Category Archives: Imaginary British Cinema

Comedy, Horror, Imaginary British Cinema

#159 – Back Again To Be Bad

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(2012, GB, 100 min) Dir Christopher Smith. Cast Reece Shearsmith, Peter Serafinowicz, Alexi Sayle, Julie Andrews.

Supernatural comedy. The Grand Order of the Everlasting Night had a foul plan – they were going to raise from the dead the most nefarious, bloodthirsty tyrants that history has to offer to wreck the most profound and unimaginable havoc on earth. From the four corners of the earth they summon Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Elizabeth Báthory and, by accident, Jim Morrison. The trouble is they have no idea what to do with them now that they have them, all five seemingly unable to raise dread armies at the drop of a hat and also a bit depressed at being reanimated. The solution? Bung them all in a remote Scottish cottage for the time being while a Plan B is hashed out. So Stalin and Hitler are continually fighting over the bedrooms, Genghis is making all sorts of odd smells in the kitchen, Báthory’s taking forever in the bathroom and Morrison refuses to tidy up. An equilibrium has yet to be reached when there is a knock at the door. It’s only Churchill, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, a not dead Julie Andrews and, by accident, the Big Bopper and they’re there to sort out the tyrants once and for all. Cheap, slapdash and hilarious with a very unexpected good sport cameo from Andrews.

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Comedy, Imaginary British Cinema

#149 – Pansies Ahoy!

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(1953, GB, 102 min) Dir Aldous Oxbury. Cast David Niven, Dirk Bogarde, Charles Falder.

Florist duo Ted and Gerry decide to do their bit in the war and sign up for duty in Her Majesties navy, both assigned to the same ship, the HMS Pielight under the watchful eye of the notoriously humourless disciplinarian Captain Reginald Oxphroy. Ted and Gerry, being incorrigible cut-ups (as we have seen in training when they snuck a goat into their Sergent’s bedroom), decide to have themselves a little fun decorating the ship with flowers of all sorts and sizes and the more Oxphroy clamps down on them the more they appear. They find themselves eyeing up a court-martial for insubordination when suddenly, on the horizon, a U-boat! A deadly game of cat and mouse ensues and wouldn’t you know it the only thing that keeps the ship’s morale up is those damned pansies! Of course the krauts get a jolly good thrashing and of course Oxphroy comes around to the mischievous florists way of things and before the films out it’s medals all round. Hurrah!

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Drama, Imaginary British Cinema

#142 – Loneliness of the Long Distance Lorry Driver, The

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(1970, GB, 100 min) Dir Joseph P Pritchard. Cast Harry H Corbett, Hans Pickert, Melanie Marie.

It’s no Convoy and despite its jokey title it’s no comedy either – the title was pasted on by the producers who also furnished the film with posters that suited both their new title and leading man’s Steptoe persona but didn’t spend any money in recutting the film, perhaps surmising that no amount of editing could transform what they had into something more amusing. It’s hard to disagree with them on that point though they seem to have missed the gem of a film they had too. Corbett – a Shakespearian actor once dubbed “the English Marlon Brando” but forever typecast by Steptoe & Son – plays the transcontinental lorry driver Oliver Brady, a man who lives in the perpetual grip of existential woe writ large across his doleful features. No matter that he traverses epic vistas in the shape of the snow-capped Alps, the vast Bavarian forests and so on, his face betrays no joy in any of this splendour. It seems his only relief is in people watching at the various truck stops along the way, particularly the prostitutes that work the drivers but don’t talk to him. It seems as though at some point something’s might give… A quiet, low-key film that shares its namesakes documentary realism and Corbett’s a fine lead too, effortlessly suggesting the great depths of feeling that run inside this lonely man. Unfortunately the film was unloved by comedy fans for not being a comedy and serious film aficionados were put off by how it was presented. Both sides lost out on a true classic.

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Comedy, Imaginary British Cinema

#140 – Belfastards

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(2014, GB, 104 min) Dir Jim Laughlin. Cast Phil Laverty, James Gillen, Brendan Forde.

