Whiny Dancer

‘Die Screaming, Marianne’ is a difficult film to categorise in many ways but, at heart, it’s a good old fashioned Victorian melodrama, albeit one with mod accoutrements and a heroine who works as a go go dancer.

Susan George plays Marianne ‘Hips’ MacDonald, a troubled dollybird on the run from secrets and a weird family set up (Mum is dead; half-sister hates her; Father likes his daughters a little too much). Poor Marianne believes the only thing she has going for her is her lithe body and, as a result, she freely donates it to interested parties on a regular basis. When things become complicated, she moves on, packing her pathetic little bag, slipping on her Dr, Scholl’s and moving on like a pouting, bra-less Littlest Hobo. To be honest, to use the parlance of the period, she's a bit of a drag, man. 

Her main issue is that she has the account number of a Swiss safety deposit box in which her late mother stored a number of incriminating documents about her father and, Dad, a defrocked (or whatever) Judge wants them back. Her half-sister, Hildegard (played by super skinny Judy Huxtable, soon to become Mrs. Peter Cook) just wants Maz dead, especially as she is due to inherit a lot of money on her imminent 21st birthday, money that will go to Hildegard if little Marianne is out of the way.

The film bobs along nicely for a while but, in the end, becomes a bit frenzied and confusing, albeit in an extremely languid way. I have heard that the shoot was complicated by bad behaviour from the young leads and this led to beleagured director Peter Walker having to rip several pages out of the script just to keep to schedule. That’s a shame, because although I enjoy random stabbings, car crashes, people (well, Chris Sandford, an actor I find detestable) falling down a hole and being left to die and, in particular, attempted murder by super hot sauna, ‘Die Screaming…’ never lives up to the promise of its credit sequence where Marianne, clad only in a spangly bikini and a few chains, frugs like a funky puppet to Cyril Ordanel’s groovy theme tune. If it did, we might have had something halfway decent, but it doesn't, and that's all there is it to it, I'm afraid.

Die Screaming, Marianne!

Makes Your Blood Run Cold

Sieges are great subjects for films, aren't they? Tense, exciting - and even more tense and exciting if you have a mix of ruthless criminals and sympathetic innocents, say an international criminal and a trigger happy drunk holding an asthmatic child, an old man and a lady doctor at gunpoint? No? Not exciting enough? Well, what if there was a Black Mamba loose on the premises? What about that?  Yep, now you're interested...

'Venom' is really stupid. But as really stupid films go, it's a corker. I needn't go into how the deadliest snake in the world was given to a small child by accident, or how that very snake gets loose in a house and inadvertantly becomes a key character in a foiled kidnapping attempt, so let's just say that it happens and move on. I also won't go into why the house in question, a large Georgian terrace, was thoughtfully built 250 years ago with a massive stainless steel air conditioning system for the venomous killer to slither around in.

What I have to say, however, is that this film has one of the most eclectic and downright bloody dangerous casts ever assembled: Oliver Reed, Klaus Kinski, Nicol Williamson, Sarah Miles and Sterling Hayden - a collection of unreliable nutters, troublemakers, malcontents, free spirits, drunks and degenerates that shouldn't even be able to co-exist in the same small space in the universe. The insurance premiums must have been through the roof. Shame Brando wasn't available.

Throw in Susan George as a scheming maid who gets her kit off in minutes and then turns dying from a snake bite into something wanton and erotic and you have half a dozen reasons for watching, and that's before you even get to the quite amazing finale where an out of control Kinski grapples frantically with a rubber snake, trying to blow the synthetic serpent's head off as he himself is shot repeatedly by Police snipers. It's like something out of a Norman Wisdom film. That one with the guns and the snakes.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention that Ollie Reed gets bitten on the bollocks. That's one brave hisser. Mr. Reed also suffers the indignity of a really nondescript credit, and I say that as someone who (much like everyone else) has several mates called Dave.

Venom

 

Turned On

‘The Sorcerers’ was Michael Reeves second film, and the first to have any kind of budget and distribution. Starring Boris Karloff and Reeves’ alter ego / fantasy figure Ian Olgilvy it tells of an elderly man who, aided and abetted by his even more cracked wife, invents a new form of hypnosis which allows the ageing and infirm couple to experience excitement and emotion through a much younger and more active subject (Olgilvy) who they manipulate like a lanky puppet. This being 1967, of course, there are many vicarious thrills to be had, including groovy dancing, making it with dolly birds, fast driving, drinking, drug taking, pushing girls off diving boards and, as kicks get harder to come by, violence and murder.  

It all ends badly, and Professor Marcus Montserrat (fantastic name) and his Missus soon learn that evil acts have consequences, even if you get a tall posh bloke to do them for you.

The Sorcerers

Jelly Tot

For Dolly Dolly Dave, the only Apiarist I know.

A New Definition Of Terror

'Fright' is a pretty effective thriller, and makes for a tense and occasionally shocking hour and a half. Susan George is under threat again but here, unlike in 'Staw Dogs', she's no pushover, even when faced with psychotic asylum escapee Ian Bannen. Bannen was always at his best when completely deranged, so much so that I find his 'straight' performances really creepy. Good film.

Fright

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