Lifeforce

'Lifeforce' is a mostly enjoyable adaptation of Colin Wilson's classic novel 'Space Vampires'. In it, a space shuttle mission is interrupted by the discovery of a huge, seemingly abandoned space craft of alien origin. When the crew board the hulk, they discover hundreds of dead space bats and three naked humanoids in a state of suspended animation. Their genitals are thoughtfully obscured but the sole female (Mathilda May) is very beautiful indeed and has perfect breasts, and we are allowed full sight of these, which is a fatal mistake as they become pretty much all we can see and, when they disappear about forty five minutes in, all we can think about is when we will see them again. Indeed, if I close my eyes I can see them now *closes eyes*

As it goes on, the film becomes less interesting and slightly chaotic, especially in the semi-hysterical finale in which vampirism  has infected London and is driving people to barbaric acts of public unrest, and our uninspiring American hero (Steve Railsback) has to strip off and kiss the sexy naked vampire lady a lot in order purely to get her into a position where he can stab her with a special anti gorgeous bloodsucker sword, killing her, saving the world, but sacrificing himself. Good, the man's an idiot.

There are some excellent actors in the cast (Jerome Willis, Frank Finlay, Patrick Stewart, the superb Aubrey Morris), although Peter Firth is miscast as a tough SAS officer. There was also clearly some money spent on the production, and the special effects are generally very good if rather derivative of both 'Alien' and 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark'. There's even a promising plot line about the vampires having visited Earth on a cyclical basis for centuries but this doesn't really develop into anything interesting. Ultimately, however, all of those positive points are totally irrelevant in the scheme of things: this film is all about the ancient space vampire's stupendously attractive chest and the rest, a mysterious celestial body well worth getting bitten on the neck for.

Thinking about it, perhaps not the best film to come back with. I don't want you thinking I've had some sort of breakdown and am now obsessed with knockers, especially as a couple of next week's posts are about Linda Hayden.

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.

The Commonwealth Institute

Ah, The Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, the trendy, liberal cousin of the British Museum that eventually came a cropper. Whereas the British Museum is full of artefacts stolen from the natives, The Institute showcased items donated by our extended international family, not least the 25 tonnes of South African copper that comprise the distinctive ‘hyperbolic parabaloid’ roof.

Built as a showcase for trade between Commonwealth partners, it was designed by Sir Robert Matthew, who had worked as a London City Council architect from 1946 to 1953 and played a massive part in the Festival of Britain, as well as co-designing the Royal Festival Hall. Started in 1960, it was opened by The Queen in November, 1962. It comprised an administrative wing (it was a real Institute, not just a pretend one), and a large diamond shaped exhibition space with an art gallery and cinema attached, all set in ornamental gardens with walkways and waterways. It’s a lovely building, very 1962.

The exhibition itself was designed by James Gardner, who had created the exhibition inside The Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain, which looked at life on our small planet, and the proportionally enormous part Britain had played to date (sections included The Earth, Outer Space, Sky, Polar, Sea and The Land). The Commonwealth Institute’s exhibition was similarly comprehensive, with stuff from all the formerly pink bits on the map, all willingly given in the spirit of the new age of equality of peoples and a spirit of co-operation.

In 2000, the ownership of The Institute shifted from the Foreign Office to a Trust, the architectural equivalent of a football manager receiving a vote of confidence from the Chairman. It closed two years later and has remained closed ever since. Here it is in its rather sad, vacated state.

In 1969, the ITV kids show ‘The Tyrant King’ (which was basically a tourists guide to London and the suburbs), filmed several key scenes at The Institute, and the following screenshots give a flavour as to what it looked like with stuff in it. I love the central hub, although it is very frustrating that everyone in the programme who passes the centre looks down, and I have no idea what they are looking at.

The Hub

Not part of the permanent exhibition

The late Phillip Madoc checks out some ethnic art 

Some sort of African exhibit

Another sort of African exhibit

How much did Modernists love stair cases?

The building is due to reopen in 2014 as the new home of the Design Museum, although the interior has, apparently, been significantly remodelled. I wonder if there will be a place for a model of a Hong Kong junk, or a set of African drums? I hope so, but I very much doubt it (the majority of the exhibits were returned to their places of origin).

Speaking of Design, here’s the flag of the Commonwealth, a classic of simplicity and good taste, although I'm not sure it’s a coincidence that the beneficent golden glow encircling the earth has a gap where Russia and China are.    

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.

The Sin In Its Shadows

Mondo films are, in essence, exploitation documentaries, i.e. they focus on the seamier, sleazier, bloody side of life and, although they are often as staged as carefully as traditional narrative films, they present it all in the name of truth, disdainfully holding a mirror up to this awful world whilst simultaneously zooming in on a load of breasts.

‘London In The Raw’ shows us various sides of our fantastic / terrible capital that the tourists don’t normally see (unless they’re sex tourists or, perhaps, sexy tourists). Much of it is fairly innocuous, however, although occasionally not for the squeamish (a hair transplant is shown in all its gory glory, for instance), but more or less everything comes with a side order of dimpled and goose-bumped female flesh: a tawdry cavalcade of prostitutes, clip joint girls and strippers, many of whom have enormous hair. Or do they? Given how obviously faked many of the sequences are, they could just be wearing wigs. The overall effect reminds me of a tourist information film directed by Benny Hill.

Occasionally monotonous, but generally very watchable, ‘London In The Raw’ was the second in a trilogy of London Mondo films made by sleaze meister (but generally nice guy) Arnold Louis Miller. The first ‘West End Jungle’ focused on prostitution; the third, ‘Primitive London’ will be under discussion tomorrow.           

Interesting Postcards

Royal Coachmen,
The Royal Mews,
Buckingham Palace,
London.

The bloke second from the right seems to have crapped out in terms of gold braid. He can, however, go down the shops in his uniform without kids chucking stones at him.

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.    

Interesting Postcards

Sunset On The River Thames
Published by John Hinde Ltd.
6 Rupert Street, London W.1
Photo: E. Ludwig

Psychedelic night falls in the most wonderful and annoying city on Earth, that London.

Less Than Animals

In 1892, a dozen construction workers digging out the London Underground were cut off from the surface by an accident. Lacking the funds or the inclination to rescue them, the powers that be simply left them to their fate, little realising that they would survive and, due to a propitious ratio of female workers, thrive, running to several generations. Inbreeding took its toll, of course, as did the need to cannibalise each other for food. By 1972, there were only two savage, degraded creatures left and then, when his mate died, a sole male remained, a hairy, dirty, sore ridden monster who treated the outside world and the people in it as a Takeaway and could only gasp three human words: 'Mind The Doors'.

Based on a true story (no, not really), 'Death Line' (re-titled as 'Raw Meat' in the US) is actually very good. It suffers from an uneven tone, and several underground scenes where its too dark to see what's happening, but it has plenty to recommend it: a hilariously sarcastic turn from Donald Pleasance, some gory killings, bags of pathos, James Cossins as an OBE who frequents strip clubs, location shooting at Holborn and Aldwych stations, an extremely original premise and great, strange music from Wil Malone. 

Little seen at the time of release due to a poor distribution deal, this little gem very occasionally shows up on late night telly but, happily, was finally released on UK DVD in 2006. My thanks to The Happiness Patrol for the gen.

Death Line