FT383 65Quite a trajectory!
Take for example Lloyd
Bickford’s film,A40, a
black, gay, dystopian
allegory from 1965 (aired
in 1971) or Antony Balch’s
experimental study of
awkward sexuality,Secrets
of Sex(1970), which, as the
authors point out,would leave
an expectant cinema audience
understandably detumescent.
Such errantexperimentalism
provided a strange bedfellow
for everyday sex-rompfodder,
andyet by the end of the 1970s
avant-garde big hitters such
as CoseyFanni Tutti could be
found subverting the genre in
the somewhatmystifyingPhœlix
(1979) andyet at the same time
modellingfor sleaze magnate
David Sullivan. Crazy days!
It’s not allabout sex, however,
andmuch of the authors’focus
is upon the doom and gloom
redolent of post-war Britain.
As urban sprawl occupied the
countryside, ecological disaster
followed close behind. Curious
documentary pieces such asOss
Oss Wee Oss(1953) cast itswary
eye on the eerie and strange
traditions that could befound
in the English countryside
and the anxiety and spiritual
malaise urbanisation brought
with it is seen in themuted and
melancholy desperation ofRobin
Redbreast, a 1970 BBC Playfor
Today. No area of the human
conditionremained sacrosanct,
we are reminded, asPeter
Watkins’sWar Game(1965) held
the nation in post-nuclearabject
terror. Well, if the bomb didn’t
get you then therewas al ways
mental illness or kidnap and
torture at the hand of homegrown
terrorists asevidencedby Eric
Marquis’Savage Voyage(1971)
and HowardBrenton’sSkinflicker
(1973).With one’s dream ofa
happy future in tatters, perhaps
there is something quite
reassuringabout the comic
strangeness offaux Mondo
documentaries such asPrimitiveThe Bodies
Beneath
The Flipside of British Film &
Television
William Fowler &Vic Pratt
Strange Attractor Press 2019
Pb, 398pp, illus, bib, ind, £15.99, ISBN 9781907222726With its origin in the
‘Flipside’, a celebration of
delinquent British cinema
and television held at the
BritishFilm Institute between
2006 and 2013,Fowler and
Pratt’sThe Bodies Beneath
documents their findings
into homegrown cinematic
oddities.What is on offer is
a detailed cultural appraisal
of what they acknowledge is
a personal selection of film
and TV that they tender asa
countercultural filmography.
No mean task, andyet
they manage to convey the
complexity of establishing
a canon as therelationships
between writers, directors and
studios are counterpointed
with shifts in popular taste
and the breakdown of cultural
boundaries between high and
low art.
Alongside the
current interest in the
psychogeography of cultural
memory and the ‘repressed’,
Bodies Beneathexplores the
bubbling id that has both
undermined and co-opted our
viewing culture.The authors
explore convincingly the
degree to which mainstream
mediaexploitedradical new
perspectives laid bare in the
wakeof the sexualrevo lution
of the 1960s and the decadent
embrace of the 1970s. Each of
the staples of the ‘typically’
repressed British psyche–
sexuality, class,war andfantasy- are scrutinised in highly
researched and authoritative
studies of individual films and
commercially problematic
cultural tropes considered
taboo.
British,oddandproudofitFor British forteans of a certain vintage,Watch with Motherwas agateway to so many horrors(and pleasures, terrors and rumpy-pumpy...)London(1965) and the
arch humour ofnudist and
witchcraftexposés at the
hand of DanielFarson and
hisOut of Stepseries (1957).
Can things get anyweirder,
we ask?Yes, of course they
can, andmuch is made of the
Britishability torender the most
innocent of thingsfantastical,
if not pathological – psychotic
even?
Once lulled into a stuporby
Watch with Mother(1953–1975),
our children had to learn to cope
with deranged glove puppets,
monsters of implicit threat,
as Hartley Hare terrorised
the livingroom before Oliver
Postgate’sTottie was witnessed
firebombing a doll’s house
in 1984.Well now, if that all
meantyou couldn’t sleep at
night,forg et about a visit to
Sooty’s Chemist Shop(1957)
where hewas found knocking
up a few ‘specials’ to take out
Sweep. For the adults in the
room the Ray Davies’ scripted
Starmaker(1974) and Charlie
Drake’sSaucerer’s Apprentice
(1970) proffer salutary tales of
regression into toxic nostalgia
and tackling depressionby
falling in love with a bedsheet!
What was in that tea?To cap
it all, ifMother Riley Meets the
Vampire(1952) isn’t enough
to sendyou into therapy then
perhapsyou’d best join Alex
Sanders and his hippy witches–
Secret Rites(1970) – and tune in,
turn on and getyour kit off! And
why not!
Fowler and Pratt have
done afantastic job here and
Strange Attractor has produced
an elegantvolumeworthy of
any bookshelf. With plenty of
illustrations and a scholarly
bibliography to boot, this
recalibration of British cinema
and TV not only impliesa
parallel canon of cultural note
but wittilyexamines the British
psyche writ large in 35mm.
Chris Hill
HHHHdown in the Egyptian Red Sea
“at the black end of the dark
spectrum...There’s an encrusted
ghetto blaster, the obligatory and
evocative solitary shoe, thena
suitcase...” He goes toAustralia
to dive theSSYongala, in which
all 122 peopleaboardwent down
with the ship: “I don’t believe in
ghosts,” he writes, “but if I did,
they’d be here.”
At Auschwitz, he’s fulfilling
a promise made to a Holocaust
survivor friend, Sissy, who died in
- “Sissy’s testimonywas part
of the ‘Survivors of the Shoah’
Visual HistoryFoundation,
foundedby film director Steven
Spielberg.” Sissy’s tale is
probably the highlight of the
book. Sawyer paints a loving
picture of awoman whowas
totally nonchalantabout being
thankedby Steven Spielberg but
beside herself when she dropped
her walking stick in Marks&
Spencer one day and snooker
legend Steve Davis picked it up:
“OH. MY. GOTT! I COULD NOT
BELIEVE IT! STEVE!DAVIS!”
In Cambodia, Sawyer meets
survivors of Pol Pot’s regime,
observing that he feels “neutered
in the presence of survivors at
dark sites, as if they only survived
in order to benefit tourism and
to caterfor my curiosity.” I can
see whymuseum staff theworld
over don’t email him back. At the
Tuol Sleng Information office he
is “disarmedby [the] age, beauty
and stance” of the tour guide
before heading to the Killing
Fields and making a ridiculous
comparison between them anda
mini golf course.
Then he’s off to Aokigahra,
a Japaneseforest famousfor
suicides: “Once I steppedover
the barrierropes bearing the
‘No Entry’ sign into theforest
I was lookingfor a corpse.” It’s
disturbing to say the least. His
final stop is theWelsh mining
village of Aberfan, where in 1966
150,000 tonnes of mining slurry
buried the local school and 20
houses. 144 villagers lost their
lives; 116were children between
the ages of seven and 10.”
If you’re willing to ignore
the author’s feeble attempts at
poetic prose and at timesweird
observations, the book serves as
a detailed andwell-researched
guidefor an yone wanting to
travel to places associated with
death and the macabre.
Sophie Collard
HHH