What is it?
“Please help me try to understand this film!” as the lady says in PEEPING TOM.
The extract comes from a compilation called Modcinema Presents… Colorspace Vol 1 (I know!) and most of the stuff on it is fairly self-explanatory — a ’60s Cher TV appearance here, a fashion show clip there. True, at one point some young people sing a folk ballad to a hideous bee puppet, but I guess that’s from some kids’ show.
But this — it’s apparently a film clip. Certainly a British film. Low-budget but far from no-budget. I’d love to know what the film is, if only to avoid seeing it. I think it’s probably from the 68-70 era, going mainly by the casual nudity. Don’t recognize anybody in it, which is surprising in itself — that era had various strata of “usual suspects” who had the profession sewn up. Normally I can identify two out of every three dolly birds, and ALL the lecherous old geezers.
So, anybody know what this is, or who anybody in it is?
February 6, 2012 at 4:28 pm
No idea what it is. Looking at it, I’d guess c.1970 or so, the mix of hairstyles and the clothes and decor seems slightly later than ’68.
February 6, 2012 at 4:42 pm
Quite possible. And the sixties style seems to have curdled a bit, which would make sense for 1970.
February 6, 2012 at 5:01 pm
I really have tried, I did an advanced search on imdb, watched some youtube clips, looked through the thumbnails on modcinema’s youtube channel. I was really determined. Then about halfway through looking at the pictures on the modcinema website I started to get depressed, I even felt sorry for Joan Collins. I hope someone with a stronger constitution can work out this mystery.
February 6, 2012 at 5:01 pm
Another vote for 1970. The midi-skirt length was pretty much 1970, I think. That blond guy looks familiar…
February 6, 2012 at 5:15 pm
The little bald bloke with the moustache sounds like he’s been dubbed by Robert Rietty, but nothing on his imdb listing seems to leap out as a possibility for that period…
February 6, 2012 at 5:48 pm
It’s Puppet on a Chain (1971) after the Alastair Maclean novel, set in Hamsterjam. The guy at the bar is the star, Swede Sven-Bertil Taube, which may explain why no one recognises him now (though he was also in The Eagle Has Landed). There was a bowdlerised tv version which omitted topless waitresses, etc, so this scene may fail to trigger memories.
You just gotta know how to search these things …
February 6, 2012 at 6:08 pm
Ah, thanks Dai. Happily I didn’t come across that title, which would have been very annoying.
February 6, 2012 at 6:09 pm
Yay!
My late friend Lawrie worked with director Geoff Reeve when he was a pushy 1st AD. He was amused to imagine Reeves’ outraged reactions to the reviews on this one, which all singled out the boat chase as the only good bit. And the boat chase was directed by 2nd-unit man Don Sharp.
February 6, 2012 at 6:15 pm
Those body-stocking are a scream!
Very low camp.
February 6, 2012 at 6:58 pm
Yes, and you do get the sense that somebody, somewhere, is not quite aware what message they’re sending.
February 6, 2012 at 7:52 pm
Puppet on a Chain had that terrific boat chase: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqdP9c0tp9Q
February 6, 2012 at 10:28 pm
The entire aesthetic of this scene seems woefully out of date for 1971. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that this was filmed in the same year as Get Carter.
February 6, 2012 at 10:42 pm
I think the British cinema carried on in that mode for some time, running on sheer inertia — look at Dracula AD 1972.
On the other hand, it’s vaguely impressive that they were able to reflect the psychedelic culture as swiftly as they did — since it now takes everybody five years to get a film made in Britain, all the major cultural changes and political events are usually over by the time anybody tries to make a film about them.
February 6, 2012 at 10:52 pm
I think that’s why it was hard to fix a date on it. A lot of it screamed swinging ’60s (too emphatically?), but there were also a lot of things that flipped a “hey, that’s early ’70s!” switch in me. It’s like seeing a film that looks ’30s and then spotting a female actor or extra with one of those ghastly ’40s hairstyles. Once years ago I ID’ed a film purported to be mid-’20s as something almost ten years older from just the style of dress and a few props.
February 6, 2012 at 11:16 pm
Part of it is ego, I admit. I’m usually so good at guessing the year a movie was made, and this one really threw me.
But since the dancer at the beginning who looks deep into the camera’s eyes reminded me of a very young Gilles Segal, I’m clearly not in top form today.
February 6, 2012 at 11:17 pm
Somebody in charge of the boy dancers seems to have been influenced by SCORPIO RISING, methinks. It’s also instructive to be reminded what real breasts, male and female, used to look like . . .
February 6, 2012 at 11:22 pm
I think it’s worth bearing in mind that to a young guy (just starting Uni) at the time, it was hilarious how out of date or simply pastiche many films and tv series were. So many directors seemed to get the hang of late 60s fashion and what the mail readers saw as its freedoms and mores, just in time for a world with a totally different aesthetic. Admittedly a few others were part of the trend and right on the button.
All such films have ‘sophisticated’ guys taking girls to their pads and playing these mor lounge music records. I never knew any real people who ever owned such things. Most of us would put on some Floyd or something!
February 6, 2012 at 11:32 pm
I kept expecting Patsy and Edina to trundle in looking for a Stoli-Bolli
February 7, 2012 at 12:33 am
Dai,
Of course, in America at the tail end of the ’60s we were getting fed cop shows like The Mod Squad. Cooptation and subversion were the order of the day and the only saving grace was the shows were mostly so out of touch they got laughed at by anyone who was remotely hip. I found TMS revolting (a remarkable feat for a 8-year-old, I think I was smarter before puberty). That so many of those doing the laughing turned into religio-fascists later I leave as a depressing thought.
February 7, 2012 at 12:36 am
That dancer at the beginning didn’t just remind me of Dominic West — I actually entered a temporal rift in which he WAS Dominic West.
February 7, 2012 at 12:57 am
Katya, I like the way your mind works.
February 7, 2012 at 9:26 am
I like how he emerges from a darkness that couldn’t possibly be on that set. Even more abstract with the sound off — and you can still make him Dominic West or Gilles Segal in your head.
I recall a Richard Lester interview from around 1973 where he bemoans the lack of any new pop aesthetic / cultural movement since the late sixties, which suggests that he’d simply stopped following the trends, as surely glam rock was visible by then?
February 9, 2012 at 11:37 am
Holy synchronicity! I was just talking about this film yesterday in relation to filmed Alastair Maclean novels. I actually saw this in the cinema in a double bill (I think) with When Eight Bells Toll. To think that this (and Where Eagles Dare) used to be thought of as the ultimate in action movies (although Where Eagles Dare is commando comic magnificence – those cable cars, Derren Nesbitt as a Nazi!).