Offbeat

With Headpress's Offbeat editor Julian Upton presents 400+ pages on what the book's subtitle identifies as "British Cinema’s Curiosities, Obscurities and Forgotten Gems." Other than mentioning the films encompassed within this remit only cover a thirty year period from c. 1955-85 (so no Tod Slaughter or 30s Edgar Wallace adaptations, for instance; though there are certainly other places you can read up on these) it is a fair enough description of the films surveyed and reviewed within.

So, for example, if we’re talking Hammer then it is emphatically not the Gothics for which they are best known, rather their swashbucklers and adventure romps like Captain Clegg and Pirates of Blood River, or the brilliant Cash on Demand where Peter Cushing is for once outperformed by another, Andre Morell; admittedly Morell had played his role on TV and so had the advantage. Or, if it’s Hammer’s most famous house director, Terence Fisher, then it is one of the three sci-fi films he made for another studio, Planet, namely The Earth Dies Screaming.

I’d like to think that I’m somewhat close to the ideal reader for the book, arrogant though you may judge me: I’ve seen about half of the films reviewed within and would say that I concur with the authors most of the time on these. Two things help here. One, the reviewers resist the urge to proclaim each and every film as a forgotten mini-masterpiece or suchlike. Rather they accept the films on their own merits, or lack thereof. Two, they provide their working rather than just their correct answer. That is they explain why they feel the way they do about a film. As such even if I do not agree with the reviewer of No Blade of Grass’s opinion I can understand that he is paying attention to the source novel, whereas I was not considering the film in terms of adaptation.

Even more important, however, is that Offbeat provided further encouragement to seek out those titles I had heard of but not seen, and introduced me to others which I had not, or which I might have grokked at some point but since forgotten.

In addition to the reviews Offbeat also presents several overviews of a time period, sub-genre, cycle or trend. These are informative as an orientation and also point out topics of further consideration. For example, the essay on the pop/rock musical posits a significant difference between the Elvis films from the US and the Cliff Richard and British Invasion films from the UK that followed them. The Elvis films were entrusted to older, established directors who worked to make Elvis a safer property, whereas the British films often took chances on younger filmmakers closer in age to their subjects, this resulting in a less predictable fare. The reviews generally run two or three pages, begin with production, cast and crew details, followed by a one-paragraph summary of the plot, followed by a more substantial discussion of the individual film’s merits (or lack thereof) and place in British cinema history.

So, to sum up, if you read this you would probably like Offbeat.

The Brute

The Brute opens in white-coater mode as a psychiatrist addresses the audience straight to camera, acknowledging his presence within a film and commenting on various theories as to why men abuse women.

Following this it then presents what appears to be a dramatised case-study as Teddy (Julian Glover) arrives at the house he shares with his wife Diane (Sarah Douglas) and proceeds to verbally, emotionally, and physically abuse her. Diane is thereby left with marks that she has to explain away in her job as a model. It is clear, however, that neither her photographer friend Mark (Bruce Robinson, later director of cult favourite Withnail and I) not his parter Carrie (Suzanne Stone) do not believe her story of having been involved in a car accident; besides anything else the vehicle has not been damaged.

After this, however, writer-director Gerry O’Hara gives us something unexpected as the second fourth-wall breaching encounter with the psychiatrist is recontextualised as one of his regular therapy sessions with Diane.

Teddy, unfortunately, refuses to accept that he is the one with the problem, continuing to vacillate between abuse and contrition. He appears apologetic, only to then reveal a branding iron which he attempts to use on her. Diane manages to get hold of the iron and strikes her husband before fleeing.
 
When Diane returns with the police Teddy denies her allegations. The police do not bother to inquire as to why Teddy has a blanket over his legs, merely accepting his explanation that Diane is neurotic, alcoholic, on medication etc.

Around this point the filmmakers throw us another surprise, as Diane is introduced by Carrie to Maria (Roberta Gibbs), another battered wife, with attention then shifting to Maria and her abusive partner.

