The Sweeney: Stoppo Driver

 "Who taught you to drive- Evel Knievel?"

Another strong episode this time round as a newlywed copper is forced to act as a getaway driver in order to stop his kidnapped bride from being harmed- an evocative situation which is handled superbly, with a very strong guest performance from Billy Murray in particular.

We're really made to feel for the couple, who at least manage to get their revenge at the end, albeit with Cooney's career in ruins. It's a script that is pacy, taut and lean yet also gives the tragic events the room they need to breathe.

The car chases (with proper '70s cars!) are excellent too, of course, as is the excellently naturalistic yet charistmatic performance from John Thaw. It's interesting to see the growing mutual respect between Haskins and Regan, too- this isn't a one-note, cliched adversarial relationship. But Aubrey Morris pretty much steals the show as an arrogant Swiss diplomat.

As ever, though, the joys lie as much in the sights and social mores of half a century ago as in any of the plot and characters. Towards the end of the season, perhaps, the self-contained nature of each episode, normal for the time, is perhaps starting to grate. But there's no denying that this is good stuff.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Fit the Sixth

 "I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe..."

And so it ends, with a twist that was much more powerful the first time but still feels worryingly true: the human race is fundamentally a race of useless management consultants, marketing executives and so forth- no civil servants, of course. We would have been on the "A" ark. Yes we would. 

And then there's what is, apparently, the ultimate question- although I'm not sure why it would be in Arthur's subsconscious in the first place, as he's descended from Golgafrinchans and thus surely not part of Deep Thought's computer program- is a mathematical equation that is incorrect. This does, indeed, explain so much about the universe. 

The Golgafinchams are great, and Aubrey Morris in particular. It's a powerfu end to a splendid visual adaptation. It may look cheap, ot may look dated, but it's bloody brilliant.

Catweazle: Season 1, Episode 8- The Power of Adamcos

 "I am doomed!"

"Here, have some more brandy."

Now that's much better. This whole episode is pretty much just a farce about Caweazle losing his dagger, Adamcos, and the hilarious goings-on in retrieving it, but it's amusing enough, and Geoffrey Bayldon carries the whole thing as ever.

The comedy has some nicely done moments too- Catweazle trying to use the "telling bone" from last episode, and Mr Milton fainting as a figure rises from the sarcophagus. And of course it's fun to see Catweazle running from "Normans", however contrived the explanation.

What really stands out, though, and reminds you that this is 1970, is the fact that George is so casually unbothered about Carrot being off somewhere and not panicking as a parent would today. Also there's the casually unbothered attitude towards knives (they're for whittling, not stabbing!) and the incredibly camp, very Julian and Sandy antiques dealer played by Aubrey Morris at a time where being camp was fine but actual gay sex had been illegal just three years previously. As ever with Catweazle, what really fascinates is the social mores of fifty years ago.

And yes, I am offended by the fact that 1970 was fifty-one years ago...

The Prisoner: Dance of the Dead

“Questions are a burden to others. Answers are a prison for oneself.”

A bit of a downturn in quality this episode; it isn’t bad, far from it, but seems a little incoherent. Certainly this is less high concept than any previous episode, there being no particular big idea at its centre.

The basic concept is, if anything, a bit ho-hum; Number Six finds a body on the beach and a radio with it, to which he listens a bit. He is caught, tried and condemned but gets away on a technicality. That’s it. Oh, and the body is made to look like him so he can be thought dead.

So there’s not much here to hang the episode on. What saves it are the details- Mary Morris as the only female Number Two, or at least the only one present throughout. A nice surreal little cameo by Aubrey Morris, and indeed the whole spectacle of the fancy dress trial, conducted as in Revolutionary France. There’s the fascinating girl who watches Number Six throughout, a true believer in the “rules” no one gets to see and a good little authoritarian drone, yet fascinated as well and repulsed by Number Six’s rebellious ways. There’s also interesting dialogue from Number Two suggesting that Number Six is somehow important; others are expendable, but he is not, and it is important to truly win him over rather than use the torture they use on his unfortunate friend Dutton.

Not the greatest episode, then, but nicely surreal and with a real sense of the Kafkaesque.

The Night Caller (1965)

"And if that is an atom bomb, and you drop it, I'll 'ave you on a charge!"

Yes, the premise really is as said on the poster, if not quite as lurid. In truth, this is an odd conflation of Quatermass II and Alfie and very, very, mid-'60s. If that sounds like an extremely bizarre concoction, it is.

A very young John Saxon stars, and his acting is such that I'm not 100% sure whether he's trying to do a British accent or not. The predictable cast of British character actors add solid support, but the film feels oddly disjointed in spite of some good scenes- the dialogue between the parents of one of the missing girls is delightfully real and naturalistic, and the downbeat ending is deeply effective. Lots of the characters feel real yet, Saxon and Patricia Haines' characters aside, there's little continuity between the cast of the first part of the film in the scientific establishment and the police procedural which then ensues, and that means the film lacks a certain unity. It's also undeniable that, while this is certainly science fiction, for most of the film we see nothing of the alien but its claw, and the final reveal of its appearance is disappointing. It's all very odd, very interesting, but doesn't quite work.

It's also very much of its time, which adds to the interest. Everybody smokes, and Aubrey Morris plays a gay bookseller in those dark pre-1967 days, with his bitterly nuanced relations with the police. Worth seeing for those of us with a particular interest in these sorts of films although not, it must be said, for everyone.

The Wicker Man (1973)

“We’re a deeply religious people...”

