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.

Dick Malloy: Agent 077

I am currently writing about Agent 077, aka Dick Malloy (Ken Clark), an American spy who spends most of his time in Europe either punching bad guys or seducing exotic women. I named this blog after the second of three Agent 077 films, having found lobby cards and this original quad for dirt cheap in a local memorabilia store. Now, thanks to Dorado Films in the U.S. I finally have the out-of-print DVD box set of all three films and am working my way through. As is to be expected, they are entertaining but not amazing. Most of the sixties eurospy films I have seen can be a bit of a slog to get through. Trying to match the thrills and romance of Bond on a quarter of the budget was always going to show on screen, and they often come across as travelogues with the occasional pedestrian car chase and raven-haired beauty wrapped in a towel.

Despite their shortcomings I personally find the whole genre fascinating, and I now have to justify this by writing a chapter of my thesis on them. Ideally I need to turn in the first draft of this, a mere 10,000 words, some time next week.

So, the Agent 077 films are:

Mission Bloody Mary (1965)

From the Orient With Fury (1965, originally titled Fury on the Bosphorus)

Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1967)

All three were directed by Sergio Grieco, under the name Terence Hathaway (a common practice at the time, in order to fool Italian audiences that the film they were watching was American) who clearly had a good relationship with Ken Clark. He made two other eurospy films with him, Tiffany Memorandum (1967) and The Fuller Report (1968). Neither of which are on DVD but are available on YouTube, thanks again to Dorado Films who own videotape versions of these films. They are not good enough quality to release on DVD but they are watchable. I intend to watch all five, as although my focus is specifically on Agent 077, I feel that the other two are relevant to the set. Hopefully they will not be too disappointing.

The eurospy film was massively popular in the 1960s with the majority coming out of Italy, and yet it is very underserved when it comes to legitimate DVD releases. There are probably hundreds that are currently commercially unavailable. This is probably because there is not a lot of mainstream interest in them, which is a pity. Like all popular genres, they tell us a lot about national identity and the times in which they were produced. The costumes, haircuts, cars, etc. are often a far more authentic depiction of their era than the big-budgeted Bond films, which have for the most part achieved a kind of timeless quality.

I have written a large article for a future issue of Cinema Retro on another eurospy film, Bonditis (1968), a one-off spy spoof from Switzerland, which I have probably mentioned on here before. I will also be writing about that for this PhD chapter, depending on how close I get to 10,000 with Agent 077.

I often get asked why I spend so much time with films that no one else (i.e. in the mainstream) has ever seen or heard of. Even I have to admit that watching obscure cinema is something of a crapshoot, but for every five bad or boring films (I saw Sharknado 3 last week, and that was terrible), you find a gem. Maybe. 

Literature Review

I thought it may be of interest to someone out there if I posted my bibliography on here. This is not meant to be the definitive word on the topic under investigation, but I hope it's fairly thorough.


Bibliography

Barker, M. and Brooks, K. 1998, Knowing Audiences: Judge Dredd: Its Fans, Friends and Foes, Luton, University of Luton Press

Bayman, L. and Rigoletto, S. eds. 2013, Popular Italian Cinema, 2013, Chippenham, Palgrave Macmillan

Benzel, T. 2012, Muchas Gracias Seňor Lobo: Paul Naschy Memorabilia, Birkenfeld, Kessler & Benzel GbR

Bergfelder, T. 2005, International Adventures: German Popular Cinema and European Co-Productions in the 1960s, Oxford, Berghan Books

Branaghan, S. edited by Chibnall, S. 2006, British Film Posters: An Illustrated History, Cambridge, BFI/ Cambridge University Press

Chapman, J., Glancy, M. and Harper, S. 2007, The New Film History: Sources, Methods, Approaches, 2007, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan

Chibnall, S. and McFarlane, B. 2009, The British 'B' Film, Camberley, BFI/ Palgrave Macmillan

Chibnall, S. 2013, 'Rome, Open for British Production: The Lost World of 'Britalian' films, 1946-1954', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 33:2, 234-269

Creepy Images [journal] available through: www.creepy-images.com 

Davies, R. R. 2011, Kiss Kiss Kill Kill: The Graphic Art and Forgotten Spy Films of Cold War Europe, St Albans, Picture and Sound Ltd

