Christ Almighty

Art therapy is an essential part of prison for those serving long sentences: they've got to do something, after all, and smearing a load of paint all over a canvas can be cathartic.

Ronnie Kray was a keen amateur artist, and his paintings (not all of which are as good as his 'Crucifixion' above) now sell for several thousand pounds each. Good news, Ronnie, wherever you are: people are still fucking mugs when it comes to your tawdry legend.

A tip of the cap to  Jonny Trunk who originally posted this on Instagram and made me aware of it. Now I can't think about anything else, so, yeah, thanks a lot.

Burn, Baby, Burn

Disco Inferno courtesy of 'The Bitch'.

After The Stud

For all its artistic faults, ‘The Stud’ was extremely successful in financial terms and, naturally, a sequel was created, this time concentrating completely on perhaps the first films least interesting character, sophisticated slag Fontaine Khaled, as played by the increasingly witchy looking Joan Collins.

‘The Bitch’ is a mess from start to finish, so much so that I was surprised to see in the credits that someone had actually written it, and that someone actually claimed to have directed it (it was the same man, Gerry O’Hara, who should be ashamed of himself).

The format is familiar – short sex scene, long disco scene, tiny amount of plot, short sex scene, long disco scene, tiny amount of plot, short sex scene, etc. The world presented is supposed to be opulent and decadent, but just looks incredibly boring and the interiors, especially Fontaine’s bedroom, are unspeakable, like a Russian oligarch’s box room, jam full of fur, onyx and disgusting contemporary art.

There is a story in there somewhere, something about The Bitch getting stitched up by an Italian super lover on the make, a sort of role reversal of the first film that could have provided a mildly ironic counterpoint, although I should say at this stage that my reading of the ‘plot’ is subjective, and that there are no dramatic scenes to support this, and the actors are unable to convey the range of emotions needed to tell any sort of story, so who knows what the point is. Actually, it's pointless, and that's all there is to it. Now I'm not a person who insists on meaning, as long as the journey is enjoyable, as long as the trip is worth it. 'The Bitch' isn't worth it, and it isn't enjoyable, which to me is the true definition of pointless.

Characters from the first film crop up every now and again and, despite only a few months having passed between ‘The Stud’ and its sequel, they all seem terribly aged and exhausted, as if their wild lifestyles have finally caught up with them. If there had been a third film, it probably would have starred a bunch of skeletons.

There is disco dancing, which I like, especially a silly but enjoyable routine featuring Cherry Gillespie from Pan’s People and a topless lady with an impressive afro. Mostly, however, the cast and extras clomp about to unhip tunes by Quantum Leap, Leo Sayer and The Three Degrees, or, somewhat pathetically, to a track called ‘Everything Is Great’. It isn’t.

There’s a scene set in some tacky, sticky nightclub where the ‘beautiful’ people are chaotically throwing shapes to some rubbishy disco track, and the camera zooms in on a pair of flashing feet in a pair of stiletto shoes. It starts off alright but, within seconds, the feet have lost it and are all over the place, crashing down in an attempt to stomp the beat to death. Does the camera turn away? No. Do we cut to something else? No. And that’s ‘The Bitch’ in a nutshell and why I don’t like it. They don’t care, so why should I?

The Bitch

 

Getting Down

What's His Game?

‘The Stud’ may have seemed the perfect suburban adult entertainment in 1978, but today the signifiers of sophistication displayed in the film (furs, cocktails, poppers, loafers, top loading VCR's, Joan Collins) give it a laughably kitsch appeal that just about make up for its shortcomings as a work of art.

Based on a best selling ‘novel’ by Jackie Collins, the film tells the story of an ambitious London nightclub waiter turned greeter turned club manager Tony Blake, played by saturnine Swiss actor Oliver Tobias. Tony wants his own club but, in the meantime, is stuck with ‘Hobo’ (absolutely nothing like ‘Tramp’), a swinging cellar populated by wealthy and unbearable middle aged people making jokes about child molestation, Legs and Co. dancing and a cool black DJ in a great big cowboy hat playing Leo Sayer records.

