Second Features - We started a podcast

 

Another fun thing that half the world seems to have started during lockdown is a podcast. Not to miss out on the action, Dr Laura Mayne and myself have started a podcast, which can be found on Acast, iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify, with other platforms on the way. Why not check us out!

The Legend of the Witches & Secret Rites now available on blu ray!

Little did I suspect when I wrote about Legend of the Witches (1970, Malcolm Leigh) on this blog a few years ago that one day it would not only be legitimised through its restoration and release by the British Film Institute, but that I would get to make a contribution to the booklet. I was able to write a short essay about the Fancey family (again) and Border Films, the company behind this odd little exploitation documentary.

It's accompanied on the disc by Secret Rites (1971, Derek Ford), which I've not seen before but with Derek Ford involved, it ought to be equally entertaining and inappropriate at least. After all, this is the man behind The Yellow Teddybears (1963, Robert Hartford-Davies) and Diversions (1976, Derek Ford).

Once again the BFI Flipside range have surprised us with something one would never expect get this kind of treatment. I'm still amused that they released Primitive London (1965, Arnold Louis Miller) and London in the Raw (1964, Arnold Louis Miller). After occasionally veering close to arthouse territory with some of the intervening Flipside releases it's good to see them get back to their origins with more exploitation documentaries about a side of life that most respectable folk would rather ignore.

You can find more details about this new release here.

PhD Thesis Available Online

It's been up there for two weeks and no one told me! However, now I know I'm telling everyone. If you want to see what a thesis given an unconditional pass looks like (I'm showing off I know, but indulge me), you can see it on the Sussex Library Database.

If you would rather wait, in another year or so I'll have turned it into a book. Hopefully. But for now at least it's somewhere, and I'm a doctor.

PhD - The results are in

Like the legendary peplum heroes of old, I bravely embarked on a noble six-year quest to become a Doctor in Film History. Some scoffed at the thought. Some said it couldn't be done. Some said that I should do something more useful with my time. Actually, I'm not sure if anyone did any of those things. Generally people have been quite supportive. Anyway, to continue...

I battled my way through libraries, archives, film fairs, seminars, conferences, and above all my own laziness, to eventually submit a completed thesis, which following a viva last week, has netted me a Doctorate. I was given an unconditional pass, which came as something of a shock after the two hours of suggested changes. It turned out the feedback was so that I could turn it into a book to submit to the BFI. They thought it was a major piece of scholarship which makes an important contribution to film history. Which is nice.

I am trying to celebrate this week by relaxing and catching up with TV shows on the Sky box, but I also have 50 essays waiting to be marked, so there's that to bring me back down to Earth. 

So there you have it. You too could be a doctor in just six years. Easy.

The Letter 'X'

I recently gave a paper at the Researching Past Cinema Audiences conference at Aberystwyth. This gave me an opportunity to use some material on The Yellow Teddybears which I had originally included in my thesis but had to cut out when I realized it was no longer relevant. I have uploaded my paper to Academia.edu if you would like to take a look.

I was also interviewed for the American public radio podcast The World in Words, which comes out of Boston. The presenter, Patrick Cox, is a reporter for the BBC World Service, but I don't think this podcast is BBC-affiliated. Either way, it's rather good. They were looking at the use of the letter X in popular culture, so naturally I was there to talk about the history of the 'X' certificate. I did my best not to disgrace myself, but I'll be happy to take feedback if I got anything wrong. It was fun to be interviewed as a film historian again, and I hope to get the opportunity again!

Recently I have managed to bag myself two more blu ray booklet-writing jobs. One is for an Italian film, the other a British film, so I'm enjoying the distraction of thinking about what I'm going to write for either of them when I am supposed to be marking a pile of essays. My favourite essay so far told me that the presenters of Queer Eye are "geologists" who have "supernatural powers." Somebody needs to pitch that show to Netflix.

It's finished!!

