The Peplum, and the Final Strait

After losing a chapter I was halfway through writing, I lost all enthusiasm for the peplum film. It has taken me about five weeks to rewrite and finish the new version. It was really hard at first. I had absolutely no passion for the work or the films, and it pained me to have to begin again. Once I hit about 5000 words though I was into the swing of things and enjoyed finishing it, at around 10500 words. I have written about several sword-and-sandal films and feel that I know more about the genre and the industrial conditions that brought it about. I am now trying to make a video essay using clips, music and text, to illustrate some of my findings and archival material. I have the aim of showing it as part of my presentation in Canada, but I'm beginning to wonder if that is not really the done thing.

My thesis word count so far stands at around 75,000, so I really do feel that the end is finally in sight. I'm thinking about proofreading and editing, all the pictures I still need to put in, formatting, all that sort of stuff. I've made a list of things I still need to do, and it's long, and if I'm honest, pretty boring. But I'm so desperate to get my thesis completed by mid-July I'm just going to have to suck it up and do it. I started writing and researching my PhD in the late summer of 2012, so five years of my life has been spent thinking, working and worrying. It will be really good to get it over with!

Of all the peplum films I watched from beginning to end, which admittedly was only five, the best was Samson (Sansone, 1961, Gianfranco Parolini, Italy: Cineproduzioni Associate (Rome)) , starring Brad Harris "The strongest athlete in the world." The acting is better than the others, including Hercules and Hercules Unchained, and the production values are pretty good. The weirdest of all of them was Goliath and the Vampires, a truly odd film with a plot too complicated and convoluted to summarise. It was also one of the only peplum films to be rated 'X' by the BBFC, and that was after some cuts to the gorier moments. About four years ago I picked up some original press books for peplum films at the Westminster film fair. Thanks to a general lack of interest in the genre I got them remarkably cheaply, and they have been sitting waiting patiently for me to use them since. It is a fun genre, and it means that my thesis now has chapters on films for kids, films for teens and films for adults, which seems like a good balance.

If you want to see Sansom it is available on a great Italian DVD with both the Italian and English language tracks. If you speak Italian you can find a poor quality version on YouTube. Here is the trailer. Look carefully and you'll spot none other than Serge Gainsbourg as the villainous Warkalla.

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!

I Start Counting (1970, David Greene, UK/ USA: Triumvirate Productions)

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.

"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.

Terrahawks - A blast from the past

Considering how often it was reported that Gerry Anderson supposedly hated working with puppets, he worked with them an awful lot. Having made his name in the 1960s with shows such as Fireball XL5, Stingray and Thunderbirds, creating a new art form along the way, he made a successful move into live action science fiction with the classic television series UFO and Space: 1999. Somehow he was persuaded to go back to puppets to produce a brand-new children’s television show in 1983: Terrahawks. It ran for three series and was very popular, enabling a new generation of children (this writer included) to discover Gerry Anderson’s incredible work for the first time.

Terrahawks tells the story of an elite force defending 21^st century Earth from a host of alien invaders, most notoriously the android clone Zelda, who with her idiotic son Yung-star is constantly attempting to either take over or destroy the planet. Thankfully amongst the Terrahawks crew are Tiger Ninestein, Mary Falconer, former pop star Kate Kestrel, Lt. Hawkeye and many spherical robots known as the Zeroids. It was a situation which ensured that every week some sort of world-threatening plot would require heroic deeds from Ninestein and his crew, accompanied by some spectacular special effects from Gerry Anderson’s team. Zelda was an odd choice for a principle villain in a children’s television series, as she is essentially a cackling old woman who looked like a cross between Tina Turner and Great Expectations’ Miss Haversham. The Zeroids were often a source of comedy in the show, particularly as their leader, Sergeant Major Zero, was voiced by Windsor Davies, whose distinctive booming Welsh tone was familiar to British audiences from popular sitcom It Ain’t Half Hot Mum.

Network are releasing Terrahawks on DVD and, for the first time, on blu ray. They do not appear to have had access to original negatives, the picture quality on the blu ray looking more like a TV broadcast than their incredibly well remastered blu ray releases of Space: 1999. Despite this it is still a fun show to see again, and one that children will still enjoy discovering. Network are putting this out in volumes of thirteen episodes each. Volume 1 was released in July, and Volume 2 is out now. The blu ray and DVD editions feature a selection of bonus features, looking at the special effects, the music and some of the early computer graphics used on the show. The documentary Terrahawks: Making the Unexpected, features behind the scenes footage shot at the legendary Bray Studios, which had once been home to Hammer Films.

Gerry Anderson was such an important figure in both television and film, and the legacy he left behind is still being enjoyed by fans. With episodes of the new show Thunderbirds Are Go bringing yet another generation of fans to his work, these new releases of Terrahawks will enable both young and old to enjoy yet more of Gerry Anderson’s intricate and entertaining creations.

You can find more details, and even buy yourself copies, here.

Cannibal Holocaust podcast

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.