On top of this (literally) he has to contend with his boss, bored socialite Fontaine Khaled (played by Jackie’s sister Joan) who sees Tony’s frequent and vigorous affections as part of their working relationship, and has no qualms about letting him know this on a regular basis. What unfolds over the course of the next hour and a half is a tacky maelstrom of recrimination, class consciousness, disco, angry parrots, homosexual assault, wrinkly nudity, uncomfortable looking lift sex, uncomfortable looking swing sex and an eight minute filler sequence where Tony simply drives through the countryside in his MG.

Glowering Tobias gives a fairly wooden performance, and Joan Collins, as ever, makes your skin crawl. The film itself is obviously low budget, dimly lit and poorly located, re-using shots over and over and slumping unceremoniously from one scene to another. The result is a slightly crushing experience, detailing as it does the depressing, sleazy lives of idiots in a dingy, miserable world where prostitution and borderline paedophilia are presented as the zenith of jet set glamour.

In its defence, the film is very funny on all sorts of (mainly ironic) levels, and has some memorable dialogue (once you’ve seen it, you won’t be able to check your reflection in the mirror without growling ‘you handsome bastard’). It is also quite clearly and cynically designed to make as much as money possible by cutting costs and appealing to the lowest common denominator at every turn, so we shouldn’t expect a cinematic masterpiece. That said, the climactic scene, where a crushed and humiliated Tony fights his way out of the club as the countdown to the New Year begins, finally bursting out into the (day for) night at the stroke of midnight and taking a massive breath of clean and uncorrupted air actually achieves a level of profundity missing elsewhere in the film and, as he saunters off into the night, you wonder where’s he’s going and what (and who) he’ll get up to next. Sadly, the sequel ‘The Bitch’ is all about Fontaine and is irredeemably awful. But we'll pick that scab tomorrow.

The music for the film was put together by the enigmatic Biddu, a talented writer, arranger and producer who had a few glory years in the UK charts with hit records like Carl Douglas’ ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ and Tina Charles’ ‘I Love To Love’ before returning to his native India. Appropriately for this low rent celluloid opus, the soundtrack LP was released by US infomercial giants Ronco, famous for severely editing tracks to fit more on an album and their immortal range of household must haves like the Veg-o-matic and the Buttoneer.

Anyway, here is a pretty comprehensive American trailer, which will give you a damn good idea of what you’re up against.

If you were wondering, by the way, Oliver Tobias' Wardrobe is by Herbie Frogg.

The Stud

Milton!

'Ooops, wrong arm. Keep filming, I'll sort it...' 

'That's better'

Milton Reid as he appears in no budget Bond rip off No. 1 Of The Secret Service' (1977). Milton plays a bad ass with an earring and an eye patch and a bare chest, although later he dons his familiar brown jerkin, trousers and cowboy boots.

I wonder if he charged for supplying his own costume, or whether he put the saving forward as a reason to employ him?

Don't Open Till Christmas

Right. Wow. Okay. 'Don't Open Till Christmas' looks like it was made on the hoof with borrowed equipment in about two days. The script is full of holes; scenes are either too short, too long or missing entirely; the performances are inept; the settings a succession of deserted alleys, rented halls, borrowed flats and a couple of London landmarks after the tourists have pissed off home. But where else can you see Father Christmas get his cock cut off?

Written by exploitation serial offender Derek Ford, this tawdry concoction was directed by Edmund Purdom, a British actor of the fifties who was once a household name without ever really being in anything successful. Purdom is an awful director, the sort who points his camera at the New Scotland Yard sign to establish where we are and that it is day, then holds the shot for a very long time before arbitarily cutting to an office that is clearly not New Scotland Yard and, somehow, it's now night.

