Voice Over.

Another film that had a limited release and then was quickly lost to public view! Now once again thanks to BFI Flipside series we have the chance to see Christopher Monger's controversial trip into darkness Voice Over (1883). This was his second feature film, the first being the experimental 1979 thriller Repeater (more of that later) which he also wrote and directed.

Fats Bannerman is a successful host of a local late night radio programme called Thus Engaged that he both writes and presents. Its main protagonist is a Jane Austin Regency type character called Elizabeth. The programme has a cult following amongst a young teenage/student audience but not for artistic reasons as he finds out when a reporter tells him that they only listen to make fun of him and his broadcast. Bannerman's life is like a nightmare; he is estranged from his daughters, divorced from his wife, drinks too much and lives in an old run down warehouse down by the docks, before this type of area became fashionable and expensive. Even when he is picked up by two sexy young women and taken back to their flat and plied with alcohol, it all goes pear shaped when the twosome set upon him and give him a good hiding, denting his ego more than actually inflicting physical pain!

 

Fats Bannerman at work.

His pitiful sad and lonely life is reflected in his radio programme and following the encounter with his two attackers he gradually changes the format of his show from Jane Austin to Mary Shelley, much to the disgust of the station but surprisingly the ratings increase. One evening returning home late he finds a badly beaten woman and transports her back to his flat.  Against advice he decides to take care of her and nurse her back to health washing and dressing her in new clothes that he has purchased. Although the woman he calls Bitch (Bish Nethercote) is still alive it is obvious she is in deep shock, never actually speaking. Again Bannerman transcribes this entire incident into the script for his radio show. The success of the radio programme leads to an offer from another company, RDOV, which means that he can purchase a wee house for the pair to live in, but his increased remuneration does not seem to run to furniture or a new t-shirt!

 

Nice girls don't normally come in pairs!

We witness how Fats Bannerman mental state deteriorates and how he has no physical contact with the girl even when she gets in the bath with him, he treat’s her like a real life  'Elizabeth' and as we watch this extremely complex character descend into the dark depths of his mental anguish we are continually forced to ask the question  - will he give into his hidden impulses?

Monger produces a searching look into the mind of Bannerman in a study of loneliness, detachment and depression. He also proves to some extent that we are our own worst enemy’s and can truly f**k ourselves up without any outside help!

 

The caring Fats Bannerman?

Christopher Monger is a Welsh born director who is probably best known for the 1995 movie The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain which stared Hugh Grant and the British character actor Ian McNeice. It's McNeice who stars in and completely dominates Voice Over playing the central role of Fats Bannerman. He is an actor whose face you will recognise instantly but probably not his name. Incidentally the soundtrack uses music composed by Franz Schubert to great effect. 

 

Their new found wealth does not run to a new T-Shirt. 

As part of the Blu-ray/DVD release we get a chance to see Monger’s debut film Repeater (1979). This strangely compelling wee film attempts to mimic films of the French New Wave. The basic story is about a woman (Chris Abrahams) who walks into a police station and confesses to a murder but the police do not believe her. She befriends a hit man played by John Cassady, who was also in Voice Over, this black comedy/thriller gets a little ‘of the wall’ the BFI describe it as having ‘an unorthodox narrative’ which does in fact sum up this wee movie. One small point, if you concentrate you may see comedian Alexei Sayle in his debut feature film.   

Captured.

The British Film Institute’s wonderful Flipside[1] series has done it again. Released in April 2013 Captured highlight’s some of the rediscovered work of British screenwriter and film director John Krish.

The main film on this DVD is a film that was classified as restricted and not declassified until 41 years after it was made. Captured (1959) was allegedly based on the experiences of soldiers captured by the North Koreans/Chinese Armies during the Korean War which took place between 1950 and 1953 between the Republic of Korea supported by the United Nations and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea who were supported by China and the Soviet Union. It highlighted ‘the bad treatment’ of prisoners and was meant to show what to expect if soldiers were captured and interned in a prison camp. This Military Training Film was supervised by an officer appointed by the General Staff and produced for the Army Kinema Corporation by World Wide Pictures and was approved and given a Crown copyright number B1131. The movie also had a civilian advisor who had previously been a captive himself, but after ten days the man started to experience fits. It all became to real for him and he was taken off the film, Krish finished the film without him.

 

The brainwashing begins!

