic shouty, stompy take on early rock and roll is probably one of the least interesting things about them. By far the most interesting is the film they made in 1965, ‘Catch Us If You Can’.

Directed by rising star John Boorman, the film is wacky and fun loving for approximately ten minutes before becoming quite amazingly wistful and downbeat. Dave and the lads (the other four aren’t given names. One has no lines at all) play stuntmen (Dave’s job before he became a pop star) who are working on a successful advertising campaign for meat. The star of the ads is Dinah, the ‘Meat For Go!’ girl. She and Dave share an unspoken mutual attraction and both feel confined by the ruthlessly commercial world they have become a part of, a world run by manipulative men only marginally older than them but much more ‘grown up’: men who no longer have dreams, only goals. Dave and Dinah impulsively run away from the latest advert shoot, stealing an e-type Jag and heading for an island off the Devonshire coast that Dinah is thinking of buying.

What follows is an hour and a bit of Dave and Dinah trying to find freedom, pursued all the way by the unstoppable forces of adult life and the press who, in order to generate maximum publicity,  have been led to believe that Dinah has been kidnapped. This downbeat travelogue is occasionally punctuated by DC5 recordings (the band do not play or sing at any point during the film), and, superbly, incidental music from an uncredited Basil Kirchin.

When they finally arrive at their destination (Burgh Island near Plymouth) the young almost lovers soon realise it’s far from being the safe haven they dreamed of - not only is it readily accessible when the tide is out, but the media circus following the couple has already landed. Dinah, swayed by the flash bulbs and the attention, is immediately sucked back in; a baleful looking Dave and the boys drive off in their Mini Moke to their next existential crisis.

A strange, pensive film, it’s interesting to think what DC5 fans would have thought of it, especially under its US title ‘Having A Wild Weekend’, but then I suppose ‘Having A Weird Weekend’ doesn’t sound as much fun (it does to me).  Dave Clark readily admitted that he was not comfortable as an actor and this clearly shows – in fact, he does the strange thing of making the viewer uncomfortable. Described throughout as ‘saturnine’ he is a dark, glowering, monosyllabic presence who spits out his chewing gum on his own floor, the sort of bloke one tends to steer clear of in real life, whatever that is.

Here’s a lovely medley of the amazing Mr. Kirchin’s incidental music. it has never been officially released, so this is an audio rip from the film. I’m not a technical sort, so don’t expect perfection, just a lo fi sound portrait of Basil’s usual brilliance.

Basil Scores

For all its murder and revenge, ‘The Abominable Dr. Phibes’ is actually quite a tender film, full of poignancy and loss. Basil Kirchin’s incidental music has all his normal quirks and bumps and weird noises, and is, of course, excellent, but his genius fully flowers on the soaring waltz ‘Vulnavia’s Theme’, the music the bad doctor dances to with his beautiful, silent assistant – pretending for a brief, blissful moment that he’s dancing with his dear, dead wife.   

The World Of The Nightmare

David Greene seemed like one of Britain’s most promising directors in 1969. After a decade in TV, Greene had made the transition to films with odd horror thriller 'The Shuttered Room' in 1967, rapidly following up with brilliant espionage romance 'Sebastian' and policier 'The Strange Affair' (see yesterday) in 1968. Although none of his films could be called masterpieces, he definitely had something, a way of taking standard, even clichéd, genre material and giving it a Carnaby Street paint job and a fresh and trendy cast of pretty semi-freaks: a sort of psychedelic-lite approach to film making.

‘I Start Counting’ (1969) was his last British film, and its critical and commercial failure drove him to America, where he stayed working in TV until his death in 2003. The film itself has a mixed reputation, is not available on DVD, and has not been shown on telly for many years, but is hardly the disaster Greene thought at the time.

Wynne (Jenny Agutter) is a 15 year old school girl with a desperate crush on her older foster brother George. Their family is pleasant, but slightly dysfunctional: fatherless, and crammed together in a small flat on a featureless new estate. In her spare time, Wynne goes back to their old, abandoned family home in a nearby wood and happily reverts to early childhood, playing house and swinging aimlesly on the rusty swing.  A series of small incidents lead Wynne to suspect that George might be the perpetrator of violent sex crimes that have taken place in the area and, desperate to show him her maturity, and heedless of the danger, she sets out to investigate.

An odd little film that ultimately appears not to have a point, ‘I Start Counting’ meanders from scene to scene at a sombulant pace, throwing up lots of dead ends and unanswered questions. The script was adapted from a moderately successful novel of the same name, but the nuances and psychological twists and turns of the written word seem to have been lost in the journey from page to screen. It’s a well-made film, but gives very little to the viewer in terms of genuine suspense or insight, although historians and sociologists and mid-century enthusiasts like me may value its portrayal of New Town Britain* in the late 1960’s, and record enthusiasts (like me) enjoy the scenes set in a groovy disc emporium, complete with West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band LP’s and space age plastic bubble listening posts.

The most notable feature of the whole venture is the star, Jenny Agutter, although it’s also the most problematic. Agutter was 17 during filming but, in school uniform, she looks considerably younger than even the 15 year old character she is playing, and the emphasis on her sexual attractiveness in both the film and its attendant publicity material seems unacceptable today.

Island Idol Basil Kirchin provided music for three out of the four films Greene made before he relocated to the states, including 'I Start Counting', and here's the opening sequence with its beautiful, wispy title song, as sung by Lindsey Moore.

* It was filmed in Bracknell in Hertfordshire, like 'I Want What I Want' and 'The Offence' from a few years later. Part Utopia, part work in progress, everything seems to be under construction, a new world in the making. The church that Wynne attends looks more like a space age bachelor pad than a place of worship, and it's slap bang in the middle of a building site. See 'Bracknell' tab at the bottom of this post for more stuff about the place.