As well as 'directing' Purdom also stars as the police inspector trying to track down a psycho who really has it in for blokes in Santa suits. One gets knifed, one gets speared through the mouth, one selling chestnuts has his face pressed against the hot plate then is garroted and left to catch fire. Eyes are detached, arteries spurt, guts drop out and, yes, cocks get cut off. It's a hoot. When the killer is asked just why he hates men dressed up like Saint Nick he simply replies 'because they remind me of Christmas'. Fair enough, Sir, you're free to go.

Other notable elements include a look at how the London Dungeon used to look in the olden days, the usually sexy Caroline Munro and her awful band performing a really shitty song, and lots of snatched / stolen footage of Londoners getting ready for Xmas. It's cheap, it's gory, it's sexist, it's trashy - it's recommended.     

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Creator Of Catastrophe

'The Medusa Touch' is a hilarious film about a sociopath who, unfortunately for the world, has limitless psychic powers. John Marlar (Richard Burton, awful) is a hugely bitter and angry person with a nasty habit of righting petty wrongs against him by using his mad telekinesis skills. He knocks his parents off a cliff with a runaway car, burns his school to the ground because he gets detention and, when he grows up, graduates to messing up space missions, crashing planes into tower blocks and making rubber rocks fall on people. Even when he has his head caved in with a bust of Napoleon he keeps going. Can anyone stop him? No. No, they can't. Even when clinically dead he blows up Windscale power station. He really is 'Le Grand Menace', as the French would have it. The Italians wouldn't even hang around long enough to give him a name.

The film is a real kedgeree of slumming talent - Lee Remick and the almost unintelligible Lino Ventura have the biggest supporting roles, and loads of other venerables pop up for a couple of scenes, including Harry Andrews, Norman Bird, Gordon Jackson, Jeremy Brett, Alan Badel, Michael Hordern, Robert Flemyng and Derek Jacobi. The star, of course, is Burton. Looking shorter, iller and older than ever, Burton prowls and scowls around in a brown cardigan, using his incredible voice to stretch out every syllable of the over-written dialogue he gets to spout. In a line that must have caused several film producers and directors to shake their heads ruefully, Burton declaims 'I am the man with the power to create catastrophe' - too fucking right, mate.

There is a chance that Osama Bin Laden may have watched this film and got the idea for 9/11, which is rather chilling - either that or he was inspired by that episode of 'Only Fools & Horses' where Del Boy installs a satellite dish stolen from Gatwick Airport and a 747 nearly crashes into Nelson Mandela House.

The Medusa Touch



Sexually Rampant Ghouls

US director Andy Milligan (1929 – 1991) is something of a legend in exploitation circles, a sort of mod Ed Wood. His films, half of which are lost, veer crazily between sex and horror and sleaze and are characterised by low budgets, poor acting and the stilted awfulness that signals the disconnect between ambition and talent.  But he made about thirty films, and you have to applaud his resolve, not to mention his sheer bloody nerve.  

‘The Body Beneath’ (1970) was one of several films Milligan made in London in the late sixties. It’s basically a retelling of ‘Dracula’ but with some very soft porn elements and an interesting twist: the vampires all belong to the same family, and the head vampire is obsessed with refreshing the degenerating blood line. It isn’t what you’d call a good film but I’ve seen a lot worse. A lot, lot worse. The basics are there: some fantastic locations (‘filmed in the graveyards of England’), occasionally  interesting camera angles and some halfway decent performances (Gavin Reed is particularly notable as Algernon Ford, the chief blood sucker, although he does remind me a lot of Reece Shearsmith from ‘The League of Gentlemen’). There’s a bit of sex, a splash of gore and a hunchback has his hands nailed to a post before being set on fire.

Strangely for this sort of film it isn’t at all boring (it’s too choppy for that), although the script makes no sense and the climactic party of the undead is rendered fairly incomprehensible by an optical effect that detracts from the action. The green faced vampires are nice, however, and, overall, it’s an interesting attempt at reinterpreting the vampire mythology on a shoestring budget and a soupcon of talent.     

The Body Beneath