We are in a prison camp in North Korea in 1950; it has no bared wire and no watchtowers. Twelve UN prisoners are held in huts, built to hold three, therefore tensions run high between the men which in theory makes it easier for there captors to brainwash and interrogate them! Mine you if you invade someone else’s country you got to be pretty naive to think they are going to welcome you with open arms. It was actually made over a six-week period with the exteriors shot in a purpose made village in an isolated part of Surry to closely resemble a Korean village. The idea was to make the conditions as real as possible for the actors that in turn created a very life like situation this was done in a purpose made studio in Barnet where we also witness the ‘water boarding’ which was carried out on actor Alan Dobie for real. The Korean/Chinese, all non-actors, were culled from local students and restaurant workers. 

 

Some where in Surrey.

A very strong and dramatic drama with actors that manage to convey a real and horrid situation, although Dobie tends to over egg the role of the brave British soldier that with save his fellow inmates from the brutal brainwashing of the Communist guards! John Krish hoped that this film would enable him to break into feature films but the fact that the War Office put a restricted notice on it did not help his case!

Also included, as part of the BFI Flipside release is a very interesting fantasy film that was eventually banned for 21 years. The Finishing Line (1977) was made for British Transport Films to deter children from vandalising and playing on the railway’s. It starts with a wee lad sitting astride a railway bridge over looking the tracks he imagines a children’s sports day which involves races and games that include railway vandalism and trespass which results in horrendous injury’s or death for the school kids willingly taking part. The ‘games’ include breaking through the railway fence and running across the line, playing chicken with an oncoming train and throwing large stones and bricks at a passing passenger train. Finally we have the great tunnel walk where the children walk through a dark 4 mile tunnel with a train approaching. With each of these action’s the consequences are graphically depicted with the walking wounded, the injured in side the train and dead children laid out along the track side. This allegedly is amongst the most daring public safety films ever made and generated an awful lot of public debate, which you can understand after watching the film. A surreal and bizarre piece of film making, if it was not meant to be so serious would remind you of a Pink Floyd video or a Monty Python sketch? 

 

These children will never cross The Finishing Line.

Two very short Public Information films are also included Sewing Machine (1973) where we witness the last minutes of a little girls life as she runs into a road and gets killed by a passing car. Controversially this was the first time a black child was seen in a government commercial which coursed letters of complaint to be written by the ‘wonderful British public’! Keep matches away from children was the subject of Searching (1974). It shows the interior of a completely burnt out family home and Krish uses a soundtrack of people and children screaming, when they realise that they cannot escape from the burning building, to great effect!

 

This wee child will be dead in 30 seconds. 

The danger of matches.

Maidstone Prison.

The final film on this DVD is H.M.P (1976), which was made as a recruiting film to attract men to work in Her Majesties Prison Service. Krish was allowed a free hand to work in any prisons other than Brixton - he chooses Maidstone. Using non-actors he shows what is involved in the job of a prison warden. The men spend four weeks in various departments observing what constitutes prison life. We are witness to some very interesting discussions between our trainees and the man that work in the prison and we learn that if the new men are to succeed then they will have to show humanity towards the people in their charge. But it was agreed by the majority of the people involved in this documentary that we have no idea how to deal with crime and criminals!

John Krish Director and Screenwriter.  

Born in London in 1923 John Krish never wanted to be a film director, he wanted to be a musician. But when he was 13/14 years old he saw Night Mail (1936) and fell in love with one of the sequences, so by the time he was sixteen he decided he wanted to earn his living in the film industry and managed to get a job at the old Denham Film Studios, coincidently as second assistant to Harry Watt, the director of Night Mail, on the movie Target for Tonight (1941). Also working in the cutting room as assistant editor. Called up for National Service he went to work for the Army film unit at Pinewood where he was assistant editor on The True Glory (1941) a co-production of the US Office of War Information and the British Ministry of Information that documented the victory on the Western Front from Normandy to the collapse of the Third Reich. As well as the army he made documentaries for other film units including The Crown and British Transport.  He also worked for the Children’s Film Unit on The Savage Gang in 1958. Making in all four feature films none of which he was particularly happy with, including The Man Who Had Power Over Women (1971), which stared Carol White. He also worked on the TV series The Avengers in 1967. But it was with documentaries that John Krish made his reputation and now thanks to BFI Flipside we get a chance to rediscover and reassess a section of this director’s body of work.

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[1] FLIPSIDE: rescuing weird and wonderful British films from obscurity and presenting them in new high-quality editions.

Sleepwalker .

