Prick Up Your Ears, 1987

The story of the spectacular life and violent death of British playwright Joe Orton, through the eyes and pen of that other great British playwright Alan Bennett.

In his teens, Joe Orton (a smart working-class boy from Leicester) is befriended by the older, more reserved Kenneth Halliwell, and while the two begin a relationship, it's fairly obvious that it's not all about sex (they were also sent to prison for defacing library books, hilariously treated here). Orton loves the dangers of cruising; Halliwell, not as attractive as Joe, doesn't fare so well (he is bald and wears a wig). While both try to become writers, it is Orton who succeeds - his plays ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE and LOOT become huge hits in London of the sixties, and he's even commissioned to write a screenplay for the Beatles. But Orton's success destroys Halliwell's sanity, whose response ended both their lives.

This 1987 film is a fascinating re-view now, particularly with that great cast: Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina early in their careers as the outrageous playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell who ends up killing them both. Add in Vanessa Redgrave ideal as the agent Peggy Ramsay (a small woman actually), Julie Walters as Joe's dotty mother back in Leicester, Frances Barber as his sister, Lindsay Duncan as the wife of writer John Lahr (Wallace Shawn) who wrote that great biography of Orton, as we follow him piecing together Joe's life. Its a fascinating saga particularly for anyone who lived through that 1960s era, as I did. 
I did not see MR SLOANE then but remember walking past the theatre where it was playing when I was first new in London in 1964, when I was 18 - but I saw the 1967 production of LOOT at the Criterion, with young Simon Ward and Kenneth Cranham. In 1976 I saw a great revival of SLOANE at the Royal Court, with Beryl Reid reprising her role in the 1970 film (much better than the film of LOOT - see Orton label) with Malcolm McDowell as Sloane in leather trousers! The actual murder of Orton in August 1967 and Ken's suicide was front page news, I was spending the weekend in Hastings on the coast with friends and it was in all the papers ...

Written by Alan Bennett from Lahr's book and directed by Stephen Frears, PRICK is a treat all round and captures both the 80s and 60s perfectly, and their one-room flat in London's Islington. It should be a better-known cult film, it does not shy away from the seedier aspects of cruising (what gays did before all those bars and clubs opened in the '80s - pity Orton did not live to see all that...) its frank language captures it all too. Its also very moving and sad as well as being wildly funny - Oldman (great legs) is perfect as Joe (looks like him too in that leather cap and tee shirt) and Molina is also marvellous as ever. Great to see him recently in that other gay romance LOVE IS STRANGE (and those re-runs of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK), while Gary is magnetic in films like AIR FORCE ONE, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, TINKER TAILOR SOLIDER SPY etc (and directed NIL BY MOUTH). 
Lahr's book is a great read too (as are Orton's published diaries), capturing it all, like Joe's final visit to Brighton where he was looking at flats as be was thinking of moving there, once he had left Halliwell (before he returns to London that fateful weekend ... when Ken explodes in murderous rage when Joe suggests they could split up, leaving Ken feeling abandoned by Joe's success), and it also details their friendship with Kenneth Williams and their trips to Morocco etc. Orton's own diaries are very amusingly explicit too on his many sex-capades ...
Great quotes in the film also: like that end comment, before The Beatles's "A Day In The Life" reaches that crescendo ...

Leonie Orton:  [Mingling Joe's and Ken's ashes]
I think I'm putting in more of Joe than I am of Ken.

Peggy Ramsay:  It's a gesture dear, not a recipe.

Kenneth Halliwell:  Cheap clothes suit you. It's because you're from the gutter.

[Halliwell puts his hand on Orton's leg. Orton brushes it off]

Joe:  No. Have a wank.

Kenneth:  Have a wank? Have a wank? I can't just have a wank. I need three days' notice to have a wank. You can just stand there and do it. Me, it's like organizing D-Day. Forces have to be assembled, magazines bought, the past dredged for some suitably unsavoury episode, the dog-eared thought of which can still produce a faint flicker of desire! Have a wank, it'd be easier to raise the Titanic.

[Joe and Ken are cruising a strange man]

Joe:   He's built like a brick shithouse!

Kenneth:  He's probably a policeman.

Joe:  I know, isn't it wonderful?

Peggy:  Ken was the first wife. He did all the work and the waiting and then...

