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!
Wynne Kinch (Jenny Agutter) was adopted. She had been raised Catholic by her mother, but at some stage prior to seven, still old enough to know about what was happening, she was put up for adoption and taken into a loving family with two older brothers. Considerably older. Of the brothers, George (Bryan Marshall) is her favourite. And now, at the age of fourteen, Wynne's familial love is turning into a sexually driven lust and obsession. Denying that it is incest because she was adopted, Wynne feels completely justified in having sexual urges towards her thirty-two year old brother. This leads to frustration that he does not see her in that way, but merely as his younger sister.
Wynne (Jenny Agutter) wants George (Bryan Marshall) to see her as a woman
Wynne and her adoptive family live in a new high rise block in Bracknell, Berkshire. Everything around her is either white or concrete, and all of it new, yet she still yearns to spend time in their old home: a large, crumbling farmhouse on the other side of the park. It is condemned and marked for demolition, like all of the other Victorian property we see in the area. Anything not brand new, it seems, is unwanted. Wynne's mother (Madge Ryan) exclaims to her father (Billy Russell), who also lives with them, "This place is a palace compared to where we used to live." "Oh yes?" he replies, "and you name me a palace where the doorknobs keep falling off." There is something rotten at the heart of this new brutalist utopia.
This crumbling facade not only represents the forbidden love at the centre of the family, but the possibility that George may be a killer of young women. Bodies have been found in the park near their old home, and the police are seemingly without a lead. When Wynne spots scratch marks on George's back, and finds his jumper covered in blood, she begins to suspect that maybe he is the culprit. Far from putting her off, this causes her love for him to grow stronger, feeling a need to protect him. Only she truly understands him and can help him. She fantasises about George kissing her, or walking in on her in the bath. Wynne confesses her sinful thoughts to a priest during the day, and caresses herself in bed at night.
Throughout the film she becomes an amateur detective, following him around and searching for clues in his bedroom. The occasional red herring is also thrown in, such as the interest her other brother, the pill-popping Len (Gregory Phillips), shows in the grisly details as reported in the press: "You'd think if he was going to kill all these people, he'd at least rape them. It seems such a waste." He even keeps a scrapbook of press cuttings, a sure sign of any serial killer. There is also the occasional appearance of a potentially sleazy bus conductor (Simon Ward), who grabs Wynne by the wrist and tells her "Your skirt's too short." Ultimately Wynne does solve the crime, and in the process is forced to grow up and learn a few unpleasant things about life.
I Start Counting begins with a long panning shot around Wynne's bedroom, and the opening credits then roll over her morning routine. We see her open curtains, eat breakfast and get dressed. Continuing her routine, and in full close-up, Wynne pulls on her underwear, puts on a bra and gets into her school uniform, of which the skirt is short. This is one of those films which belongs in the same category as Baby Love (1968, Alastair Reid, UK: Avton Films), All The Right Noises (1971, Gerry O'Hara, UK: Trigon Productions) or Twinky (1970, Richard Donner, UK/ Italy: World Film Services), where schoolgirls are objects of sexual awakening and desire. Twinky's tagline (on the US poster, where it had been renamed Lola) was the astonishing "She's almost 16, he's almost 40." Pop music also contributed to this concept, whether it was Neil Sedaka singing in 1961 "Happy birthday sweet sixteen, Tonight's the night I've waited for, Because you're not a baby anymore," or the Rolling Stones cheerfully proclaiming "There'll be a feast if you just come upstairs, But it's no hanging matter, It's no capital crime, I can see that you're fifteen years old, No I don't want your I.D." in 1968.
Jenny Agutter may have been seventeen, but the schoolgirl she was portraying was fourteen. The creepy rabbit to the left plays a small part in the plot.
Wynne Kinch may have been fourteen in I Start Counting but Jenny Agutter was seventeen, eighteen by the time the film was released. This may serve as some sort of justification in shooting her dressing in such a voyeuristic fashion, or in the way the camera often looks up the miniskirt of her friend Corinne (Claire Sutcliffe), whose colourful knickers are flashed throughout the film, despite her also being fourteen. Agutter also posed for a series of blatantly sexual photos to promote the film, perhaps demonstrating just how much of a woman Wynne has become despite her young age. 1960s and 1970s culture was preoccupied with the first flowerings of sexual desire in teenage girls (and underage girls). Sadly the events of the last few years, and Operation Yewtree in particular, have taught us the dark truth behind this cultural acceptability.
According to the 1970 edition of The British Film & Television Year Book, if you had wanted to reach Jenny Agutter she could be contacted care of Denys Becher, 9A Marylebone High Street, London, W.1.