Spin off from the popular BBC NI TV show about a trio of track suit wearing wastrels on the streets of Belfast who have transcended the cultural divides of their city, united in their common interest of being wee turds. Their favoured forms of mischief involve general loutishness on the streets, calling the emergency services out to fake crises and then stoning their vehicles, stealing cars and joyriding them about the town all while getting “lit on Bucky”. Their big screen debut sees Diz, Mickey and Tummers being chased through Belfast city centre after stealing a rack of children’s clothes for Diz’s sisters baby and, once caught, being recruited to stop local drug dealers from the inside. Your ability to tolerate the Belfastards brand of comedy will depend entirely on your ability to spend more than an hour and a half in the company of such appalling scumbags though for some fans the trappings of the shows’ expansion from its half-hour slot to feature-length has diluted the rough-edged charms of the show. For some though the film’s depiction of the central trio’s lifestyle is implicitly condoning them but to those critics the Belfastards themselves would no doubt say “get away up yourself”.

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Horror, Imaginary British Cinema

#138 – In Lamplight or Candleflame

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(1977, GB, 69 min) Dir Eric Conway Bryce. Cast Thomas Pretton, Billie Whitelaw.

In Lamplight or Candleflame was supposed to kickstart a series of annual films that would rival the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas but despite being perhaps Conway Bryce’s best film (and definitely his last) hardly a soul watched it upon broadcast and those who did found it, in the words of the Times’ reviewer, “turgid and murky”. Despite not being held as fondly in the public consciousness as A Warning to the Curious or even Schalcken the Painter a lavish reissue was mooted in recent years until it was discovered that the only remaining copy had somehow been spirited from the vaults. Despite this there are those, like I, who had the exceptionally good fortune to have seen it on first broadcast who will attest, in defiance of the opinion of the time, to how terrifying a watch it really was, despite the fact that, like those who I have discussed the film with, I can’t recall exactly what it was that I saw in the film’s flickering candlelight that frightened me so. Pretton plays a reclusive lord rattling around his vast country estate with only the imagined voice of his mother (Whitelaw in voiceover) for company though the speed with which she alternates between love and anger makes her uneasy company at best. As time wears on in his dark midwinter house he begins to perceive that perhaps there may be a figure out in the fluttering darkness beyond his meagre illuminations and while she’s not telling he begins to suspect that figure may be that of his long dead mother…

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Comedy, Imaginary British Cinema

#137 – Helmland Hustle, The

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(2009, GB, 101 min) Dir Michael Winterbottom. Cast Steve Coogan, Jason Issacs, Tom Hardy, Riz Ahmed.

“So, tell me, in your own words,” asks Mike, a Nick Broomfield-alike documentary filmmaker played by Steve Coogan, of young soldier Newell (Hardy), “What do you think that the British army is still doing here, in Afghanistan?” Newell opens his mouth, closes it, and then looks to the left of the screen where Jason Issacs’ Oliver Messing stands. Messing is the Media Relations Officer for this division, sent by the MOD to ‘liase’ between the troops and the filmmakers. He shakes his head and Newell turns back to Mike and the camera. “I’m afraid I can’t be answering that question sir,” he says. Half mock-doc and half feature, The Helmland Hustle slots quite comfortably alongside 24 Hour Party People and A Cock and Bull Story in the Winterbottom/Coogan collaborations though it’s not quite as pointedly self-referential as either. The only issue with the film is that while it lays out it’s satirical stall early on it fails to cash in on this, focussing more on personality clashes than the absurdity of the situation they are all in. Besides that it’s still very funny with a great turn from Issacs, here quite ably keeping pace with improv veteran Coogan, and from Riz Ahmed playing an interpreter who despite blagging the job doesn’t actually speak the local language.

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Action/Adventure, Comedy, Imaginary British Cinema

#136 – Northern Sector

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(1988, GB, 100 min) Dir Pete Foster Cast Neil Morrissey, Peter Capaldi, Denis Lavant.