Previous rambles have referred to the Flipside series and the great 'lost' films released through the BFI. My latest foray into this wonderful series is a rarely seen British 'horror' film from 1984 directed and co-written by Saxon Logan called Sleepwalker. The Blu-ray/DVD release also includes some of the directors short films and a very informative interview recorded in Cape Town, South Africa in July 2013 which gives a welcome insight into the short film career of a man whose work had been neglected until recently.

 

Our four protagonists.  

The story is in the horror genre. The film opens when we enter an old rundown house, seemingly tucked away in the countryside.  We see a woman asleep having a bad dream that involves murder, blood and broken glass. A grey haired man enters the woman room and injects her with a syringe. It transpires that the women have been asleep all afternoon. The man and woman are called Marion and Alex Britain; the couple are brother and sister! Marion gets out of bed and proceeds to get dressed and make herself ready for her guests, Alec works on his computer unable to except the fact that visitors are there way, not a social animal our Alec! The storm, that has been raging since the start of our story, lashes the building. Richard Paradise and his wife Angela finally arrive having had problems locating the house. All four drive to a nearby restaurant that has only one other patron the Old Englishman (veteran actor Raymond Huntley). As the party of four begin to get a little loose tongued due to a rather large intake of alcohol the obnoxious Richard sets out to not only upset his fellow guests but also the Restaurant proprietor (Fulton Mackay) and the waiter (a role that Lindsay Anderson was to play until he was stuck in New York with a damaged ankle thereafter Michael Medwin offered his services).  After the disastrous meal our four protagonists return to the house where, because of the storm and the age of the electrics, neither the lights nor the heating are working properly. More alcohol is consumed, pornography watched on the TV and Marion flirts with Richard which disgust's Angela - Alec storms off to bed. All but Marion have gone to bed, but eventually the house beds down for the night but by the time that day breaks nothing will ever be the same again.

 

Joanna David as Angela Paradise.

Surprisingly the main male lead in this film is Bill Douglas a man probably best known for his directing and writing rather than his acting although he did start his career as an actor. I did have the privilege of see Douglas's best know work, the three films that made up his Trilogy (1972-1978) at the RBCFT in Dumfries in February 2011. Douglas had already worked with Logan on his second short Working Surface in 1979 the men had remained friends and Douglas readily agreed to appear in Logan's medium length debut feature film.

 

Bill Douglas as Alec Britain. 

Logan admits that his influences for this feature film include the movies of Dario Argento and Mario Bava and James Whale's 1932 horror film, which starred Boris Karloff, The Old Dark House, and the political satire of his mentor Lindsay Anderson. 'The later point emphasising that the film is as much political satire as horror film, if not considerably more'[1]. What Michael Brooke meant by this is that Logan's film is seen as a metaphor for Thatcher’s Britain. Logan claims that it was based on a true story of a friend who did actually sleepwalk and could be prone to violence when in this state. It's a film with atmosphere which I would readily admit comes from Logan and Michael Keenan's script and the cinematography of Nick Beeks-Sanders, who's still regularly works in Television as a camera operator.

 

Heather Page as Marion Britain. 

Are we sure that what we witness is real or unreal? But what we are sure of is the movies barely hidden political motives. The characters and the house became the embodiment of Britain in the 1980's. The name of the house is ‘Albion’, which is the oldest known name of the island of Great Britain. Each character represents something different: Marion (Heather Page) is Britain, Alec (Bill Douglas) is the wounded socialist, Robert (Nickolas Grace) the veracious businessman who thrives in the free market climate set in motion by Thatcher and her government, with Angela (Joanna David)as the British middle class who dislike what's happening but comply without barely a whimper. The highlight of this political representation is indeed the restaurant scene. 

 

The obnoxious Richard Paradise.

The only reason that Logan was able to secure funding for the film was because of the vanity of his financier who provided the £40000 required when he found out that Lindsay Anderson was to appear in the movie and that he could meet him. Because there was not enough money for production design it was filmed on location in Hampshire at a house that had became empty when its elderly resident moved in with her family after she got to old to care for her self. Both the house and its contents were loaned to the film crew for a five-day shoot. The film took six weeks to edit. The local Fire Brigade provided the rain.

Saxon Logan.