John Lahr:  Well, first wives don't usually beat their husbands' heads in.

Peggy:  No. Though why I can't think.

John:  So what does that make you? The second wife?

Peggy:  Better than that, dear. The widow.

Another ship of fools ....

Based on the true story of a ship carrying German-Jewish refugees which was sent to Havana in 1939 by the Nazis but was denied permission to land anywhere. The ship was eventually obliged to return to Germany, where certain death awaited its passengers. This terrible outcome had been cynically anticipated by the Nazis when granting permission for the voyage in the first place.

The 1970s was that era of all-star disaster movies: the US studios gave us EARTHQUAKE, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, AIRPLANE 75 and all the rest, while in England TV mogul Sir Lew Grade assembled several all star packages, some of which were amusingly awful like our favourite THE CASSANDRA CROSSING (Sophia! Ava! Ingrid Thulin! Alida Valli! Burt Lancaster! John Philip Law! and more) and others like ESCAPE TO ATHENA was just silly, but VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED in 1976 was meant to be a serious drama but it is so crammed with names that one just sits there bemused by it all - "look, there's Julie Harris talking to Wendy Hiller" - but a lot of them have nothing to do and some barely get a look in: 

James Mason, Katharine Ross as a prostitute, Orson pops in a scene or two, as does Ben Gazzara, Helmut Griem reprises his evil Nazi (a la CABARET and Visconti's THE DAMNED), Malcolm McDowell, playing nice for once, is the young steward having a romance with Lynn Frederick (the last Mrs Peter Sellers), her parents are Lee Grant (who goes over the top spectacularly as the berserk mother cutting her hair in the concentration camp style) and Sam Wanamaker. Other well known faces here are Nehemiah Persoff and Maria Schell (also barely seen), while Jonathan Pryce is one of the persecuted refugees hoping for a new life. 

Topping the bill are Faye Dunaway and Oscar Werner (his final role) - Faye as an embittered wife displays her haughty glamour and gets to wear a monacle and strut around while her husband, Werner, practically reprising his role in SHIP OF FOOLS plays an esteemed Jewish surgeon. The captain of the "St Louis" is none other than Max Von Sydow. It should be a grim drama but the all-star cast and plodding direction of Stuart Rosenberg render it interesting for all the wrong reasons. Kramer's 1965 plodder SHIP OF FOOLS, which we caught and reviewed a year or so ago (Simone Signoret label), did it all much better. 

THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN in 1969 was also an all-star spectacular, helmed by the reliable Michael Anderson - one of several that year (BATTLE OF BRITAIN, OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR) - from a novel about the first Russian pope and how he tackles world poverty, from a novel by Morris West - which is another long, if entertaining, plod to see now, but at least it employed Anthony Quinn as the pope, Laurence Olivier as a wily Russian official, Oscar Werner again as another doomed priest, Gielgud as another ailing pope, and many, many more. 

October Trashfest

The IMDB Classic Film Board people are having their annual October challenge, seeing and reviewing the obscurer-the-better horror films for the Halloween season. I’ve rustled up my own October Trashfest, with some choice doozies:

Paul Schrader in 1982

CAT PEOPLE. The glossy 1982 remake from Paul Schrader (of DeWitt Bodeen’s story as filmed by Jacques Tourneur in 1942, a '40s classic) after his AMERICAN GIGOLO (which defined the early '80s), where he continues exploring his Calvinist background (he couldn't see any films until he was 18) and attitudes to sex and violence (as in his terrific script for TAXI DRIVER and early films HARDCORE and BLUE COLLAR, and his later LIGHT SLEEPER). Schrader certainly liked getting his attractive leads out of their clothes – as in GIGOLO and here, where leading lady Nastassja Kinski is starkers for the closing scenes …. I can’t imagine it being shown on TV uncut!

