House On Straw Hill

‘House On Straw Hill’ has either an illustrious history or a terrible reputation, depending on how you look at these things. It was the only British film on the 1984 list of banned video nasties, mainly because of its fairly explicit mix of sex (some consensual, some not) and violence (some consensual, some not). Made in 1975, it exists in any number of different versions, and under several different titles, although a more or less definitive version has recently been released on Digital Versatile Disc.

The always odd Udo Keir plays Paul Martin, a successful author who rents a remote cottage in Essex in order to work on his second book.  He has an on-off relationship with porn star Fiona Richmond, i.e. he gets on, then off, then sends her packing. Their ‘love’ scenes have a rough and ready quality that makes them seem more explicit than they really are, but then some of that might be due to him putting on latex gloves every time they get it on.  

Paul hires a secretary over the phone to help type up his masterpiece and is delighted when she turns out to be Linda Hayden, who brings her usual blend of jailbait precocity to the role, and forgets to bring a bra. Linda is a compulsive masturbator and, when she is caught fiddling with herself in a field by a couple of bicycle riding 'youths' (including an already balding Karl ‘Brush Strokes’ Howman), an unpleasant rape scene (is there any other type?) ensues.  This young woman is not quite the pushover she seems, however, as the yokels who assault her find out to their cost.

The last half hour explodes in a frenzy of rough sex and sharp knives and a soap opera plot twist which makes enough sense to validate all the huffing, puffing and intimate touching  that has gone before. Unlike the BBFC, I wouldn’t describe the film as nasty, rather as an adult psychodrama that occasionally gets a little too adult for comfort: if Ingmar Bergman had made it, it would have been hailed as a masterpiece (it’s worth remembering that Bergman’s film ‘The Virgin Spring’ was the inspiration for ‘Last House on The Left’). Probably.

I enjoyed the rural setting (it was filmed near Chelmsford, the furthest extent of 'my' Essex), and the scene where Keir drives a brakeless Morris Minor into a pond. I liked Linda Hayden, who always does an excellent sexy psycho, and I was intrigued by Fiona Richmond’s lissom body and bricklayer’s face. Most of all I enjoyed hearing extracts from the book Paul is working on, which sounds like it’s going to be truly fucking awful.

Music lovers will be pleased to hear that the film has a rather good soundtrack, but you needn't take my word for it as my friend and colleague Fearlono has made a custom soundtrack for it that you can download at his smashing website Cottage of Electric Hell. One thing: you will need to pretend to be an adult to gain entry, as there are grown up themes and some sexual swear words.  

Best Tasted Cold?

'Revenge' is pretty tough going. It all takes place in the aftermath of that most heinous of crimes, the abduction, rape and murder of a child and, not surprisingly, this hangs over the film like a dark pall of cloying, choking black smoke.

When the chief suspect is released without charge, the bereaved family take the law into their own hands - they kidnap the man, beat him up, and tie him to a chair in a pub cellar. They haven't the nerve to kill him, however, so, as time passes, the insidious presence of the man begins to pull the family apart, especially when he is able to start sowing seeds of doubt about his guilt...

Beefy James Booth plays the father, Joan Collins the new stepmother who has a simmering, dangerous relationship with her grown up stepson. The most difficult part is that of the suspected molester / murderer, played here with sleazy, wheedling aplomb by Kenneth Griffith. Griffith, with his milk bottle specs, bad teeth and flasher mac, is a loathsome creature, a stereotypical kiddie fiddler - if you can be certain that he is the murderer, that is - if not, he could just be another sad, lonely misfit in ill-fitting, badly made 70's clothes.

A film that raises some interesting questions, 'Revenge' is downbeat and deadly serious. The world it portrays reminds me of 'The Offence', a shadowy, terrifying place where justice and injustice are hard to tell apart, where pleasures are warm beer, sixty Embassy Number One's a day and Joan Collins in her bra and pants, where violence is contagious, and the overwhelming desire to smash something or someone into atoms is both a symptom of the disease and the cure.

Produced by 'Carry On' mogul Peter Rogers, perhaps this grim offering was (along with 'Assault') his way of getting as far away as possible from the franchise that paid his mortgage. If it was, it worked: unless you have a very odd sense of humour, you'd have to look forever with an electron microscope to locate a thin smile here, let alone a titter or a hyuk yuk yuk.

Revenge

No Cage Can Hold His Lust

Oliver Reed was a pretty good actor before he decided being a clown was an easier option. His best performances have a sort of brutal sensitivity: he's vulnerable, and liable to smash your face in if you mention it. In 'Sitting Target' he takes this persona to the very edge.

Harry Lomart is a professional criminal who can endure any hardship inside as long as he has the backing of his much loved wife outside. When she tells him that she's leaving him, he breaks out of prison to kill her, her lover, and anyone else who gets in his way. At the end of his rampage, he simply lays down to die besides the body of the woman he loves, all passion spent, all point gone.

It's a pretty hard hitting film, and Reed is brilliant in it, a force of nature, a brute with a broken heart. Lomart is no cold, ruthless Jack Carter, he's full of rage and barely in control. That said, the net result is more or less the same. Revenge, eh?

Sitting Target

Revenger's Tragedy

'Get Carter' is positively Jacobean in its relentless drive towards tragedy, death, destruction: it's one of the grimmest and most nihilistic films ever made. The desire for revenge is, of course, a basic human tenet, although few people ever seriously act upon it, but Jack Carter is not most people: he's a dead eyed killer, a relentless destroyer who goes back to his native North East to avenge his brother's death, not out of love and grief, not even out of pride, but because it's what he does, the only thing approaching an emotional response he has. He later experiences a sense of shame at the life he is involved in, and the damage it causes, but it only hardens his resolve to wipe out those he feels responsible. 

It's a great film, but don't expect to feel good as you're watching it. Everything about it is depressing, from the sheer pointless brutality of Carter's quest to the dirty new concrete and nicotine coloured plaster of the mise en scene. I couldn't say it was a favourite film, but it's certainly one I think about quite a lot.  

Get Carter

The Birth of A Man

Is 'Straw Dogs' a British film? Well, it was filmed in Britain, with a British cast (Hoffman excepted) and a mainly British crew. It'll do for me.

The infamous rape scene tends to dominate most discussions about the film, but it's also a taut thriller imbued with an heavy atmosphere of impending doom. Peckinpah captures the claustrophobia and strangeness of small community living very well and, of course, returns to his traditional themes of honour and what it means to be a man (violence, mainly).

David Warner was uncredited as village idiot Henry Niles because he was still struggling to walk after breaking both heels and was concerned his prominent limp might cost him other work. It didn't, of course, he's been in everything.

Straw Dogs