I wrote my first PhD proposal in 2011. It was about live TV drama of the 1950s and 1960s. I didn't get anywhere with that one, and I started to look at my collection of Bonditis ephemera and wonder what I was going to do with it. Some time in 2012 I visited the Cinema Museum for the first time, and looking around at all the fantastic posters and collectibles I began to think that maybe there was a PhD in all of that. Having spoken at Cine Excess a couple of times, and given a guest lecture on British cult film in 2011 at Brunel, I applied for their fee waiver with a proposal that looked at film promotion in the 1960s. it was very vague, but knowing some of the academics there through Cine Excess, I got in.

I started with Brunel in September 2012, and my supervisor was the brilliant Leon Hunt. He helped me begin to shape my idea into something which might actually work. his own passion for Italian cult cinema in particular began to interest me. My own historical interests were very Brit-focused, and he helped me to see that there was a whole continent of fascinating European film that might be worth exploring. Coupled with my collection of Bonditis material, a 1960s spy film from Germany distributed by Compton, a British company, ideas began to coalesce. The notion that one could study the distribution of European cult film in the UK in the 1960s took hold, and that was it. I loved studying, and the fee waiver was a massive help, but I still had to work as a college lecturer for three days a week. This was a real struggle, and after a year I knew that I was never going to get anywhere without more financial backing.

Jobs.ac.uk told me that Sussex were offering full scholarships through the AHRC-sponsored CHASE programme. This was worth a shot, and I applied. This was late 2013, and the fact that by this point I had already written a literature review and knew what I wanted my project to be really helped shape a decent application. I was offered a place, but after a long wait I was turned down for the scholarship. This was a massive disappointment, particularly as 2014 was already shaping up to be quite a difficult year, and I was so desperate to get out of my current employment. About two months after that, as I was still working slowly on my research, I received an email out of the blue from the head of Music, Film and Media at Sussex to tell me that the department wanted to offer me a scholarship anyway. My application had been the strongest film one they had and they were very keen to have me. That was the single greatest email I have ever received, even better than the time Barbara Steele asked to friend me on Linkedin. I should probably frame it. From that point on my life took an upward turn, and my Doctorate would live after all! 

Three years and four months later I have just submitted my finished thesis, all 85,000 words (plus a 50,000 word appendix) and am now waiting for a viva. My supervisors have been brilliant, particularly comedy legend Andy Medhurst, who for the last year has shepherded me through more or less single-handedly. This research has opened up so many great opportunities for me, and I hope that it will lead to an actual career. A decent full-time job somewhere would be a good start at least. There have also been exciting media moments along the way, such as my appearance on The One Show a couple of years ago, and yesterday I spoke down the line to Patrick Cox, a BBC journalist based in Boston, about the development of the 'X' certificate in the UK and the US. He contacted me having found my chapter in the Routledge British Cinema History book which was published a year or so ago. I consider myself very lucky!

I'm not sure how much more I will use this blog now that my research has finished, at least for the time being. I'm sure eventually I will be encouraged to turn my thesis into a book. I'm considering a book just on the Fancey family at least. However, as well as catching up on some of my other writing commitments for magazines, I really need to get on and finish my Norman J. Warren book which has been in the background for about nine years now. He's been very patient, but it has to be done this year! Still, this is the life I have created for myself, and I'm happy with it.

Antonio Margheriti and The Waiting Game

It's been a while since my last post. This is mainly because I was in the final sprint of trying to finish the first full draft of my PhD thesis. I finally submitted it a month ago, and now I am waiting for my supervisors to tell me what's wrong with it.

In the meantime I started a new blog, which feels a bit like I'm cheating on this one. It's purely about the films of Antonio Margheriti, who I think has been critically ignored, and is written off as "not as good as Mario Bava." I hope to redress this through the blog, and eventually I hope to get a book out of it. Or maybe a DVD extra or two. You can find this blog here, or on the blog roll on the right. I'm really enjoying writing about his films so far, with Danza macabra, aka Castle of Blood being a particular revelation.

As soon as I get feedback from my supervisors I can make the final corrections and get the thing sent off to the external and internal examiners. I'm just desperate at this point to get it all finished so I can move on with my life and get a job!