While uniformly well-acted, competently directed and intelligently written by O’Hara, The Brute is one of those films whose appeal, as something that the 1970s punter would have paid to go and see at the cinema, for entertainment, as opposed to feminist consciousness raising, is hard to discern. In this it reminded me a bit of the later Hollow Reed, a film in which a gay man struggles for custody of his child against his ex-wife’s new partner, whom he suspects of being abusive.

In relation to this possible failing, however, one of The Brute’s strengths is its refusal to give easy answers, as when Mark initiates a relationship with Diane, which Carrie is fully aware of, or when a friend of Maria’s partner is visibly shocked by his violence towards her but does not know how to respond. Somewhat against this, however, there’s Carrie’s martial arts displays, have been fine if introduced earlier but here coming across as somewhat deus ex machina.

Hot Girls / For Men Only

Freddie (David Kernan) is a fashion photographer for Vogue. His fiancée Rosalie (Andrea Allen) is worried that the models will prove a temptation to him, and is pleased when Freddie is hired, sight-unseen, by Fanthorpe (Derek Aylward), the owner of some 30 or so publications with a big and small C conservative orientation.

Note the credit for "The Birds"

What nobody else knows is that Fanthorpe is also the proprietor of a cheesecake publication, For Men Only, and has hired Freddie because he thinks Freddie will prove to have a knack for glamour photography and be able to recruit some “birds” through his Vogue contacts.

Sexy secretary: "Sugar?" 

Freddie: "Two large ones please"

A further complication is provided by a rival publisher, who hopes to steal away the best of Fanthorpe’s talent and use them as the basis for his own magazine.

Running under an hour – and listed on the IMDB as being a mere 43 minutes long, rather than the 58 or so of this washed-out, scratchy Something Weird release – this early Pete Walker piece, on which he served as producer, director and writer, plays out much like a classic farce with added tits & arse.

The most interesting aspect of the film, if the viewer has seen Walker’s later horror films, particularly those written or co-written with David McGillivray, is how it prefigures aspects of them. The glamour/softcore porn industry also appeared in House of Whipcord, the attack on religious hypocrisy House of Mortal Sin.

Striptease Extravaganza / Mary Millington's Striptease Extravaganza

Or the uses and abuses of montage...

One of the key divisions in film theory is between proponents of the long take and proponents of montage. The use of the long take is usually associated with realism, and entails the presentation of blocks of space and time where the relationships between images emerge 'naturally'. Montage, by contrast, is associated with formalism, and entails the construction of relationships between otherwise disconnected images, perhaps in the service of another (higher) reality.

I mention this because Striptease Extravaganza / Mary Millington's Striptease Extravaganza is an exercise in the latter, albeit one which few montage theorists would likely want to take as an illustration of their idea(l)s.

First of all, there are those titles: Millington friend / exploiter / enabler John M. East introduces the film, proclaiming that Millington was a great striptease artist who made a profound impression on the form. As evidence he presents some scenes from Queen of the Blues, the last film that she made before her 1979 suicide.

But, if you don't care about Millington, or don't find dead women sexually attractive, it's then on to the main attractions of the other, sans Millington, title: Comedian Bernie Winters and 16 women supposedly competing for the stripper of the year title, £1000 and a movie contract.

Then there is the complete dissociation between what is happening on stage and the reaction shots of the audience. The latter, you see, have also been taken from Queen of the Blues, although unlike the introduction this is not stated. If you look carefully there are never any establishing shots which show the performers and the audience together, nor any pans or tracks from one to the other.

Then we have the complete dissociation between the pianist and drummer on stage and the music we hear, reinforced for those familiar with other David Sullivan product of the time by the re-use of cues from Emmanuelle in Soho. (Some of the cues do have a pleasing Nico Fidenco type vibe to them, though, and wouldn't be out of place in a Laura Gemser vehicle)

Turning to Emmanuelle in Soho, we also have its two female leads, Mandy Miller / Quick and Julie Lee, amongst the 16 strippers. The former is introduced as Vicky from Sweden, the latter as Julie from Hong Kong. Neither wins through to the semi-finals, though Winters does announce Julie as one of the semi-finalists even if she isn't actually present on stage.

Nor does either speak. In Lee's case this is presumably because her Yorkshire accent would have demolished the lie that she was from Hong Kong.

