Pit of Darkness (1961, Lance Comfort, UK: Butchers Film Distributors)

Pit of Darkness opens on a bomb site somewhere in London, still a common thing in the early 1960s. A young boy spots what appears to be a body down amongst the rubble, but when he investigates he discovers the man is still alive. Richard Logan (William Franklyn) slowly comes round and realises that he has been "coshed" by some ruffians. He thanks the boy for his help and makes his way home. When he walks in his wife Julie (Moira Redmond) is shocked: Richard thinks he is only three hours late, but he has actually been missing for three weeks. He has no memory of his whereabouts and spends the next eighty minutes piecing together the mystery: the fact that he works for a company who specialise in making burglar-proof safes might have something to do with it.

Pit of Darkness came late in the career of Lance Comfort, a solid British director who specialised in supporting features, more commonly known as 'B' films. To Hammer fans he will be best known as the director of the now lost comedy The Ugly Duckling (1959) with Bernard Bresslaw, or at least if it is not lost it is a film which no one wants to let out of the Hammer vault. Pit of Darkness forms part of a sort of "Darkness" trilogy in Comfort's career, which was most likely unintentional. He previously directed Daughter of Darkness (1948), as well as the horror classic Devils of Darkness (1965) shortly before he died. Darkness is a good, go-to word to use in a film title, as it can mean different things depending on the theme of the film. In this particular case the pit of darkness in question is purely metaphorical. Admittedly Logan does wake up in a bomb site, a pit of darkness of a sort, but it is the darkness of amnesia which is he trying to claw out.

The film was released with a 'U' certificate from the British Board of Film Censors following some brief cuts. It seems to have been well received. In the December 1961 issue of Monthly Film Bulletin Pit of Darkness was summarised as having a "Complex, fanciful plot made plausible by effective writing and direction. The pace is brisk, there are some spirited fisticuffs, and there is the personality of William Franklyn - unbeatable in suggesting solid virtues behind a rakish, smooth exterior." In the excellent The British 'B' Film by Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane Pit of Darkness is compared to other Lance Comfort films, who despite the low budgets and quick turnaround generally managed to raise them above being merely formulaic: "All Comfort's films are persuasive narratives, marked by absence of sentimentality and the whiff of human reality, by a feeling for melodramatic tension and for thematic contrasts underlined by a visual style which can move into the expressive and the metaphoric." (p. 142-143)

Butcher's Film Distributors were the typical independent distribution company. It appears they were in business as distributors and occasional producers from the early 1930s, mainly with factual short films such as Strictly Vegetarian (1932, unknown) and the occasional western or thriller like Gorilla Ship (1932, Frank Strayer, US: International Film Studios). 

They were still submitting films for classification in the late 1970s, mostly of the Hot Dreams (Amore libero, 1974, Pier Ludovigo Pavoni, Italy: Aquila Cinematografica) or French Nympho (Candice Candy, 1978, Renau Pieri, France: Les Films de l'Epeé) variety. According to my 1970 copy of the The British Film and Television Year Book Butcher's were by then based on Wardour Street in Soho and the managing director was the London-born John I. Philips, of whom I'm ashamed to say I know nothing. Butcher's made around twenty feature films, mostly in the 1950s and early 1960s, perhaps the best known being the proto-slasher Cover Girl Killer (1959, Terry Bishop, UK: Butcher's Film Distributors) starring a pre-Steptoe Harry H. Corbett.

A vital point in the plot pivots on Logan's recollection of the song "My Heart is the Lover," which we hear over and over throughout the film, so it is interesting to see that the song was released in sheet music form. This is most likely the only product tie-in for Pit of Darkness. It is an enjoyable thriller featuring safe-cracking, explosions and a blonde femme fatale, played by Jacqueline Jones. When she first appeared on screen I was convinced it was Caron Gardner. The film also features performances from Anthony Booth, later to be Robin Askwith's best mate and Tony Blair's father-in-law, and a young and very beautiful Nanette Newman. 

I saw this when it was broadcast by Talking Pictures TV, the freeview channel which is connected to distributor Renown Pictures. If you are a fan of obscure British 'B' movies this is one of the best channels out there. They don't always have the best picture quality, or even the correct aspect ratio, but it is the only place you are likely to see this sort of stuff.

Hercules and the Perils of the Corrupted File

It's been far too long since I last wrote in this blog. As 2017 hit, so did the realisation that I need to finish my PhD this year and find a full-time job, given that my scholarship runs out this summer. So it is fair to say that a certain amount of panic has gripped me for the past four months. I have applied for several jobs so far both around the UK and abroad, currently to no avail. It's difficult not to feel a certain amount of despondency, but I am still remaining optimistic. There is a Film Studies lecturer job out there somewhere with my name on the office door.

