E.J. Fancey's Exotic Thrills

Following some deep thought after my last post I realised that trying to write three papers at the same time was more than any sane mind could handle, so reluctantly I dropped the Hammer conference. It will undoubtably be a fantastic event, but I just couldn't do it. Plus it was really straying from my current areas of research so it was purely an indulgence even to consider it.

However, I am going to Lincoln next week to give this paper on the fascinating world of E.J. Fancey. At least, I hope it's fascinating. I've been researching this for a long time, and writing the paper itself has taken me the best part of two weeks. 

I have delved into the Fancey family history to unravel some of the complicated relationships behind his companies, which included S.F. Film Distributors, D.U.K. Films and New Realm Pictures. I have also uncovered original marketing materials and BBFC documentation which highlights the sometimes friendly, sometimes fractious relationship they had with the censors.

I am mainly focusing on the films they distributed rather then their own productions, although they did make several of their own. Largely forgettable is the kindest way of describing them. They did however give Michael Winner his first break as a feature film director, although if you have ever seen Parting Shots (1998) you may not be able to thank them for that.


Karamoja - Land of the Naked People (1965) has to be one of the best exploitation titles of all time. This was actually one of Kroger Babb's films, the American exploitation king who gave the world Mom and Dad (1945) and "She Shoulda Said 'No'!" (1949).



The Fancey's empire, which was eventually run by E.J. himself, his wife, his common-law wife, and his children by both wives, was a major player in the world of independent film distribution in the 1960s.

Edwin's son Malcolm had great success in the 1970s by acquiring the rights to Emmanuelle (1975), and he invested the money into making sex films of his own. In the 1980s he gained notoriety for this little publicity stunt to promote Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (1981). This backfired when he and partner David Hamilton-Grant were prosecuted for obscenity because they "accidentally" distributed the version refused a certificate by the BBFC. He got off with a suspended sentence whilst his partner went to prison.

The Fancey's are a fascinating and slightly elusive family that I hope to continue to find more on. I have contacted some living members of the family but have had no success in persuading any of them to speak to me. But I will not give up!

Now that this paper is finished I have to start my giallo one for the Rome conference in three weeks. Oh dear...

Conference Papers, and The Tyranny of Choice

I have submitted a proposal for a conference being held in Rome this June. The whole conference is devoted to the giallo, a film genre I have to admit to only now becoming acquainted with. But my desire to expand my academic reach, coupled with the idea of spending some time in Rome again, has prompted me to get on board. I had previously seen The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, and my interest in Mario Bava has been developing for a couple of years now, so it is not impossible that I can find something to say on it! Indeed, I think I have found an angle that fits well with my own research interests, and hopefully will be fairly original for the conference. If I get accepted I'll start presenting some of the research here.

I also found out last week about a three-day conference in Paris on Hammer films. This sounds like my sort of thing too, but writing academically about Hammer is out of my current comfort zone. I wrote about some Hammer films during my degree, but that was a long time ago and I have felt, somewhat arrogantly, that I have "moved on" from Hammer.But it still has a hold over me. By a rough count today I have over eighty Hammer films on DVD and blu ray, and I have written extensively about them for Cinema Retro. I have interviewed stars and directors, and been to loads of Hammer events and conventions. I have had my photo taken with many a Hammer Glamour girl, as well as many of the ageing male stars too. I feel like my problem is that I'm in too deep with Hammer. It is such a vast subject area, that to choose just one small part to present a paper on seems virtually impossible.

Surrounding myself with DVDs today, and looking through the list of suggested topic areas by the conference organisers, I think I have come up with an idea. It has nothing to do with my PhD, but I feel I can justify it by saying I am stretching myself as an academic. If I can speak on a wider variety of subjects, I'm going to get more exposure in the global academic community. This, like I said, is how I justify it to myself anyway. Spending a few hours of a day staring at Hammer DVDs has to be justified one way or another.

So I think I've narrowed it down to The Stranglers of Bombay and The Terror of the Tongs.

I've also submitted a proposal for a conference on exploitation cinema being held in London this May. So I've gone from doing one paper in the past two years to potentially writing and presenting three within a couple of weeks of each other. Fun times ahead.

Fragile archives

A colleague of mine has let me borrow his personal collection of 1960s Monthly Film Bulletin issues.  As the only other place I have found these is in the BFI library, having access to them at home is quite an advantage. However, when I'm handling them I feel very nervous. At some point, probably around fifty years ago, he decided to tape each year together to make them into annual volumes. This means that when I'm trying to scan reviews I have all these fragile, yellowing pages flapping around desperately trying to tear themselves away from each other.