Not, however, that any of those we do hear speak make any attempt to present themselves as being from Turkey, France or wherever else 'exotic'.

A reason why they wouldn't is that not being white British often means being subjected to racist 'humour': Vicky from Turkey is a 'Chapati' while Maxine “from Botswana” can be distinguished from Cathy “from South England” by being “the darker one”.

In fairness, however, Winters also does some self-deprecating/hating Jewish jokes.

Then we have the incogruity of some of the strippers doing paired routines despite this supposedly being a competition.

Then there is the sudden injection of some cynical realism when one of them, Cathy, proclaims in a voice-off that she had better win since she had given the main judge a blow-job. This leads to further re-use of outtakes from Emmanuelle in Soho.

Cathy does, however, win the competition.

Art imitating Life?

The losers, meanwhile, must also include anyone who ever went to see the film on its original release, for entertainment...

Night After Night After Night

Directed by one Lewis J. Force – actually Lindsay Shonteff, who requested that his name be taken off the credits – Night After Night After Night comes across as something like a hybrid of The Cover Girl Killer and The New York Ripper with a touch of House of Whipcord thrown in for good measure.

Contemporary giallo-type touches include a black leather wearing, knife-wielding killer on the loose; an assortment of suspects and red herrings and an agreeable level of sleaziness.

The more traditional whodunit is meanwhile represented by the focus on a professional rather than an amateur investigator, in the form of Inspector Bill Rowan.

Rowan is, however, given a more personal interest than applies in the usual detective story, when his wife Jenny falls victim to the maniac as she is stabbed to death whilst taking a shower.

The prime suspect in the murders, even before this, was Pete Laver. A misogynistic womaniser, he doesn’t help his case by reciprocating Rowan’s overt hostility by saying what he’d like to do to Jenny...


The duel: Laver vs. Rowan

The other likely candidates, as far as the audience is concerned, are the moralistic Judge Lomax and his smut-obsessed clerk.


The clerk and his favourite reading material

The filmmakers play reasonably fair with us in terms of the story and the characters’ relationships with one another, providing the opportunity to figure out whodunit by the time that, just over two-thirds of the way through, the killer’s identity is revealed and a manhunt scenario then takes over.


The amount of time that passes between the arrest and the trial isn't too clear

The low budget is most evident in the courtroom and police station scenes, both of which feel somewhat cramped through their emphasis upon medium shots and close-ups to the exclusion of establishing shots. Shonteff’s direction is more agreeable when style comes to the fore, whether within the stalking and slashing stuff or the maniac’s freak outs.

A decent time-passer.

Take an Easy Ride

One definition of surrealism is “the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table”

Based on this, Take an Easy Ride could almost be classed as an inadvertently surrealist film on account of the way in which it brings together two seemingly incongruous paracinematic genres.

The first is the public information or service film – i.e. a non-profit film, usually made by official bodies, with the goal of modifying behaviour for the good of individuals and/or the collective.

The second is the exploitation film – i.e. a film made by private entrepreneurs with the intention of making money.

How the two came to be incorporated into the one film is reminiscent of a scenario out of Eskimo Nell. It seems that producer, director and editor Kenneth Rowles initially set out to make a serious film about the dangers of hitch-hiking. Then notorious porn/sexploitation mogul David Hamilton Grant, encouraged Rowles to spice things up with some extra sex and violence so the film could also be played on his sex film circuit.

The serious side of things is most evident in the voice-off and on-camera interviews with what seem like genuine members of the public for the most part.

The exploitation side is more to the fore in the three vignettes that make up the bulk of the 40 or so minute running time, which include voyeuristic low angle shots of mini-skirted women climbing into lorries; footage of Soho sex shops, strip clubs and cinema clubs and a selection of mostly inappropriate stock music cues.


The camera actually moves to get a better view here


Probably illegal now...

One of vignette actually blurs the distinction by beginning as an interview and then segueing into a flashback based reconstruction in which a young woman relates how she was picked up by a couple who took her back to their house, plied her with drink, and ultimately forced her into a porno rape styled no-means-yes threesome...


“I decided to take a bath... I was very surprised when I was joined by Margaret...”