Whilst applying for jobs I am also attempting to finish my PhD. I totalled up my word count so far and realised that what I really needed was another chapter. I have gone against the advice of my supervisors, who when I first suggested the idea shot it down, and decided to write about the peplum. Amongst other factors, the knowledge that Hercules Unchained was the most popular film in Britain in 1960 (according to box-office receipts) was one of the pieces of information that piqued my interest in the distribution of international popular cinema in Britain in the first place.

I have been collecting promotional material to do with the peplum film since I started this research, given that people like Compton handled many of these Italian sword-and-sandal films in the early 1960s. It seemed like a shame not to use them, so armed with a handful of original press books and a collection of downloads from rarelust.com and YouTube I began writing a new chapter. I have also picked up a few books including a recent title from Robert Rushing so had plenty of information and research to draw on. It was the easiest, quickest piece of writing I had ever done. In five days I had written 5000 words, which for me is highly productive. 

At the end of another successful day of writing I was also trying to multi-task. I have been making DVDs of my Dad's old home videos, and one of them needed compiling and exporting into a new file before I could burn it to DVD. I assembled it on a Premiere Pro timeline and hit export, thinking my Mac could handle working on this in the background whilst I continued writing. When I went to return to my Word file it would not open. It had disappeared. My heart raced and I panicked. What quickly transpired was that Premiere was trying to export this video to the folder I had selected, but as  bonus was also writing it to the folder with this chapter in (which was on the same external hard drive) and was writing video metadata information over my chapter. I stopped Premiere exporting, but it was too late. I spent the next two hours trying every type of file recovery possible, including an hour's pointless chat with a Microsoft helpdesk, all to no avail: The file wasn't deleted. It could not be recovered. It had been written over. My chapter so far was gone.

Maciste, aka Goliath (Gordon Scott) in Goliath and the Vampires

I felt like Goliath here, only instead of an uprooted tree I wanted to hurl my Mac out of the window. I had enjoyed a week of unbridled productivity, and it was lost. I had not backed it up anywhere, or emailed a copy to my wife to show off. I learned a painful lesson, scribbled as much down on a piece of paper that I could remember, and immediately backed up all my other writing on Dropbox, where I now save everything.

Goliath's fiance Guja (Leonora Ruffo) in Goliath and the Vampires

 I have started again, but I am not enjoying it half as much this time. What I have written is possibly better, but I will never know. Occasionally I remember that something I am trying to write now was worded in a much better way last time, but I don't know what it was. It's frustrating. However, I've had other ideas as I'm writing that I had not put in last time, so overall it will probably be okay. I had a good research trip to London just the day after I lost it all, where I visited the Cinema Museum and the BBFC archives, so I have tons of material. What I have struggled with since is finding the time to sit and write. It has just been the Easter holidays and I also have lots of coursework to mark, so that perfect week where I could just write and write and write has been hard to replicate. However, now the teaching and marking are almost done it will get better. It has to! My goal is to submit a first completed draft of the thesis by the beginning of June.

So learn the lesson from me and make sure your work is backed up. Please!

"Grossly Obscene and Primarily Erotic!" Swedish Sex Education in 1970s Britain

Last weekend I gave a paper on the censorship and legal problems around two Swedish sex education films which were released here in the mid-1970s. I came across this story as it involved Jacey cinemas and the Fancey family, both of whom I had been researching.

The paper was part of the Sex and the Cinema conference at the University of Kent. It was an excellent conference and I met some interesting people. I also had very positive feedback, which is always nice. It's also reassuring to see other people's papers and realise that the areas in which I'm researching are also of interest to other academics, and that I'm not misjudging this whole thing.

You can read the paper on my Academia.edu profile here.

The Boys (1962, Sidney J. Furie, UK: Galaworldfilm Productions)

US one sheet poster

The boys outside a Jacey cinema in Picadilly

One of the first distributors I began researching for my PhD was Kenneth Rive, who for a number of years ran a company called Gala. He became known as a specialist in French New Wave and European art house cinema during the 1950s and 1960s, but every so often he also produced films under the Galaworldfilm Productions banner. I have finally caught up with possibly one of his best, The Boys from 1962.

(L - R) Rita Webb, Betty Marsden, Patrick Magee, David Lodge

The Boys begins in a court room with very little exposition. We are thrown into a court case as four teenage boys are in the dock on a charge of murder; the stabbing to death of a garage nightwatchman during a bungled robbery. Various witnesses for the prosecution give evidence as to the yobbish, loutish behaviour these boys indulged in around the west end of London on the night in question, whilst their concerned parents look on in horror. This is 1962 after all, when the penalty for a murder conviction was still death.