SPOILERS AHEAD:First thing, it looks terrific of course, shot by John Bailey (who lensed GIGOLO), and again Ferdinando Scarfiotti (1941-1994) is “visual consultant” (presumably like Hoyningen–Heune used to be for Cukor), the score is again by Giorgio Moroder, and David Bowie contributes that dynamic song “Putting Out Fire with Gasoline” – which leads us to the subject matter. Brother and long lost sister re-unite in suitably spooky New Orleans (OBSESSION, ANGEL HEART) – Irina (Kinski) though turns into a black panther when erotically aroused – brother Malcolm McDowell, who also transforms, wants her to sleep with him so they can protect each other, but she falls for a zoo director (John Heard). The copious amounts of nudity and the erotically charged story and the stunning visuals keep one watching, but the ending is problematic. We get a man tying a naked woman with rope to the four corners of a bed (which will be a turn-on for some people) before having sex with her – to save himself when she transforms into the panther! – and then the last scene has her as the panther in her cage at the zoo, as he looks at her wistfully and pets her and gives her treats, his pet captive. 

It seems it is her choice to be captured and sacrifice her freedom and he goes along with it, but will she turn back into human form again? There are gruesome scenes along the way, as well as Annette O’Toole’s topless swim in the pool, and some terrific special effects. Kinski (TESS), McDowell, Heard and Ruby Dee all do as their director requires and the Bowie song rounds it off nicely. Its certainly a fascinating, offbeat, cult movie that bears a rewatch. Interesting features on the dvd have interviews with Schrader (now married to Mary Beth Hurt) on set discussing Scarfiotti and the cast. Bowie of course went on to THE HUNGER with Deneuve, the next year in 1983, another stylish horror movie (as per my review Deneuve label).

THE KILLER NUN.  This is the real eurotrash treat, from 1979.

A demented nun sliding through morphine addiction into madness, whilst presiding over a regime of lesbianism, torture and death. Sister Gertrude is the head nurse/nun in a general hospital, whose increasingly psychotic behavior endangers the staff and patients around her.Or as the blurb says:

Legendary Swedish sex bomb Anita Ekberg (LA DOLCE VITA) stars as Sister Gertrude, a cruel nun who discovers depraved pleasure in a frenzy of drug addiction, sexual degradation and sadistic murder. Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro (ANDY WARHOL’S FRANKENSTEIN), Alida Valli as the mother superior, Lou Castel, Massimo Serato co-star in this notorious “Nunsploitation’ branded as obscene around the world and banned outright in Britain, but now available in a new restored transfer …

Well, yes, it’s a lot of fun, Trash Heaven in fact. Anita still has that Ekberg magnetism here (see label for my other reviews on her classics like SCREAMING MIMI or ZARAK), hilarious moments include her stamping on false teeth and having some hot girl on girl action. Directed by one Giulio Berruti.

THE NUN OF MONZA, 1969. “The Nun of Monza” by Mario Mazzuccheli was a respected Penguin paperback in the ‘60s which I remember enjoying reading. The film, by Epirando Visconti (a nephew of Luchino), finally turns up, a 1969 romp from that era of nun exploitation cinema. The story is based on real events emphasizing on the hypocrisy and abuse of power of the Catholic Church in 17th Century Italy. 
It all looks great of course, the buildings and the costumes. Anne Heywood is the Mother Superior who against her will has to give shelter to handsome Antonio Sabato who soon has those nuns all aflutter. Hardy Kruger is the priest who wants him protected. Soon though Sabato and Anne have a passionate affair resulting in a baby. Then they have to go on the run due to various plot twists and turns. It all ends with her being walled up alive for 10 years …. A fate worse than death, probably. Not as lurid as THE DEVILS it still packs a punch and looks great. Good score too by Ennio Morricone. 

RED RIDING HOOD, 2011. The classic fairly tale re-imagined for the TWILIGHT generation, as its director Catherine Hardwicke fashions a marvellous village and forest setting for more werewolf mischief … This time, Amanda Seyfried is Valerie (and she seems as vapid as she was in MAMMA MIA!) the girl torn between two men, the man she loves and the one her parents want her to marry. Gary Oldman on autopilot is Solomon, the werewolf hunter brought in to aid the villagers as it seems the wolf who prowls the forest is actually one of them in daylight hours … Julie Christie (right) is the grandma with her cottage in the woods who gives Valerie her scarlet cloak. I would not really bother with this, apart from Christie, who has some good moments. The ending though is rather a mystery as Riding Hood kills the werewolf (her own father!) but does not mind that the man she loves will also become one, as she takes grandma's place and waits for him. It has moments of campy fun but left a lot to be desired, some of it looks so murky one can hardly see what is going on – I was wishing I was back at Neil Jordan’s THE COMPANY OF WOLVES in 1984. 