The other two vignettes are more straightforward. One presents a cut-down version of Last House on the Left as a couple of young women hitch-hiking to a rock festival are picked up by a black-glove wearing, porn-magazine reading maniac intent on rape and murder...


Black gloves


Some slow motion here

The other presents something of a reversal of this, as another two young women go on a miniature crime-spree that culminates in their turning on one of the men who gives them a lift, almost like a prototype for a Baise moi or Butterfly Kiss...

Crudely made, unpleasant in that way that it often seems only 1970s exploitation can be and absolutely fascinating in that what-the-hell-were-they-thinking way.

Adventures of a Private Eye

Bob West (Christopher Neil) is a trainee private eye. He’s also a bit of a mug, the kind of guy who claims to be so much more observant than the average but who nevertheless is immediately recognised as an easy mark by a passing pickpocket and, more importantly, the femme fatale type Laura (Suzy Kendall) who comes into the office when his boss Judd Blake (Jon Pertwee) is on holiday.

Bob can’t resist taking on the case, which involves her deceased husband and someone blackmailing her over some ‘artistic’ photographs taken during days as a model. Soon he is completely and utterly out of his depth, with a body in a trunk to dispose of so that Laura can secure her inheritance...

Producer, director and co-writer Stanley Long later felt Adventures of a Private Eye was the weakest of his three Adventures films on the grounds that his target audience found it more difficult to identify with its ‘glamorous’ protagonist compared to Adventures of a Taxi Driver and Adventures of a Plumber’s Mate.

While there is maybe a bit more laughing at Joe and less empathising with his situation – in part because often as not it is his own fault, rather than that of anyone else – the film really doesn’t depart from formula too much.


Sin in the suburbs

It is, after all, still a sex comedy in which the sex is strictly softcore and the rapid-fire, hit-and-miss comedy based largely around misunderstanding. misidentification and a steady flow of double meanings, from Pertwee’s “You stick with me and you’ll soon become a successful bugger” in reference to contemporary surveillance techniques, to a police inspector’s remark of “What a big Willy I’ve got” with regard to his son.

The cast is the same mix of up and coming and established actors, of varying degrees of talent but undoubtedly equally glad of the chance of some work. Amongst the up and comers there are the likes of Neil, Adrienne Posta, Robin Stewart and Nicholas Young, whilst amongst the established performers Diana Dors, Irene Handl and Harry Corbett showed up for a scene or two.

Here we may also note that Long was presumably satisfied with Neil’s performance – Taxi Driver’s Barry Evans had been offered the role, but declined it – in that the actor again played the lead in Plumber’s Mate.


'Moroni with an I, and not with an E, because Morone would be stupid'

The film also has its own strong points, most notably Posta’s Lisa Moroni character, with her note-perfect impersonation of Liza Minelli’s Sally Bowles from Cabaret.


Note Milton Reid as the leftmost heavy

For the fan of British genre cinema there’s also a nice touch when the Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General cue that introduces Hopkins is played as the blackmailer makes his entrance. Given that Long had worked as a cinematographer on Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers and that co-writer Michael Armstrong made the Witchfinder General-inspired Mark of the Devil, this seems more than coincidental on someone's part.

Permissive

Suzie arrives in London from the provinces, hoping to catch some of that Swinging London vibe that she has heard about through the mass media. Fiona takes Suzy under her wing and introduces her to the band she hangs out with. After a short while Suzy does an All About Eve and usurps Fiona's position, with fatal consequences...

It may have plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll, but 1970's Permissive is not exactly what you'd call a fun film. Rather it's one of the most dreary, drab and depressing films you could hope to see about the realities of the music world, more Cocksucker Blues than Almost Famous, but with a band whose material circumstances are more akin to those of Black Flag than the Rolling Stones.

Stylistically the film is an odd combination of pseudo-documentary nothing much to see for the most part punctuated by moments of machine gun editing, as if someone had decided to make a kitchen sink drama of the Cathy Come Home or Bleak Moments type with editing inspired by Performance.


Is it Madeleine or Maria? One of the Collinson twins as a groupie

Even more intriguingly, the editing isn't used to make the musical performances more interesting, as might be expected, but rather to present disconcerting (acid?) flashbacks and flashforwards as to the characters' relationships and fates.