I Start Counting

His Name Is P.C Strange

'The Strange Affair' (1968) is a fairly standard police drama, enlivened by director David Greene’s gentle counter cultural flourishes and a great score of noodling guitars and polite free jazz from the incredible Basil Kirchin.

The story concerns new police constable Tom Strange (fresh-faced Michael York, resembling a less pustulent Cristiano Ronaldo) who, in the course of about two weeks, goes from being an optimistic and principled young copper ("I believe in principles of order; the inevitability of justice") to a disgraced criminal with a scabby hole in either cheek after getting embroiled in cover-ups and fit-ups and impaled on the wrong end of a gangster’s electric drill.

The film begins by portraying a lost ‘Blue Lamp’ world of friendly bobbies strolling around bombsite London, chuckling at naughty kids (and, at one point, helping someone to flytip an old mattress!) before ramping up the violence and corruption levels to ‘Sweeney’ proportions. Interestingly, corruption is shown from both angles: police officers that take bribes to turn a blind eye to crime; police officers that bend the law to punish criminals – with the latter seemingly turning out to be the less acceptable of the two evils.

Strange’s love interest is played by young, toothy Susan George, a promiscuous, underage, face-painted hippy called Fred who follows a hairy group called The Hieronymus Bosch, and isn’t satisfied until she’s shared a bath, a bed and a giant inflatable ball (you’ll need to see the clip below) with the idealistic new recruit. To her credit, she sticks with him, even after his impromptu face drilling, but that may be motivated by guilt after finding out that their bath, bed and ball session was secretly filmed by her permissive, immoral Aunt and Uncle, and is now doing the rounds in every porn pit in Soho.

Throw an obsessive Sergeant into the mix (the ridiculously over-expressive Jeremy Kemp) and an ex-bent-copper turned gang lord running a drugs ring out of Battersea Heliport with the aid of a his two grinning, psychotic Mod sons, a sexy air hostess and a Maharishi clone with an army of white clad followers, then you have just enough elements to keep you occupied for ninety minutes, even if you’re never quite on the edge of your seat. Still, a nice spin on a familiar theme and nice music, too, here serving as a slinky soundtrack to the aforementioned ‘big ball’ scene.

The Strange Affair

Basil Scores

Occasionally revolting visuals accompanied by Basil Kirchin's otherworldly muzak. Check out that bass line. I also like the brief transition into the avant garde scrapings of the body building sequence. From 'Primitive London' (1965).

Basil On Film

Basil Kirchin scored relatively few films and even less TV, but his name on the titles always gives me a frisson of pleasure.

The Mutations.

Assignment K.

The Strange Affair.

The Shuttered Room.

Primitive London.

I Start Counting.

Negatives.

Out Of The Unknown: The Indian Spirit Guide.

Freelance.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes.

The Freakmaker

Released in 1974, ‘The Mutations’ turned out to be the last film that Jack Cardiff directed, and the last film that Basil Kirchin scored, so you might well expect it to be a career ending disaster, a monumental flop that derailed the hitherto promising careers of two excellent people. In actual fact, it isn’t bad at all: just a little cheap and tacky. But it’s fun, which goes a long way, and the music is great.

Donald Pleasance plays Professor Nolter, a brilliant biologist and geneticist who is working on creating animal / plant hybrids so that mankind can live by photosynthesis and the world hunger issue can be eradicated, which is fair enough. But why do the annoying (and really old) students in his seminar group keep disappearing, and what exactly is going on at the local Freakshow? That’s right, the local Freakshow. It’s that sort of film.

The Freakshow is the centre of the mystery, and is populated by a cast of real sideshow performers with a variety of deformities (including a man who can pop his eyeballs out of his sockets) and it is their presence that raises issues of exploitation and sensationalism. The majority of their screen time is documentary type footage of their tent show where they introduce themselves and their ‘talents’ in time honoured carnival style, but they also have some dramatic scenes that are deliberately staged to recall Tod Browning’s ‘Freaks’, including appropriating some of the dialogue. These scenes have a real pathos that is not in the script, but written by their haunted faces, awkward movements, and the obvious sadness of their limited lives. In classic horror style they become killers at the end, of course, and give a fairly impressive demonstration of deadly knife throwing.

Pleasance is very understated and utterly convinces as a dedicated, if somewhat sardonic man of science. You could almost believe he might even be the hero of this story until you see him tenderly stroke a large rabbit before shoving it into the open trap of a massive carnivorous plant. No matter how many times I see this, it always makes me laugh.

Scott Anthony is the male lead (well, he shares the honour with screen vacuum Brad Harris) and is perfect casting as a know-it-all student with a shit quip for every occasion. Equally insufferable as sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brezska in Ken Russell’s shrill and embarrassing ‘Savage Messiah’, Anthony’s career ended here, too – I can’t say I’m sorry as he is one of the least likeable male actors I have ever seen, and I’ve watched films with all of the Baldwin brothers (Memo to the Baldwin Brothers: you have made life unnecessarily complicated by all becoming ‘the fat one’.)

The most striking element of the enterprise is Basil Kirchin’s amazing music, including extracts from his first ‘Worlds within Worlds’ LP and additional material written with John Nathan. Surprisingly experimental for a mainstream (horror or otherwise) film, it utilises trumpet, animal roars, hums, clicks, pops, scratchy strings and the sounds of autistic children to provide an avant garde accompaniment to the story, lending a gravitas to the action even when it gets really silly. The combination of music and image probably work best in the opening sequence: the stop-motion footage of flowers and toadstools growing is beautiful on its own terms, but Basil’s music and sound makes it transcendent.

The Mutations

US Title.