 

I have managed to scan several original reviews for some of the movies I have come across in the course of my research, and thought I would post a couple of them here. Dolls of Vice was a German prostitution drama, a surprisingly popular topic back then. This was probably for the exploitation potential, as highlighted here; "Beauty contests, striptease and undressing scenes."

More intriguing is the mention of a "sympathetic dwarf". And yes, several "climaxes" were censored. I have seen the original BBFC documentation, which included:

Reel 2: Remove all shots of girls wrestling

Reel 3: In strip-tease act remove shots of girls stroking their breasts

I have also come across Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace, an early giallo that established Bava's style and influenced a whole rash of Italian and German crime movies, all seemingly obsessed with killers in black gloves and rain coats.

Blood and Black Lace is given a fairly complimentary review for a dubbed Italian horror film, with particular attention paid to the look of the film. Hardly surprising for Bava, although the reviewer is critical of other elements, describing the film as "derivative, for the most part poorly acted and written, and risible in its several descents into pathos." I must confess that I haven't seen this film yet, despite its classic status. I keep hoping that Arrow Video will eventually pick it up, as they have done such brilliant work with many other Bava titles. (edit - within a month of my writing this, Arrow did indeed announce a blu ray release of Blood and Black Lace)

I intend to continue my way carefully through these copies of Monthly Film Bulletin. Ideally I would love to talk to people who remember going to the flicks and saw some of these films, but I have come to realise that is an almost impossible task. The opinions of reviewers like those in MFB at least give me some idea of the contemporary reception of most of the movies my research is digging up.

From the Orient With Fury UK Quad!

I took the title of this blog, and my PhD itself, from a 1960s Eurospy film released in the UK by Compton. It was one of the Agent 077 films. These were Italian/ French/ Spanish co-productions. 

Whilst I have yet to find a copy of this film itself, last weekend I found the quad poster. It was in the same shop I bought the lobby cards almost two years ago, in a box of posters I had never seen before. It has been folded, probably for most of the last fifty years, but it is still in remarkably good condition. The artwork is crude, and Ken Clark is all out of proportion and looks like he is in a western, but I am still happy to have found it. This will take a prominent place in the visual elements of my study. 

Agent 077's name was Dick Malloy, and he was played by the American actor Ken Clark, who despite some success at home spent the majority of his career working in Italian films.

According to the Kiss Kiss Kill Kill archive there were three Agent 077 films, and some of the posters advertised that fact. It is interesting that Compton chose not to use that in their materials, perhaps trying to play down the Bond connection for suspicious British audiences. 

Argentinian poster for From the Orient With Fury (1965)

Italian poster for Mission Bloody Mary (1965)

Italian poster for Operation Lady Chaplin (1966)

Mark of the Devil

After many years the infamous Mark of the Devil is being released uncut in the UK. Arrow Video have put it out on blu ray, and they asked me to write an essay for the booklet. I was honoured to have been asked, and the fact that I love all that censorship stuff combined with the international angle meant it was pretty much a perfect fit. It was released this week, and I'm still eagerly awaiting my copy. It's a fascinating film, as these old shockers always are. If there was ever any doubt as to the exploitation value of torturing sexy ladies, this cheesy promotional image of Udo Kier and potential victim ought to settle the question.

If you too are interested to know how the film was treated by the BBFC, simply click on the cover above and order yourself a copy! Only be warned, this is not one for the kids.

Jake West

Recently published in Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media is an interview I conducted with British film director Jake West. Of particular interest to me was the fact that he is a former student of the college where I currently teach part-time. I don't know this for definite, but I would like to claim that this is the most in-depth, career-spanning interview Jake has done. We even talked about Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes (2006).

Whilst browsing through other articles in the journal I was amused and delighted to notice that I had been referenced in a review of The Witch Who Came From the Sea (1976), which was incidentally on the Department for Public Prosecutions list of "video nasties" in 1983. My description of Baba Yaga (1973), from an article I wrote in last summer's edition of Intensities, has been used. Nice to know that at least one person out there read it. This is the first time that I know of where I have been referenced in an academic context. I guess this means there is hope for me yet.

Exciting news!

Last week I was offered a full three-year PhD scholarship at The University of Sussex to start in September.

This means that I have a definite end in sight; that in three years, all being well, I will have the PhD and be eligable for more exciting prospects of employment. I'm also looking forward to being involved in research and seminars at the university, and there's a good chance that I can give lectures to undergraduates too.

I had given up all hope of ever getting a full scholarship, which just shows that you can never say never.

This also means that you can expect to see this blog updated far more often.