Scotland, the unspecified future. Chemical Nuclear Industries are the government of Great Britain now and north of Hardian’s Wall the country has been appropriated as their nuclear production zone with hundreds of power plants fuelling the whole of Europe. Into this steps Gary (Morrissey), a lowly maintainance officer fresh out of training, tasked with battling the countryside’s feral occupants to repair a pipeline damaged by the AFEN, the Armée Française d’Énergie Nucléaire (the French Nuclear Energy Army) a gang of foreign interest saboteurs angling through violent action for a contract for their home country’s nationalised industry. Of course things don’t go as smoothly as all that and soon enough Gary’s a hostage of the locals who may be horribly mutated but aren’t all that bad. Cue a showdown with the nefarious AFEN who want Gary for reasons of their own… A cheap but spirited flick that takes enough time out of it’s genre necessities to poke fun at the Thatcherite privatisations of the era. Worth admission alone for the terrible mutant makeup that Peter Capaldi, as High Clan Lord O’Mac, is forced act under.

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Horror, Imaginary British Cinema

#132 – Carrion Crow

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(1974, GB, 100 min) Dir Harold Andsley. Cast Ian Ogilvy, Franco Francini, Maria Perschy.

Good old Harrow Productions – there wasn’t a popular British film of the seventies that they didn’t half-assedly rip off and in Harold Andsley they had their star director. The Devil Rides Out does well? He can get you Death to the Devil! knocked off in a fortnight. Witchfinder General causing a stir? He’ll get you Carrion Crow – the tale of a medieval demon hunter – in a trice. The one thing that nobody could have foreseen however is that Andsley might have made a good film. Perhaps it was his passion for the subject, having studied the Middle Ages in Oxford? Perhaps it was a complete accident? Who knows! Carrion Crow is Ogilvy’s Crusades scarred knight brought into the service of the church to scour the haunted isles of Britain, rooting out the demonic influence that is trying to take hold with his aged Italian aide Father Carfat (Francini). The film finds them having completed passage to Ireland where it seems they might have met their match in rural priestess Maria Perschy (who was Austrian but dyed her hair red for the part and was totally dubbed so let’s not split hairs) and her village of acolytes. A surprisingly effective and atmospheric picture and worth seeing for evidence that Andsley could make a good film if he really tried.

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Comedy, Imaginary British Cinema

#118 – Let’s Go Crazy

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(1962, GB, 91 min) Dir Aldous Oxbury. Cast Kenny Hettie, Charles Falder, Betty Beauchamp, Netty Potts.

In 1962 Amiable Films set up what was to be their rival to (and sponging off of) the popular Carry On series with their own shameless Let’s Go cycle of facsimile features of which Let’s Go Crazy was the first. Seeing how the Barnview “loony house” is staffed by “a right load of top totty”, local lads Marvin and Pete (Hettie and Falder) fake themselves mental to get in there with Marvin pretending that he thinks that he’s Napoleon and Pete just barking like a dog. Once inside all sorts of hilarity ensues that includes being hosed down, being given therapeutic enemas, sessions with German-accented psychologists and, eventually, electroshock therapy – all very much like if, for whatever reason, they had decided to play Shock Corridor or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for lowbrow smutty yuks. Despite the tastelessness, inept direction and, worst of all, criminal lack of jokes, Let’s Go Crazy was enough of a mid-level success for a further two films to be squeezed out before the wheels came off the whole thing for good.

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Drama, Imaginary British Cinema

#112 – Happy New Year, Detrasta Melovian

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(1973, GB, 86 min) Dir Adrian Fisher. Cast Eddie Mitchell, Sandra Gladstone, Tony Cousins.

The tale of young Alan Henry, who passes his time over the Christmas holidays in his boring seaside hometown of Yorrip by inventing saints, complete with illustrations of them being martyred. New Year’s Day he decides is the holy day of Saint Detrasta Melovian who was killed for not renouncing her faith in 1386 by having the top of her head sawn off in Bulgaria. Soon enough he finds himself accompanied by the forcibly trepanned imaginary saint on his walks along the beach where he goes to escape his quarrelling parents. This was Fisher’s first feature film after a tumultuous time with the BBC and the freedom of the big screen is palpable. It’s final image, of Alan back at school looking out of his classroom window at his Detrasta Melovian flying in slow circles over the building with Hovum’s Felestra swelling on the soundtrack, is surely one of the most ecstatic religious images produced in all of British cinema. A gentle and quietly confident debut from a director who would go on to prove himself an understated and underappreciated talent.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms