It's Like A Rabbit Warren Down There: The English Landscape And Continental Filmmakers (1969-1974)

Having seen the restored edition of A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971) at the nearby multiplex, armed with a smuggled-in bottle of rum and coke, it was a wonderfully overwhelming experience to finally see it on the big screen, as opposed to the previous viewing experiences via a bootleg VHS and a nifty little DVD.  One thing that always stuck with me was Kubrick's use of locations throughout the film, specifically his use of 1960s Brutalist architecture, which although French in origin became immensely prominent in the UK's city centres and so-called 'new towns' such as Stevenage and Milton Keynes.  What once was viewed as utopian in films such as Here We Go 'Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968) was now a dystopian grey shot with wide angle lenses which only emphasised the dullness and the starkness of the buildings themselves.  What once seemed futuristic (and, for me, are eyesores) now resembled set designs from The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920) or a 1960's Fumetti strip from Italy.  Something that seemed far more exaggerated than the original building planners ever conceived.  By highlighting its uniqueness and exaggerating their foreboding quality, these locations seem far more exotic and mysterious than you or I take for granted.

This viewing experience has made me consider the use of the English landscape by directors relatively unfamiliar with them, and how they could be utilised and wrapped around their stories in a disconcerting and unusual manner.

This alien view of England in the late 1960s/early 1970s was best utilised by foreign directors.  While homegrown talent such as Richard Loncraine (Slade In Flame, 1974), David Gladwell (Requiem For A Village, 1975) and Pete Walker (Frightmare, 1974) offered a fascinating glimpse into the day to day mundanity of British lives during this period from unique angles, it took an international director to take a look at the oh-so-familiar landscape with a fresh, alien perspective and a viewpoint untainted by the initial burst of possibility of the 60s followed by the austerity of the early 70s.  The grit, the grime and the desolate beauty of abandoned buildings ravaged by the Blitz and waiting for the bulldozer, the reality untouched by the hip and swinging touch of London, the unfulfilled promises only hinted at by Pathe newsreels and locations that 'respectable' areas of the British film industry wanted to avoid.

Although some of the films mentioned in this piece appeared both before and afterwards, the key film which seemingly lit the fuse for this series of films was Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971).  As relayed numerous times by other (superior) writers, Straw Dogs is effectively a grueling Western typical of Peckinpah at his prime, relocated to the placid English countryside.  By shifting an American staple into a radically different foreign clime, it still packs a punch – the last 30 minutes remains such a frighteningly intense experience that yours truly almost had a massive panic attack when first watching it almost two decades ago.

The nearest film that retains as much of a cult following is undoubtedly A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin (Lucio Fulci, 1969).  Outside of his gruelling dream-like zombie opuses from 1979 to 1981, Lizard is one of the most well known of his films in other genres, standing out a psychedelic assault of the senses, right in the middle of his lesser-known classics such as his personal favourite Beatrice Cenci (1969) and the tragic Don’t Torture A Duckling (1971).  Fulci knew exactly which locations to shoot, such as Alexandra Palace and the Old Bailey, and how to seamlessly blend them into the interior footage shot in Rome.  As authors such as Stephen Thrower (Beyond Terror, FAB Press, 1998/2018) have described, Fulci’s sniping, pessimistic world view, void of nostalgia and celebration of iconography resulted in a fresh view of the big city.  Lizard is the complete antithesis of Antonioni's Blow Up (1966), a hymn of praise to the bustling, hip and swinging, stripy shirted and mini skirted London.  Lizard shows a London where paranoia, darkness and doubt lingered in every alleyway and even sporadically flopped around, baking away in the intermittent summer heat.  It's may be glamorous, but in more of a decadent style.

Spanish directors Jorge Grau and Jose Ramon Larraz saw an opportunity to bypass the capital and aim instead for other parts of the country, untouched by indigenous filmmakers.  When viewing The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue (Grau, 1974), Symptoms and Vampyres (both Larraz, 1974) side by side, they key to these films' success is the use of locations.  Apart from the main protagonists, the locations play far more a role in the story than usual.  The hotel, corner shop and hospital of Manchester Morgue, alongside the mansion and camper van of Vampyres provide a nice slice of countryside domesticity and predictability amongst the vast mysterious void of the churchyard or the never-ending woods that engulf them.  As a result, the locations help to strip away the need for superfluous extras and buildings, leaving a practically blank canvas for which atmosphere is the key.