The big surprise is who was responsible for it all, with notorious hack for hire Lindsay Shonteff writing and directing and Tony Tenser's Tigon producing.

Yes, part of the business of exploitation filmmaking was exploiting the audience in giving less than is promised.

But to make a film that is utterly joyless, which leaves you feeling cheated and like you also just might want to end it all?!

Either Shonteff seriously pulled the wool over Tenser's eyes and intended this all along as some sort of perverse artistic statement, which seems unlikely, or something just started to happen once the cameras were rolling.

Queen Kong

This, as you might know, is the King Kong spoof that was deemed to be a bit too similar to Dino De Laurentiis's remake of the same year (1976) and as a result was prevented from being released. Female lead Rula Lenska was apparently pleased by this turn of events, as she felt that the release of the film would have hampered her career. 30-plus years later it's hard to see what the fuss was about: The film would be difficult to confuse with the De Laurentiis version and, while certainly bad at a technical level, nonetheless has a certain something about it.



We open with a man being chased by hostile natives and ending up in their cooking pot. It is the latest scene in Luce Habit's (Lenska's) latest epic and proves the last straw as far as the actor is concerned.


In case you couldn't tell, and a possible nod to the krimi?

The demanding director returns to London to seek out a new lead and soon finds one in the shape of happy-go-lucky gleaming-smiled rogue Ray Fay (Robin Askwith).




The female gaze and its object; much like Four Flies on Grey Velvet Handel's Hallelujah Chorus plays here

In a nod to the original King Kong Ray's first glimpsed attempting to steal an apple. In a joke at the expense of the remake he then tries stealing an “original reproduction” King Kong poster from an Italian junk shop owner. (Ray: “Where is he, the little Italian fink, I'm gonna sue ya!”)


“I'm taking this peach with me”

Luce pays off said fink, slips Ray a mickey finn as his attention is distracted by some hippy types from whom he attempts to cadge a joint, and has The Liberated Lady set sail before he can awaken and start questioning the contract he may or may not have signed.

The Liberated Lady then arrives at the Island of Lazanga. The high priestess (Valerie Leon) wants to sacrifice Ray to Queen Kong but Luce is having none of it. Ray winds up being offered up to the giant ape anyway only for her to fall in love with him. What neither the high priestess or Luce were expecting, however, was for the feeling to be mutual...

Around about this point the action jumps back to London as Luce decides to put Queen Kong on display...

Throughout the gags come thick and fast, mostly missing but with enough hitting not to be a complete disaster.

The first thing that made the film work for me was the filmmakers' awareness that what they were doing was, at some level, basically crap as when, en route to Lazanga we're treated some highly self-referential and deprecating commentary on the B-film and its limitations.

Luce: We're on our way to Darkest Africa, to make a film that will make you the biggest star in Uganda
Ray: Oh, terrific

Ray: They keep saying Kong, Kong, Kong, Kong, Kong, Kong
Luce: yes, that's true
Ray: Well do you think this has some underlying meaning or symbolism or social significance?
Luce: Perhaps it's a secret code

The second, following in part from this, was the inability to actually position the film as X (bad) or Y (good), with a particular excess of images that could be construed as either sexist or anti-sexist, racist or anti-racist, or both at the same time.

On the one hand we have the crew of The Liberated Lady singing a song that name-checks such feminist figures as Germaine Greer and Jane Fonda:

Burn your bra
Burn your panties
Call you ma
Call your aunties
And ship up on the Liberated Lady
It's the new dance sweeping every nation
As they swing to the beat of women's liberation
Ladies entering into the lion's den
Fighting for their place next to men
Grab a Honda with Jane Fonda
Give a cheer for Germaine Greer
Etc.

On the other hand we have the selfsame crew/singers dressed in hot pants and cropped tops doing a dance routine that presenting the kind of spectacle for the assumed male gaze a Laura Mulvey most definitely would not have approved of:







On the one hand we have the primitivism and ignorance of the inhabitants of Lazanga being foregrounded, as with a public baths which comprises a number of toilets and sinks.