What is particularly enjoyable about this film is the way in which it deconstructs the narrative, offering a commentary on the unreliable nature of storytelling. Each of these witnesses offers circumstantial evidence that on the surface points to the guilt of these four boys, but it based purely on assumptions that these boys are up to no good, purely because they look like teddy-boys and one of them carries a flick-knife. Even the audience believes they must be guilty, before we hear testimony from each boy in turn, who fills out the details and gives a wider context for each of the stories told by these so-called eye witnesses. Yes, they may have seemed like louts, but really they were just teenage boys out for a good time. Suddenly you begin to believe they must be innocent, and that this film is a critique of the attitudes adults have towards a youth culture they mistrust and don't understand. The drama, with the present taking place in the courtroom and the flashbacks taking us to the night in question, really creates tension and never lets on which way the verdict will go right until the last minute. Like all good courtroom dramas, you feel invested in the outcome. Sidney J. Furie does not pass judgment on these young boys, and creates realistic, likeable characters who are as much the victims of poverty and circumstance as the trouble-makers of a Charles Dickens novel.

One thing that really makes this film stand out is its tremendous cast. Familiar faces follow each other onto the witness stand, such as Roy Kinnear and Wilfrid Brambell, and Felix Aylmer, recently seen as a predatory paedophile in Hammer's Never Take Sweets From a Stranger (1960, Cyril Frankel, UK), is now on the right side of the law as the judge, listening to questioning from both Richard Todd and Robert Morley. One of the boys, Stan Coulter, is played by that irascible raconteur Dudley Sutton, in one of his very first starring roles, and he is brilliant. He goes from menacing thug to wide-eyed innocent, remaining completely believable the whole time. Popular singer and heart-throb Jess Conrad plays one of his friends. 

Richard Todd for the prosecution on the left, Robert Morley defending on the right

My desire to watch this film was prompted by an interview I conducted with Aisha Ahmed (now Wills) last summer for a book chapter I was writing on Jacey cinemas. As a teenager in Birmingham she started working for the chain at their offices there before being selected to become the glamorous face of the company. As "Miss Jacey" she was required to attend glittering premieres in London, attend public events and even model for advertising materials. In 1961 she was encouraged to get into the film industry and was offered a small uncredited part in The Boys, as a kiosk girl. Being a Kenneth Rive production, her scene was shot in the Jacey on Piccadilly, which was currently screening the Italian neo-realist drama Adue e le compagne (1960, Antonio Pietrangeli, Italy: Zebra Film), which Rive had retitled Hungry for Love. Also on offer was the creaky striptease spectacular Femmes de Paris (1953, Jean Boyer, France: Hoche Productions), and the advertising for both can be clearly seen in the film.

The boys are causing trouble outside the Jacey

Aisha "Miss Jacey" Ahmed in her cameo role

Her film career was stymied when she refused to appear in horror films, and she continued to work for the Jacey company for the remainder of the 1960s. She kindly sent me a photo taken during the shooting of her scenes.

Aisha discussing her scene between takes with Sidney J. Furie whilst operator Chick Waterson readies the camera. Photo courtesy of Aisha Wills. 

 The Boys is a great example of Britain in transition. This is a pre-Beatles, pre-sexual revolution 1960s where boys still wear smart suits and go to dance halls for a good time. Jess Conrad may have been a pop star, but his style was soon going to become very unfashionable indeed. The location photography around London reveals bomb sites and Victorian tenements alongside new high-rise blocks under construction (in fact one of the boys works as an apprentice carpenter on one such block). With Furie having apparently told the boys to "rip up the script," their scenes have a freshness and improvised quality which helps accentuate the contrast between their poor working-class lives and the more stilted, formal atmosphere of the court room. These boys could have easily stepped out of a John Osborne play, or one of the "Angry Young Men" films that were still in production during this period. Perhaps the court room nature of the film, or the fact that Sidney J. Furie was not considered part of that British New Wave, means that The Boys is neglected when talking about depictions of youth in British cinema of the early 1960s. It is certainly as much of a 'message' picture as one of Tony Richardson's or Lindsay Anderson's, and these boys feel like Karel Reisz found them when shooting his Free Cinema documentary We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959, UK: Graphic Films). Like that film, here Furie, with Stuart Douglass' script, is challenging audience perceptions and asking for tolerance and understanding towards young people.

Sadly, for aspect ratio fans, the version of The Boys currently available from Talking Pictures TV and Renown DVD has been cropped from it's widescreen in order to fill 16:9 TVs. This is a pity as the photography is excellent, and there are times when information is missing from the edge of the frame because they cut it off, including a crucial final shot in the court room. In these times of restoration and preservation of lost and long-missing films, this is particularly disappointing. Despite this it is still well worth tracking down and deciding for yourself whether these boys did it, or if they are just victims of circumstance.