I KILLED RASPUTIN. A rather tatty entry in the Rasputin stakes, this 1967 farrago is directed by actor Robert Hossein, who also appears. Hossein did some neat French thrillers I like a lot, but this one is not in those league. Peter McEnery is young Prince Yusupof , with Geraldine Chaplin as one of Rasputin’s devotees. Rasputin though is Gert Froebe – perfect as GOLDFINGER but all wrong here (Christopher Lee was a much more compelling Mad Monk for Hammer Films). Hossein’s father Andre did the music score. The real aged Prince Yusopov appears in person at the start, a few months before he died, which is the only fascinating thing here. We like Peter McEnery too, the first HAMLET I saw on stage about that time, in 1968, but wasted here. 

SERIAL MOM, 1994. Director John Waters puts a twist on the everyday mediocrity of suburban life in the hilarious satire SERIAL MOM. See Kathleen Turner like never before as Beverly Sutphin, the seemingly perfect homemaker who will stop at nothing to rid the neighbourhood of anyone failing to live up to her moral code. This is great fun but not quite in the same league as Waters’ HAIRSPRAY or indeed his earlier, wilder classics like FEMALE TROUBLE or PINK FLAMINGOS. Turner lets rip as people who do not recycle properly or who do not re-wind their rented video-cassettes get into a lot of trouble, as the body count piles up, even a leg of lamb can be a murder weapon! With Sam Waterston, and Waters regulars Ricki Lake, Mink Stole, Tracy Lords, Patricia Hearst and Suzanne Somers. Kitsch is the word! 

BEVERLY HILLS MADAM. I recorded this 1986 telemovie from a cable channel and foolished wiped it, I wish I had kept it now Its a kitschfest with all the requisite '80s glossy trappings and with those big hair and big shoulders, and Faye Dunaway cheerfully chomping the scenery as the Madam - hadn't she learned anything from MOMMIE DEAREST? - we are a long way from CHINATOWN here! A bordello catering to rich and wealthy clients, run by Lil Hutton (Faye) experiences a series of crises as one girl ends up pregnant, and another dead. As a subplot, a young woman, Julie Taylor, makes a trip to LA to surprise a friend, but never finds her. Julie is mugged, and seeks help from Lil. She sees how much the callgirls are making, and is tempted into the lifestyle. On her first "job" is hired by a rich father for his 18-year old virgin son as a birthday gift, and they fall in love. But the relationship comes to a quick end as soon as the son learns she is a "whore"; Julie breaks down and runs off after realizing prostitution is a cold and loveless occupation that cannot fulfill her emotional emptiness.This treat also features Louis Jourdan, Melody Anderson (those 80s names!), Donna Dixon, Terry Farrell and Robin Givens who sashay through this farrago, directed by Harvey Hart. 

LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER, 1981. Sylvia Kristel is the lonely young wife of a wealthy aristocrat in this tale of love, lust and forbidden fantasies as adapted from D.H. Lawrence’s famously erotic novel, featuring the tortuous conflict between duty and desire. Paralysed from the waist down due to a war injury, Sir Clifford Chatterley urges his wife Constance to take a lover to satisfy her physical needs, but when she begins an intense affair with a man of shockingly lower class – the virile and rugged gamekeeper Mellors – the unexpected stirring of passions will spell the end of their marriage ….. 
Shane Briant makes Chatterley a nasty bore, whereas Nicholas Clay is a perfect Mellors, totally at ease washing himself au natural. I suppose Kristel is adequate as Lady C, as directed by Just Jaeckin, and Ann Mitchell scores again as that devious nurse with it seems her own plans for the estate and Lord Chatterley. It’s a Golan/Globus production with better than usual production values. I wonder how it compares to the ’93 Ken Russell version? Can I be bothered to find out?

TOO HOT TO HANDLE, 1960. Sex bomb Midnight Franklin is the star at the Pink Flamingo nightclub in London’s wild Soho district. Midnight’s lover, club-owner Johnny Solo, carefully handpicks the exotic dancers from the scores of actresses, art students and young housewives that seek to join the well-paid Flamingo strippers. Johnny and the girls are not adverse to after-hours “deals” with the club’s wealthy clientele. The cash is rolling in and life is good. So good in fact that a rival club owner wants a piece of the pie and is prepared to use violence to get it. But Johnny is not one to back down from a fight, setting off a downward spiral of events that will explode in betrayal and murder! 