The film is adapted from Audrey Erskine Lindop's novel from 1966, and the plot feels similar to the popular, although far more graphic, schoolgirl-based Italian crime films of Massimo Dallamano: What Have You Done to Solange? (Cosa avette fatto a Solange? 1972, Italy/ West Germany: Clodio Cinematografica) and What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (La polizia chiede aiuto, 1974, Italy: Primex Italia). Perhaps Dallamano was familiar with this film, or perhaps it is coincidence, but What Have You Done to Solange? is also set in Britain, and features the murder of a schoolgirl in a park. There are also similarities to the British thriller Assault (1971, Sidney Hayers, UK: George H. Brown Productions), which again features schoolgirls being murdered in parks. This was clearly a theme which needed exploring in the early 1970s.
The Pan Books tie-in edition of The Ravine by Kendal Young, now known as Assault.
I Start Counting was directed by David Greene, who had previously directed, amongst others, The Shuttered Room (1967, UK: Seven Arts) and The Strange Affair (1968, UK: Paramount Pictures), the latter also featuring an underage relationship, this time between a schoolgirl and a policeman. David Greene had angered many people when he burned down a real historic building in Norfolk at the climax of The Shuttered Room, the full story of which can be read here. I Start Counting also features the destruction of real property, and was perhaps something Greene looked for in his films as a way of enhancing production value. He had a varied and fascinating career, working in both film and TV between Hollywood and the UK. Monthly Film Bulletin praised his direction of this film, stating it was "a coherent and accomplished piece of filmmaking."
Sadly I Start Counting was only seen in Britain in the cinema in 1970, where it played with an AA certificate from the BBFC, and then again once on TV in the 1990s, as far as I can tell. It is a compelling and well-constructed film which was also hugely significant in the career of Jenny Agutter, coming out just a month before The Railway Children (1970, Lionel Jeffries, UK: EMI Film Productions). Monthly Film Bulletin describes her performance here as "Something of a remarkable balance, poised between naïveté and delicacy to suggest a perfectly natural innocent." If you want to see this performance the only way to currently view I Start Counting is on Youtube, where it appears to have been taken from a VHS copy. It is thankfully in its correct aspect ratio, which suggests the film was released on video in the U.S. in a widescreen version, unless it was shown on TV in widescreen and this is an off air recording. Perhaps eventually this will see a restored release as part of Network's ongoing British Collection. If you have any interest in British cinema of the period, I Start Counting is well worth your attention. And just what is it she is counting? Watch the film and see if you can work it out for yourself.
Alan Yates (Carl Yorke) and Faye Daniels (Francesca Ciardi) in the green inferno
I was recently invited to participate in The Bloody Pit podcast with Rod Barnett. The subject of our discussion was Cannibal Holocaust. I feel a bit of a personal connection with this film because I interviewed the director, Ruggero Deodato, at Cine Excess in 2011 when he received a lifetime achievement award. This interview went well and was published in the magazine Diabolique. As I explain in the podcast, that was the first time I had ever seen the film, and it made a very strong impression on me.
Ruggero Deodato (right) with Italian actor Giovano Lombardo Radice, who was providing translation.
This photo was used (without my permission) on the back of a Shameless Entertainment box set of Ruggero Deodato films. They sent me some free stuff by way of apology, so we're all cool now. In the summer of 2015 I attended a film conference in Rome and was lucky enough to meet up with Deodato again, where he was pleased that I was asking to sign a DVD of his personal favourite, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man.
Also, when I was a fresh-faced innocent at Cine Excess 2010 I had the opportunity to meet Cannibal Holocaust star Francesca Ciardi, the ill-fated Faye Daniels.
So as I said, I feel like I know Cannibal Holocaust and it's participants personally. I'm even friends with Carl Yorke on Facebook, who played Alan Yates. I wished him happy birthday last week.
If you would like to hear our in-depth discussion, where we cover the highs and lows of this powerful and provocative film, you can find it on iTunes or click below to visit the Bloody Pit blog.
It's funny how things can happen that cause you to take something of a left turn in your research. I had not expected to be doing background reading on vaudeville and burlesque entertainment in the early twentieth century, yet that's pretty much all I have been doing over the last week. Let me tell you, it's a bit awkward trying to read a large book about circus freaks on the train. Violet (on the left) and Daisy (on the right) Hilton were born out of wedlock in Brighton in 1908. Their mother worked in a pub, and the landlady, clearly an enterprising woman, offered to buy the babies from the no doubt shocked parents, once it became clear that they were not going to die within the few days predicted by the doctor. The twins were almost immediately put to work in the pub, drawing crowds who could come into the back parlour for a glimpse and the opportunity to buy a postcard or two. For an extra couple of pennies you could lift up the girls blankets to check for yourself that they really were "bound by flesh." Before long the girls were learning to sing, dance and play instruments and were playing to packed variety halls and theatres around Europe. Whilst still teenagers they were whisked away to America, only returning to Britain once many years later.