 This is the second time I've seen this film, and the subtext truly grows with reviewing. The tale of Sergeant Howie (decent Scottish accent from Edwood Woodwood, says the Englishman), policeman, virgin and devout Christian who investigates a young girl’s disappearance on a Pagan island in the Highlands of Scotland that turns out to be a terrifying trap.

We all know the simple plot, I’m sure; what matters is how it unfolds until the iconic ending, with Howie slowly finding how very different this island is. But this is also a film about, to use a contemporary phrase, the “permissive society”; Howie stands for 1950s Christian values and is horrified by the free love and young people’s music he finds everywhere. Interestingly, the film presents neither side with much positivity- Howie may be a prig, and the islanders a lot more fun, but there’s a very dark practice at the heart of their beliefs.

Interest to declare; I’m an atheist, but one with no particular beef with Christianity, itself a huge range of beliefs. But I’m happy to see this film not falling into the lazy thinking that Christianity is bad and vaguely remembered Paganism was much cuddlier and more tolerant; that’s a very shaky notion. Pagans may have sometimes (not always) been more relaxed about sex, and less keen to police the beliefs of others, but there were some very dark rituals and, sadly unaddressed here, just as much institutional sexism. None of which means that a singing, naked Britt Ella d is not, er, pleasant to behold.

Christopher Lee’s role in this, his favourite of his own films, is surprisingly modest but essential for the backstory, and his charismatic presence is central to everything. But Edward Woodward gives a less likeable but superbly convincing performance which makes him the true hero of the film. One of this country’s greatest cinematic achievements, then, and certainly a film which rewards repeated viewings.

Lifeforce (1985)

"Columbia, they're all dead!"

 Well, this certainly isn't the sort of film you'd expect of Tobe Hooper, he of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist fame. Oh, it's well-directed and acted, with horror-like touches, but it's an oddly straight piece of very British alien invasion sci-fi, stuffed with British character actors such as Frank Finlay (always the Witchsmeller Pursuivant to me), John Hallam (Forget Light- he'll always be Sir Wilfred Death to me), Patrick Stewart, Aubrey Morris and even John Woodnutt.

The script, to be frank, is British sci-fi by numbers and nothing special, a very well-made film but with an average script. It's like an episode of Doctor Who with a Hollywood budget and more nudity, right down to the suspiciously large influence plot-wise from The Quatermass Experiment, only without any of Nigel Kneale's characteristic pessimism.

Still, the film is acted well and looks good, with some truly magnificent examples of stop-motion animation which seemed to reach a real peak in the immediately pre-CGI era. Steve Railsback and Peter Firth make decent if rather unhinged-looking stars and it's fun to revel in the '80s-ness of the space shuttles, computer screens and obsession with the return of Halley's Comet. It's odd that a contemporary film should feature such suspiciously advanced space tech, but heigh-ho. Arguably beginning to fade into obscurity from its cult status, Lifeforce is definitely worth seeing not only because it's a fun bit of '80s nostalgia but because it's actually quite good, although I wouldn't put it more strongly than that..

My Girl 2 (1994)

"It's not easy being a woman!"

It's sometimes good to see and blog a film not in the usual genre, without all the explosions and CGI I'm used to, and see a nice little 90 minute drama about our old friend Vada and her dad, stepmum and soon-to-be baby sibling. No Thomas J for obvious reasons, so no Macauley Culkin to provide a big name '.this time; we'll have to make do with Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd. Still, I'm not sure Macauley Culkin was still a thing in '94 anyway.

It's interesting that this isn't, given the absence of Thomas J, really a direct sequel at all but rather a tale of Vada, a couple of years older, travelling to Los Angeles to research her late mother and to undertake a sort-of romance with the awkward and very teenage Nick. In its quiet way it's a nicely done drama, with Vada's search for answers providing a nice structure to it all.

The script and acting are both superb, and there's just enough wallowing in the fact it's 1974 to be fun without overdoing it. There are some nice cameos with Aubrey Morris as a jaded, elderly poet ("Don't be a poet. Be a TV repairman.") and Keone Young as a nerdy cop. A quietly satisfying sequel that's just as good as its predecessor.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

"You are now a murderer, little Alex."

Anthony Burgess may not be a fashionable author but I'm a huge fan of his. I've read a large amount of his work, from A Dead Man in Deptford to Earthly Powers and while, yes, there's certainly a fair amount of Catholic guilt in there as subtext, you can't reduce him to that as a writer; he has such fun playing with ideas in gloriously erudite prose. A Clockwork Orange is no exception- a treatise not only on sin but also on civil liberties vs. law and order, on free will, on the awkward fact that one can appreciate high culture and still be evil, whatever F.R. Leavis may think.

So how does Stanley Kubrick handle it? Well, with great aplomb. The entire film takes place amongst the brutalist architecture of the third quarter of the twentieth century, even the scenes set outside, with rose horrible associations not yet of decay (as I'm sure the same locations would have evoked a few years later) but of a brutal, soulless totalitarianism of the mind, which fits the totalitarianism of what happens to Alex. Yet law and order truly has broken down and totalitarian mind control is proposed as a solution; there is no role for decent liberals here, whom the script even seems to mock as elitists. It's a chilling echo of modern times. The fashions- while boiler suits, bowler hats, fake eyelashes- are striking and succeed in giving the film a sense of timeless in spite of the inevitable 1971-ness of various things, not least the police brutality.

The film would not be the triumph it is without a stellar central performance by a young Malcolm McDowell, who is not only convincing but successfully manages to imbue the psychopath Alex with sufficient charm to leaven the darkness of the film. McDowell is ably assisted by a strong cast including a startlingly young Warren Clarke. The directorial style is just as awesome as we might expect.

After a couple of crappy films it's such a relief to be blogging a true masterpiece like this. A truly seminal film.