Larraz's films are also brimming with an intense sexual heat that was normally absent in the repressed giggly atmosphere of a domestic production.  Whereas Symptoms is more of a subtle character study with sexual tensions and misplacement of trust brimming under the surface, Vampyres was another story.  What once was only hinted at was now unleashed in a pure torrent of smouldering lust and intense violence.  As Vampyres producer Brian Smedley-Aston once remarked in an interview for the 1998 Eurotika! documentary profiling the work of Larraz, the British Board Of Film Censors (BBFC) were cautiously willing to allow sex and violence if they were separate, but never together.  Vampyres' casual and nonchalant mixture of the two must have caused howls of despair in the censor's screening room.

Regarding Manchester Morgue, as David Kerekes and David Slater pointed out in their wonderful tome "See No Evil: Banned Films & Video Controversy" (Headpress, 2000, p.210), once George leaves Manchester with its claustrophobic surroundings, crowded with people, cars and clashing colours, life gradually peels away.  By the time the film arrives at its location (the Peak District) the place has become a ghost town.  A colour scheme of brown and green, no people on the streets, no cars parked up outside the hotel.  Even the hospital feels abandoned and empty.  Only characters with necessity to the story remain.  This only amplifies the beauty of the location footage.  George and Edna's arrival at the church gate bursts full of luscious colour and stunning shadows.  Nature has overtaken man as the dominant force and whatever is left will be devoured by its own.

In 1969/1970, two films were made about the groupie scene surrounding rock bands and both have separate agendas.  Groupie Girl (Derek Ford, 1969) is a thoroughly British and tabloid-inspired glimpse into the unappealing and drab world of third-tier unwashed rockers but still feels like a British film, albeit an enjoyable one. Permissive (1970), helmed by Canadian filmmaker Lindsay Shonteff, is a far more cold, unsettling and perversely beautiful little gem that is still crying out for appreciation, even after being given wonderful treatment courtesy of the BFI's Flipside range.  By tackling the ultimately dead-end hopeless profession of groupiedom from a unique angle, Shonteff succeeded at filming with a fresh unclouded eye, detaching himself from the process and approaching the endless world of gigging, fucking and never-ending motorway journeys without the usual British leering voyeurism.  Coupled with a wonderful soundtrack by acid folk combo Comus and the Scottish folk-rock group Forever More, it is mandatory viewing for the curious.

 

Like Permissive, Duffer (1971) and The Moon Over The Alley (1975) were directed by Canadian expats.  The latter two films were directed by the duo of Joseph Despins and William Dumaresq and are wildly different from each other. Duffer is an intense character study focusing on the title character and the warped tug of war for his affections between psychopathic Louis Jack and prostitute Your Gracie.  Shot silent with narration, Duffer is a disorientating and nightmarish tour de force shot in grainy and rickety black and white that focuses more on London as a decrepit and cramped ball of hate from which there is no comfort, only violence and destruction.

Moving as far away as possible, Despins and Dumaesq’s next collaboration, The Moon Over The Alley, is a wonderful ensemble piece, centred around a boarding house due to be faced with the threat of demolition whilst taking a glimpse at the lives of the multicultural occupants within, it is a mixture of joy, despair, laughter and sadness and is essentially a musical.  Although low budget, the film shines with musical numbers that fit comfortably alongside the storyline without ever feeling out of place. Compared to the cold and disturbing Duffer, there is a lot of warmth and affection displayed by the characters which makes the fate of certain characters all the more heartbreaking.  Alley is a true example of collaboration and stands out as one of the most wonderful, charming and eminently rewatchable musicals I have ever seen.  Fresh from his work composing the score for Hair, Walt MacDermott's musical numbers incorporate a wide variety of styles without ever seeming forced. 

 

Yet another valiant rescue effort from the BFI resulted in the first home video release of Nightbirds (1971), directed by the much-maligned and overlooked Andy Milligan.  A prolific New York filmmaker who viewed his $10 psychosexual melodramas as a form of primal scream therapy, Milligan decamped to the UK for a short time but filmed almost non-stop during his brief time in London.  Nightbirds has a lot in common with Duffer:  They were both shot in the same year and are both based around the subject of abuse and isolation – never intruding, simply documenting.  They are also based in London, but a London that has been stripped of people, with the ones who remain bristling with manipulative intent.  Nightbirds centres around the story of homeless waif Dink, who is taken in by the mysterious Dee who initially appears to be supportive and caring, but eventually the characters begin to blur together in a sea of manipulation and loathing.  Compared to the piss-and-vinegar screeds spewed out by characters from his 1968 offering Seeds, Nightbirds has more in common with Milligan's debut feature Vapors (1965) with a more sober and low energy attitude, the lead male is just a forgotten figure looking for companionship, albeit with more catastrophic results.