Delirious blurb – delirious movie. I had thought this was a cheapo effort not worth bothering with, but it proves a delicious cocktail of 1960 tropes among the Soho stripper set, tawdry but fun, like 1958's PASSPORT TO SHAME (revew at Diana Dors label) or EXPRESSO BONGO. It is directed by Terence Young (a few years before he moved on to James Bond and DR NO) and the cast all shine. Leo Genn is just right as Solo, while Jayne Mansfield is sweet and likeable as Midnight – this may have been the start of her slide from 20th Century Fox to cheapo movies, but she shines as the den mother to the strippers, and she has a nice scene with young Barbara Windsor (right, with her own assets to the fore, well they would have to be to compete with Jayne…) as 15 year old Ponytail. (Barbara is now one of our National Treasures here in the UK, so its amusing seeing her this early in her career in this context). Carl Boehm (PEEPING TOM that same year) is also to hand with nothing much to do, and Christopher Lee is actually rather sexy with that moustache as the devious club manager. Its all a lot of fun actually. 

Sexplosion !

"Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange - how a generation of pop rebels broke all the taboos" - this fascinating tome by Robert Hofler is an easy read, particularly for those of us who lived through those heady years. Let's see: "Rich, funny, and comprehensive SEXPLOSION takes you inside the tumultous, energizing years of 1968 to 1973, when artists, film-makers, and writers defied authority and challenged every taboo to create a sexual revolution that reverbates to this day. This is a superb evocation of an era" Patricia Bosworth says. or "Hofler pays tribute to the trailblazing artists who paved the way for the freedom on screen that we take for granted today", according to Jeffrey Schwarz.

It is a different world now looking back to those late 60s when censorship was still in full force - how much society can change over 40 years! Gay liberation and Women's Lib were still in their infancy - equality seemed a long way off then; unlike now, the newspapers were virulently anti-gay - in England the tabloids hounded closeted gay celebrities like Kenny Everett and Russell Harty to their deathbeds, and then the Aids crisis began .... Back in the '60s in America homosexuals were routinely called 'fags' or 'faggots' (it was 'poofs' here in England) even by the likes of liberals like Billy Wilder or John Huston (and in films like VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, THE LOVE MACHINE) - lots of straight men hated women whom they saw as castrating, dominating tyrants. 
Philip Roth certainly felt so - he refused to complete his manuscript for PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT as his hated ex-wife was getting half of what he earned, after tricking him into marriage with a fake pregnancy, as she had bought the urine sample from a pregnant woman, so he was not going to hand her another fortune - then, conveniently for him, not so for her, she was killed in a car crash, so heigh ho, and off to the printers !!! and that very funny book became one of the defining texts of the era, along with John Updike's COUPLES and Gore Vidal's MYRA BRECKINRIDGE, which we loved with a passion. Even the trash-but-fun movie did not dent our affection for it. How we howled at Mae West's line as she arrived at her office crowded with studs: "one of those guys will have to go..!"and poor Rusty gets it in the end, we had seen nothing like it !

Hofler goes into the genesis of all these, and in the theatre the problems with getting Mart Crowley's BOYS IN THE BAND, Tynan's OH! CALCUTTA! and Rado & Ragni's HAIR on stage with their nudity and depiction of gay life and those new freedoms. It seems critic Kenneth Tynan was more an unmitigated shit than one had realised. We knew about his S&M fetishes and caning women, but he was also rabidly anti-fag, and wanted nothing gay in his revue, and even wanted to hire only heterosexual actors! 

Also in the cinema, John Schlesinger was pushing boundaries with MIDNIGHT COWBOY, which featured some of the Warhol crowd, like Viva, also busy in Warhol products like LONESOME COWBOYS. Warhol's own films, as created by Paul Morrisey - FLESH, HEAT, TRASH - also raked in the money, though they would not pay for Holly Woodlawn to get bail from prison to attend her film opening!  Ken Russell meanwhile was getting the British film censor John Trevelyan (who was a regular on tv and in discussions on censorship I attended at the BFI), to pass his WOMEN IN LOVE (Olly and Alan had their own problems with that nude wrestling scene...) and the even more notorious THE DEVILS, while Visconti ran into problems with Warner Bros over his Nazi orgy in THE DAMNED and DEATH IN VENICE .....  which to the Warner Bros executives was about a middle-aged man chasing but never quite getting his hands on a knowing thirteen year old boy who seems to be leading him on. No wonder they wanted Tadzio changed to a girl called Tadzia !