From our more "enlightened" perspective the idea of exploiting the disabled for entertainment seems tasteless and crass, but from the 1700s right through to the mid-twentieth century the freaks, geeks, pinheads, dwarves, midgets, indeed anyone deemed to be deformed, were basically given two options: go on the road as a performer or be left to rot in an institution. The Hilton sisters grew up with this used a constant threat should they ever refuse to perform. Refused schooling, all the girls knew was how to perform on stage. They became accomplished singers, dancers and musicians and audiences were often brought to tears seeing these diminutive girls overcoming such personal tragedy with such grace and style.
Anyone reading this will know the girls mainly from their appearance in Tod Browning's Freaks (1932).
By this point it had been many years since the girls had actually performed in the circus, and evidentially they were initially reluctant to appear in the film for this reason, but ultimately they perhaps saw it as an opportunity. They actually come off well in the film. They are required to act, something they were inexperienced in, rather than sing, dance or play music. Sadly, due to the problems the film had it was not the springboard to movie success they were perhaps hoping for, and they went back on the road, touring for many years with their own revue. Along the way were romances, fake weddings and even a baby: Daisy got pregnant from someone in her band, and the baby was born in Minnesota and put up straight away for adoption; just another in the long list of personal tragedies for the Hilton sisters.
After years of being ripped off by unscrupulous men they were advised to put their own money into another movie, this time with them as the stars. In 1952 Chained for Life was released, directed by the journeyman Harry L. Fraser, who had spent decades making 'B' westerns. This means that unlike many cheap exploitation films, this was at least shot with relatively decent production values. The girls were in their early forties at this point, and are showing what two decades on the road, smoking and drinking all the way, can do to your looks. It is still a fascinating watch, being semi-autobiographical in it's depiction of the Hamilton sisters who are still a big draw on the vaudeville scene. In real life they were anything but, and vaudeville was dying out.
The film is worth viewing especially for one astonishing scene. Daisy (playing Dorothy) is in love and wants to marry, but they have been refused a marriage licence on the grounds that it would be bigamy (this is something which did actually happen to them some fifteen years earlier). She goes to bed wishing that they could finally be free of each other, the screen wobbles and we are in a dream sequence, where Daisy climbs out of bed leaving Violet (Vivian in this movie) behind. She goes out into a garden and dances around, alone, until her lover appears and they dance together. This is a heart-breaking scene to watch, as one imagines the shooting of it. Obviously a double is used for the long shots, and there is enough Vaseline on the lens to make sure we can't tell it's not Daisy, but occasionally it cuts to close-ups of Daisy. At one point she is standing next to a tree, and you picture in your mind poor Violet crouching down out of shot. How the girls must have felt about this scene when they sat and viewed it for the first time one cannot imagine. Perhaps it was wish-fulfillment for them.
In the mid-1950s they actually set up and operated a burger shack by the beach in Florida, but this did not last long, possibly because customers felt slightly revolted at the sight of "freaks" serving up hot snacks. By the end of the decade they were reduced to travelling around the States making personal appearances at movie theatres and drive-ins, accompanying double-bills of Freaks and Chained for Life. All they really knew what to do was perform. They had not changed their act in fifty years, despite the entertainment industry irrevocably changing around them. By 1962, the kids at the drive-in would not have known who they were, or cared.
Just when their story could not get any more tragic they were left in Charlotte, North Carolina by the promoter who had been driving them from gig to gig. He took the money and the film prints and drove away. Daisy and Violet were taken in by the local community, offered shelter, jobs in the town grocery store and most importantly friendship. When they finally died in 1969, they had spent their last few years living something close to a normal life, with people who cared about them. This must have been some comfort after such a long and exhausting life of abuse, exploitation and abandonment.
So their story does have a happy ending. I think they are fascinating and have enjoyed revisiting their story over the last week or so. My reason for this renewed interest was because I was invited to contribute to a short piece on the girls for BBC's The One Show. It has not been aired yet so I don't even know if I will make the final cut. You will learn far more about the girls if you watch the documentary recently produced by Leslie Zemekis called Bound by Flesh (2012). It's a great overview of their lives and features interviews with people who actually knew them. I watched it on American Netflix, but you can also find it to buy and download on iTunes.