On the other hand its native inhabitants are ethnically diverse and run the place very as a tourist trap – “Lazanga where they do the Konga” and accept American Express and Diners Club cards – offering the possibility that the likes of the baths are there as a joke at the expense of the civilised outsider who thinks he (or she) gets it.

At the core of this and further complicating things in the figure of Queen Kong.

One reading of the original King Kong is, after all, as a specifically white racist fantasy about the white beauty and the black beast: Kong represents a monstrous black male sexuality and must be destroyed so that the white man can continue to enjoy his exclusive access to the white woman.

If this seems far fetched consider Kong author Edgar Wallace's work as a war correspondent during the Boer War; his Sanders of the Rivers novels; or the frequently recurring Murders in the Rue Morgue styled trope of the ape/missing link monster-killer in his thrillers.

Or, in the Italian context of the co-production, consider a Fascist-era propaganda which depicted a US Negro soldier as an ape intent on assigning a price to the Venus de Milo to thereby also implicate the Fascists as defenders of Italian / European civilisation against the primitive/savage other.


The enslavement of the black woman by the white woman?

But what we have here is a scenario where the white proletarian male rebels against the white bourgeois female and affirms his love for a black female of ambiguous class position (Queen in her own land yet taken away from there in slave chains) in a way that cuts across class, gender and ethnic lines in interesting ways.


Unconcious vagina dentata reference?


Linda Hayden as a singing nun

In the end, it all perhaps comes down to that most conservative and radical of powers, the one which every identity ultimately relies upon and yet often also has problems with: Love.

And here there is perhaps one kind of love which proves unacceptable, which is not allowed to speak its name. No, not bestiality, if we read Queen Kong and Ray's relationship as that between ape woman and man, but homosexuality.

Consider the gay-coded actor at the start: “Listen dear, I'll sue you deaf, dumb and blind if you don't get me down from here. Mind the hair dear! Mind me ankles! Now get out the way you silly bitch! I'm calling my agent, and my lawyer, not to mention my tailor!”

Or Luce's remark as she prepares to take Queen Kong to London: “She might have been a Queen on this island, but in London half the guys you meet are queens”

Very much a film of its time...

Nice British sleaze blog

Posters, profiles, reviews, photos, clips etc:

http://gavcrimson.blogspot.com/

The Big Switch

This 1969 crime exploitationer from Pete Walker starts off in good style with a five minute striptease sequence, followed by scene-setting images of Carnaby Street at the time atop which Patrick Allen provides a voice-over introduction to protagonist John Carter.


The second strip sequence and some nice lighting effects

Given his age, identified as just the wrong side of thirty; cynical hard man attitude towards Swinging London, and ambiguously seedy / glamorous job as a sub-Blow Up photographer working in advertising, it’s not hard to see him as an easy character for Walker (born 1939) to have written.


An odd shadow effect

Also of note in this regard is that the second half of the film takes place in Walker’s birthplace of Brighton, with the showdown taking place on its pier, a location that both appears to reflect his own origins in a theatrical family and the end-of-pier theatre that provides the setting for 1972’s The Flesh and Blood Show.

Unfortunately incidental details of this nature are the main things that the film has going for it.

In terms of its stock in trade, sex, violence and sleaze it barely holds its own against Performance and Get Carter. This matter doubly in that it obviously doesn't compare to these films as far as cast, production values and direction go.


You are a voyeur

The cynicism and tawdriness pervading the entire enterprise, if at least self-conscious and deliberate on Walker’s part, also make it difficult to really care about Carter’s predicament. So too does the at times downright amateurish way in which he acts.

The story begins when Carter enters the flat of the girl he has just picked up (after going to get a packet of cigarettes, this being the kind of film where everyone smokes constantly) to find her unexpectedly dead, apparently the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. So what does Carter do? Well, he picks up the gun, calls the police; hesitates and hangs up; wipes the gun of his prints; puts it back, and leaves...




Does the strange shot-reverse shot framing here indicate something about Carter's relationship with his agent, or is it just ineptitude?

Worth a look for the Walker completist or student of British crime cinema of the period, but hard to recommend to the casual viewer looking more for entertainment.