Arrow Video and Mario Bava

I have once again been invited to contribute to a blu ray release from those great people at Arrow Video. As I have been discovering the world of Mario Bava over the last two or three years it is perfect timing. I have been able to draw on the research I conducted for my paper on the Fancey family back in May AND my giallo paper in Italy in June. Also over the summer I wrote a chapter for Routledge on the Jacey cinema chain, which turned out to be directly relevant to my PhD after all. Part of that research involved interviewing the last surviving member of the Jacey family, John N. Cohen, who had personal dealings with the Fancey family, so this has all neatly dovetailed together. 

I am trying where possible to use things I am writing towards my PhD, which as far as I can tell is fine, but it does mean that by the time the thing is finished most of it will already have been published elsewhere, and I can kiss that offer of publishing it as a book goodbye. Still, I can't worry about that now. I just need a finished PhD, and then I can write books about anything I want.

Speaking of which, I am still working on Norman J. Warren's book. He is now shooting a new movie, which is exciting but does give me another chapter to write. I have interviewed several more people for it in the last couple of months, so I really hope I can get it finished within the next twelve months. It's driving me slightly insane.

Anyway, to be involved with Arrow is exciting again. I have written an essay on the Fancey family who were behind the distribution of Five Dolls For an August Moon. They also attempted, fairly unsuccessfully, to distribute Bay of Blood too. There is some overlap here with my essay for the Mark of the Devil blu ray, as that was also handled unsuccessfully by the Fanceys. As far as I can tell, despite Five Dolls For an August Moon receiving an X-certificate, with no cuts required, it looks like they just let it sit on a shelf. Seeing that the Fancey family archive appears to have gone up in smoke, it's likely that I will never know.

The new Arrow blu ray is due out on the 1st February 2016, and marks the third time now that I have been involved with them, and it is the fifth time I have contributed to a blu ray release (the other two being the BFI and Shameless). I hope there will be plenty more in the future...

X-Ploitation: How independent film distributors battled against the BBFC and won

A few weeks ago I was invited to write a guest blog post for an AHRC-funded project over at the universities of York and East Anglia entitled "Transformation and Tradition in Sixties British Cinema". Obviously I jumped at the chance to be part of a bigger project that ties in so well with my own research interests. Also I am a shameless whore when it comes to the chance to self-publicise. So if you head over to here you can read the post which came out of my MA research into the link between distribution and censorship. 

I have just found a new lecturing post at the University of Chichester teaching a video games module on a media studies degree, so some of my reading over the next couple of months is going to be in a totally different field to that which I am currently used to. Should be fun.

Blood Baths and Bloody Brides

The conference in Lincoln went really well. It was good to present some new research, but even better to meet other academics in the same field. One particular stroke of luck was meeting Emma Petts who presented on some research she has been doing into British cinema audiences. This is exactly the kind of research I have been looking for, and hopefully when her own project is finished I may be able to use some of it.

However, another week, another conference. This week I have been writing about the UK reception and marketing of the giallo, ready to fly off to Rome in a few days. I'm very excited to be going to my first overseas conference.

The organisation behind this conference looks amazing. There will be 35mm film screenings, plenty of directors and cast members available for panels, plus two full days of papers being presented by far more knowledgable people than myself. I'm hoping my relative lack of experience in the giallo does not become too noticeable. I'm not writing about the genre or its most famous stars as such, so I ought to get away with it. I'm on the much safer territory of discussing who was distributing these films in the UK and what happened with the BBFC. I'm a little worried that I'm becoming a one-trick pony with all this distribution and censorship stuff. I will probably take a year off conferences after this, so next time I will be have some different (to a point) stuff to present.

This was the first UK release of Mario Bava's Bay of Blood in 1980, eleven years after it was first released in Italy. It is one of the examples I will be discussing in this paper. It was distributed by my old friends New Realm.

Dario Argento's seminal The Bird With the Crystal Plumage on the other hand got away with no BBFC-imposed cuts at all in 1970, but did suffer from this somewhat lacklustre new title.


I will no doubt come back from Rome with an even bigger enthusiasm for all things Italian. Before I first started my PhD back in 2012 I knew or cared very little for Italian horror, and even less for the giallo. It was all about Hammer and Roger Corman as far as I was concerned. Regular meetings with Dr. Leon Hunt changed all that for me, as I began to realise just how significant the Italian film industry was when considering the presence of international film in British cinemas. Even though I am no longer at Brunel University, I am continuing to expand my Italian film experience, enjoying giallos, gothic horrors and Eurospy thrillers. I finally appreciate the great work of Mario Bava, Antonio Marghereti, Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento, and I'm even listening to Goblin.