Devraj, R. Duncan, P. ed. 2010, The Art of Bollywood, Hong Kong, Taschen

Dougall, A. consultant ed. Gassner, D. 2012, James Bond: 50 Years of Movie Posters, London, Dorling Kindersley

Dyer, G. 1982, Advertising as Communication, London, Routledge

Eley, G. 2005, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to The History of Society, London, The University of Michigan Press

Garret S. Balazs, A. ed. 1996, Hollywood Handbook, New York, Universe Publishing

Grant, K. 2011, Any Gun Can Play: The Essential Guide to Euro-Westerns, Godalming, FAB Press

Hall, S. and Neale, S. 2010, Epics, Spectacles and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History, Michigan, Wayne State University Press

Hamilton, J. 2005, Beasts in the Cellar: The Exploitation Film Career of Tony Tenser, Godalming, FAB Press

Hanson, S. 2007, From Silent Screen to Multi-Screen: A History of Cinema Exhibition in Britain Since 1896, Manchester, Manchester University Press

Hantke, S. ed. 2004, Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear, Mississippi, University Press of Mississippi

Hawkins, J. 2000, Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Avante-garde, Minnesota, The University of Minnesota Press

Hearn, M. 2010, The Art of Hammer, China, Titan Books

Hughes, H. 2004, Once Upon a Time in the Italian West, Padstow, I.B. Taurus

Hunter, I. Q. 2013, British Trash Cinema, Basingstoke, BFI/ Palgrave Macmillan

Jackson, N. 2012, 'Stained With the Blood of the Marketing Department', paper given at Cine Excess, London

Lamberti, E. ed. 2012, Behind the Scenes at the BBFC: Film Classification from the Silver Screen to the Digital Age, London, BFI/ Palgrave Macmillan

Murphy, R. ed. 1997, The British Cinema Book, 1st edition, London, BFI

Nava, M. 2007, Visceral Cosmopolitanism: Gender Culture and the Normalisation of Difference, 1st edition, London, Bloomsbury/ Berg Publishers

Nowell-Smith, G. and Ricci, S. eds. 1998, Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture and National Identity 1945-95 , London, BFI

Sarowitz, Sam, 2008, Translating Hollywood: The World of Movie Posters, New York, Mark Batty Publisher

Schaefer, E. 1999, "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!" A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959, Durham, Duke University Press

Shipka, D. 2011, Perverse Titillation: The Exploitation Cinema of Italy, Spain and France, 1960-1980, North Carolina, McFarland

Smith, A. 2012, 'Cowboys and Cannibals: an interview with Ruggero Deodato', Diabolique, Issue no. 8, Jan/ Feb 2012

Spicer, A. and McKenna, A.T. 2013, The Man Who Got Carter: Michael Klinger, Independent Production and the British Film Industry, 1960-1980, London, IB Taurus

Trevelyan, J. 1973, What the Censor Saw, Slough, Michael Joseph Ltd

Waller, G. A. 2002, Moviegoing in America, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers

The story so far (in brief)

I was lucky enough to receive a full bursary from Brunel University last year to do a PhD. This was awesome because there was no way I could ever afford to do one on my own. The downside was that I'm supposed to be doing it full time, but the funding only covers the fees. And I am not exactly well off. So the result of this is that I'm working four days a week teaching media to college students who couldn't care less, whilst trying to do my PhD work at home and on the bus. Not exactly ideal, but until anything better comes along, it's kind of working.

I got to know Brunel uni through the Cine Excess festival. I gave two papers, one in 2010 and one in 2011. You can find one of them on my old blog here. My other paper was on the sexploitation films of Norman J. Warren, and I'm very slowly working on a book about him. But that's another story.

As a result of those papers I was invited to give a lecture on the Brunel Cult Film MA back in November 2011 on British sleaze of the seventies. It was so nice to do that, after spending most of my teaching time working with sixteen-year olds with attitudes.

So I like to think that doing that lecture helped them to remember me when I applied for the PhD just a few months later. And here I am, nearly a year in. I've mostly been reading and figuring out what I'm going to do. I have to submit my first 10,000 word chapter by the end of next month. 

At some point I'll do a post on how Bonditis inspired the direction I'm going in. For now, here's a poster.