Hofler though does not mention Fellini's SATYRICON or Antonioni's ZABRISKIE POINT, two other hits of the counterculture era, as we zoon on to BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (which earned Natalie Wood more than any other film she made, as she had a percentage deal) and CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, DEEP THROAT and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (right). Amusing story about that - arch-manipulator Kubrick stayed at home in England but persuased Malcolm McDowell and Anthony Burgess, the book's author, to go to America and handle the interviews for ORANGE. Then Burgess realised he was not making anything from the film's success as he had earlier sold the rights for a few hundred dollars ....

Schlesinger ran into more trouble with his next one, SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY, but was now an Oscar-winning director, so got his way, having to replace his initial choices Ian Bannen and Hiram Keller which was not working out, with the more laid back Peter Finch and Murray Head. Princess Margaret though hated the film with its depiction of "men in bed kissing" - surely she knew enough gays! The kinky sex and violence of PERFORMANCE (left) also frazzled Warner Brothers who did not know what to do with it. STRAW DOGS with its brutal rape was also causing lots of problems. Then there was the notorious making of LAST TANGO IN PARIS ....

A fascinating era in all, as the new freedoms slowly became commonplace- as covered by "Films & Filming" and other magazines.  Another discussion I attended in 1970, when 24, at the BFI was on the topic of 'Actors & Nudity' - a hot topic then with more and more actresses and actors too, having to get their kit off. 
I remember Billie Whitelaw being vocal at this, and Zeffirelli's naked Romeo, Leonard Whiting, in a crushed velvet blue suit. He was standing next to me afterwards at the gents urinal  ... not a suitable moment to chat though.
Censorship still raged in Ireland then, a look at WOMEN IN LOVE at the local cinema I grew up in, in 1970 or so reduced us to helpless laughter - the wrestling scene had been reduced to a few shots of them panting on the carpet, making it even more suggestive. They were running MIDNIGHT COWBOY the following week - I wondered how much of that was left ...
How times change: Finland is now issuing quite explicit Tom of Finland stamps! 

More '60s: The IF boys ....

Staying with the Sixties a bit longer, lets look at those new boys who emerged at the end of the decade, in Lindsay Anderson's revolutionary IF .... set in that public school, with its rules and rituals, homoerotic longings and finally revolution - it was in the air then in 1968.

Malcolm McDowell has had a long career, too well known to encapsulate here, full of milestone movies like Kurbrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and continued his association with Anderson in OH LUCKY MAN in 1973, and BRITANNIA HOSPITAL. He also had some notorious moments as with CALIGULA in 1976, and for me his demented over-the-top Nazi officer in THE PASSAGE in 1979, as per McDowell label, as though director J Lee Thompson was encouraging him to over-act Anthony Quinn and James Mason off the screen - Malcolm accomplished it. 

A Clockwork Orange

He was terrific too on the stage as Mr Sloane in a 1975 revival of ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE at the Royal Court in London, with Beryl Reid recreating her role, as Malcolm strided around in leather trousers, being a very menacing Mr Sloane. I particularly liked his H.G. Welles in Nicholas Meyer's marvellous sci-fi fantasy TIME AFTER TIME in 1979, where David Warner (see below) equalled him as that icy Jack The Ripper, at home in modern San Francisco ... Malcolm continues to act and has had a long career. Like Michael York and Warner, he just keeps on going. Malcolm of course was married for a long time to his TIME AFTER TIME co-star, the lovely and intriguing Mary Steenburgen. He is indeed very busy with IMDB listing 230 credits, with several in post-production. Interesting to see him and Warner, like Michael York, continuing in smaller roles as they get older and still keep busy.