Saxon Logan was born in Rhodesia where he first saw Lindsay Anderson’s If… (1968) a movie that he rates as the biggest influence on his filmmaking.  When he left the country of his birth to work in the UK he got an interview with Lindsay who employed him to work at the Royal Court Theatre in London. This opportunity gave Logan the chance to gain a broad experience of working in different disciplines and with different people within a theatrical environment. Eventually getting his own play to direct all by the time he was nineteen. His first entry into the world of the feature film was when he was invited to assist Lindsay with the production of O Lucky Man (1973). This appointment again gave him an induction to most aspects of filmmaking, working in various departments under the guidance of Lindsay who also made it possible for Logan to join the Technicians Union. Which in turn meant he could go on to work in the industry under his own accord and made it possible for him to join the BBC as an assistant editor. But it was the suggestion from the This Sporting Life (1963) director that he should make his own films that was to change his life.

A scene from Stepping Out.

The first short film he wanted to make involved a robbery and gender sex change but he was advised that this might well be too complicated for his first attempt! Finally making a less complex film about gender reversal called Stepping Out (1977) which unfortunately did not have universal appeal but did the cinema rounds as part of a double bill with Roman Polanski's psychological thriller The Tenant (1976) a film which also had a transgender theme. He followed this with another short that turned out to be quite a large stepping-stone to his first feature film. Working Surface: A Short Study (with actors) in the 'Ways' of a Bourgeois Writer was made in 1979 and as I have said before starred Bill Douglas as the writer. He fitted the role perfectly because the character called for an actor that looked like a writer and could type. Logan also used two actresses that would feature in Sleepwalker, and Douglas's own film Comrades (1986) Joanna David and Heather Page. Working Surface was programmed with The Lacemaker (1977), a French movie that starred Isabelle Huppert, and gradually gained a lot of attention.

 

Sleepwalker open's to great acclaim at the Berlin Film Festival.

This exposure lead to Sleepwalker opening the Berlin Film Festival that year, unusual for a film of this length and was repeated throughout the festival to great acclaim - but this is Europe! When returning to the UK the film was not accepted for a release not even on the Festival circuit, in fact the film 'disappeared' sinking without a trace completely, which after its reception at Berlin was quite a surprise. Logan returned to making documentaries never venturing into feature film production again.

Fourteen years after being shelved horror critic and writer Kim Newman rediscovered the film and arranged a screening where it was very well received by the invited audience. Following this it was shown throughout the country at privately arranged screenings. Saxon Logan's film was finally accepted a very long time after it made its debut at Berlin! Logan was contacted by Sam Dunn who informed him that the BFI wanted to release the film as part of its Flipside series which brings me to where I started, infusing over a film that was never given its rightful acclaim when if was first made. So thank you again BFI for all cineastes like my self who now gets a chance to see a movie that we would not normally be able to.

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[1] Michael Brooke Sight and Sound October 2013

Her Private Hell.

Modelling becomes Her Private Hell!!

Norman J Warren was one of the foremost British directors of exploitation horror, gruesome cult films with graphic violence and SF themed body horror in the 1970’s. But prior to this he directed two feature length sex films one of which has now been released on DVD as part of the BFI Flipside series and is credited with being the UK’s first narrative sex film! 

Various Clips from Britain's first narrative sex film.

Warren’s Her Private Hell (1968) is the cautionary tale of the beautiful but naïve Marisa (Italian actress Lucia Modugno who starred in the spaghetti western parody For a Few Dollars Less in 1966) who arrives from the continent for what she believes is a job as a legitimate fashion model but soon discovers that she is being groomed for the sleazy side of the business. This expose of corruption in the fashion industry allegedly put Britain on the map in the realm of homegrown adult feature films. Obviously Blow-Up (1966) was not considered a ‘sex film’!!

Originally Warren made a short film that in turn introduced him to two prospective producers, one of which Bachoo Sen, owner of many London cinemas, bankrolled the film. Although Warren’s debut feature film was made with limited facilities, an £18000 budget and a two-week timescale, its subject matter guaranteed good box office, running for over a year in London.  However the 2-year contract Warren signed meant that he did not receive any payment for directing the film, nevertheless it got his name known and the consequence was that he went on to make other films on the strength of it.

Friendly persuasion or exploitation?

The director, crew and cast really nailed the look and feel of the 60’s and for this reason alone it a worthwhile watch. Compared with modern movies it’s a very innocent piece, but sex at the time was a very sensitive subject where you were expected to confirm to the old Windmill Theatre rule where if you appeared naked you could not move (see The Look of Love (2013)). Actually during the filming, which took place in a converted cinema, a member of the public caught a glimpse of naked flesh and called the vice squad and consequently the film set was raided which added to it’s notoriety.