Death Line (Gary Sherman, 1972) places the focus on a city underground, with London only visible at night.  Focusing on a series of missing persons and a forgotten group of miners abandoned during the construction of the Underground, morphing into a doomed and pitiful cannibal clan generation by generation, Death Line was one of the most eye-opening cinematic experiences to me, especially since I saw it at way too young an age.  Without wanting to spoil such a highly recommended film, the film's approach as to who exactly are the antagonists and protagonists changed my whole preconception of what horror films can achieve and remains as devastating as The Wicker Man’s coda, which reminded us that good does not necessarily triumph over evil in the end.  Combining genuine sympathy and grisliness alongside the wonderful performances of Donald Pleasance and Hugh Armstrong, the film can indeed be seen as an overview of London itself: a city full of desperation, lost innocence, crushed optimism and lack of identity.

Milligan and Sherman share a lot of common ground in their aforementioned films: their films are angry and use the locations to emphasise that anger: the sense of loneliness, helplessness and uncertainty of one's existence.  While Death Line embodies more of a political outrage at class divisions and the ignorance of progress, Nightbirds has more of an internal anger as can be seen in practically every other film that Milligan shot. Yet they both retain a true fire and conviction which would prove harder to bring to the screen as the decade wore on, whether it be in the US (as chronicled in Peter Biskind’s “Easy Riders And Raging Bulls”) or the 'sex sells' attitude in the UK (as chronicled in Simon Sheridan’s "Keeping The British End Up").

Whereas Grau and Fulci shot what they needed and headed back to Rome for interior shots, Larraz and Shonteff settled in the UK and continued to bring their domestic eccentricities to future productions with varying results. Milligan stuck around long enough to shoot four further films back-to-back, often bringing out trusted actors from his acidic Staten Island melodramas to attempt a "DEES DEM AND DOSE" accent for whatever grisly period horror film he felt like shooting, while Sherman moved back to the US and batted away offers to make further horror films for another decade.  

 

As the industries these directors worked in developed from the late 70s onwards, a less risky and more crowd-pleasing approach had to be adopted, but to do that meant discarding the rawness, the bleakness of every day life.  Out went the quirks and the peculiarity of foreign climes. If a director had to document the filth and grime, it could only be on their turf (Milligan's Fleshpot On 42nd Street is a fine example of this and further proof that the director was not an amateurish hack with a filmography of tacky schlock). For homegrown talent, that meant a return to suburbia and the tension underneath but filmed through an English perspective.  Only the work of Mike Leigh (Meantime, Naked), Derek Jarman (Jubilee, The Last Of England) and Alan Clarke (Contact, Made In Britain, Christine) dared to tread the same path with unique and memorable results.  When US productions set foot in the UK, they focused on the glamorous and monied side of London (with the odd bit of patronising "Cor lummy guv'nor" nods to the working class to make the script appear daring), or were convenient but unconvincing alternatives to filming in New York (Death Wish 3, 1985) or Vietnam (Full Metal Jacket, 1987).

The stranger abroad mentality continued to shine through the works of the separate paths trod by Performance’s tag team Nicholas Roeg (Walkabout, Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell To Earth) and Donald Cammell’s surreal genre-defying schizophrenic gem White Of The Eye (1987). But with the exception of these directors, you have to look to more appreciative climes.  The most notable examples from the early 80s – as wildly disparate and aimed at different audiences as they could possibly be – are Roeg's disturbing Bad Timing (1980), Romano Scavolini's sleazy yet compelling Nightmares In A Damaged Brain (1981) and Andrzej Zulawski's perverse work of beauty Possession (1981). Vaguely familiar surroundings yet filmed through an unfamiliar filter (an Englishman in Austria, an Italian speeding through the East and West Coast gutters, a Pole in West Germany), these films still had a distant, almost dreamlike quality that make for fascinating viewing.  No matter how high or low brow these efforts are in the eyes of the viewers, their casual view of the locations make them distinctive and give them their unique feel.  This is an attitude and an outlook far removed from the Italian exploitation films of the day (such as Eaten Alive, 1980) which almost always used New York, and even then only as superfluous window dressing in order to sell the films abroad, but this is an entirely different phenomenon covered in far more detail elsewhere.

As for the films produced within the United Kingdom over a few short years, they all need to be treasured as wonderful glimpses into the English psyche but without any preconceived ideas or hang ups.  They remain perverse travelogues, cataloguing an era that most local filmmakers dared not document.  It was a fascinating time, full of blank slates ready to be interpreted anyway that the talent saw fit.