Then there was Richard Warwick ... born in 1945, he was in Zeffirelli's ROMEO & JULIET (as Gregory - that does not sound very Italian), before getting one of the main roles in Lindsay Anderson's IF .... and then the lead in THE BREAKING OF BUMBO in 1970, a recent re-discovery, as per Warwick label. 
He was also in NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA in 1971, (as was Martin Potter, from Fellini's SATYRICON, reviewed recently), plus in Schell's FIRST LOVE (reviewed below) and among his tv work, a good version of Coward's THE VORTEX in 1969 opposite Margaret Leighton (its included in that Noel Coward boxset). There was also that tv series A FINE ROMANCE in the 80s with Judi Dench. Richard also appeared in Derek Jarman's SEBASTIANE in '76 and THE TEMPEST. Another good BBC play was THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES in 1991 - due for a re-view and a review before too long, a very 'gay interest' title.
He was also Bernardo in Zeffirelli's HAMLET, the Mel Gibson one (which I just recorded from television last night, so that will be re-view soon, when I get around to discussing Hamlets). Zeffirelli's JANE EYRE in 1996 was his last role, as John. We have not seen that. 
As I mentioned before, I used to see Richard around town, on his bicycle, and we chatted at a pub we used to go to to in Earls Court in London in those early 80s days. He died aged 52 in 1997, its a shame he, like Ian Charleson (who was playing Hamlet just before he died), did not survive the Aids crisis. He had an extensive theatre career too, at the National in several prestige productions.

The other main actor in IF... David Wood had a successful career as actor and writer for children's television.

Ortonesque: Mr Sloane's loot

1970 saw the release of the two films based on Joe Orton's hit '60s plays LOOT and ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE. Both are outrageous black comedies and were very successful plays, but maybe they were too black and unconventional for movies then, as it seemed the film-makers did not know what to make of them, and even tried to camp up LOOT so the film now is a grotesque piece, not helped by the casting of the two male leads.

I saw the London production of the play in 1967 (programme, left), when 21, when the two boys were young Simon Ward and Kenneth Cranham, and it was a brilliant production, at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus, that little theatre with white tile walls and you go downstairs to it, so it rather resembles a gentleman's public toilet, quite apt in the circumstances. Orton was of course the enfant terrible of theatre then, being hailed as a new working-class Oscar Wilde from Leicester, ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE had been a hit in 1964 - I remember being 18 and walking past the theatre, but had not started my theatre-going just yet then, so I was determined to see LOOT on the stage. Orton also wrote WHAT THE BUTLER SAW and tv productions like THE RUFFIAN ON THE STAIR - all brilliantly funny to read now - and was supposed to script a film for The Beatles, all of which he wrote very funnily about in his explicit diaries, which are a marvellous read of the time, detailing his gay exploits (that Irish labourer in a deserted house, boys in Morocco etc) and his holidays with Kenneth Williams, and that last weekend of his in Brighton when he was looking at houses to buy, as he was planning to leave his long time lover Kenneth Halliwell. 
Unfortunately, he was not to know that Halliwell would kill him and then himself, on his return to their studio in Islington, London that weekend in August 1967. I was on the coast too that weekend, in Hastings in Sussex, with friends - and it was the big story that weekend, in all the papers, so that was his career and talent snuffed out at age 34. Stephen Frear's 1987 film PRICK UP YEAR EARS, based on the Orton diaries and Jack Laar's book, and scripted by Alan Bennett, covers it all in detail, with great performances from Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina, ably supported by the likes of Vanessa Redgrave, Frances Barber, Lindsay Duncan and Julie Walters.

So, to the films: LOOT: Dennis (Hywel Bennett) and Hal (Roy Holder) are inseperable. They are also irreverent, boisterous, highly sexed and eager to acquire a quick fortune by the most expedient method - robbing a bank. Only problem is where to hide their loot - fortunately Dennis works as an undertaker's assistant, so a coffin seems the perfect place to hide it. But from the moment they try to fit a body (Hal's mother who has conveniently died) and the money in the coffin, plans go wrong, and soon the boys have a lot of trouble on their hands as the dreaded Inspector Trustcott (Richard Attenborough) arrives to investigate, and then there is the devious, gold digging nurse (Lee Remick) who was looking after the deceased, and maybe planning to marry the widower, Hal's father (Milo O'Shea) or maybe Dennis himself, whom she has been carrying on with. 

This is all jazzed up with the most hideous set imaginable, a dreadful music soundtrack that never stops, Lee Remick does her best and some of Orton's witty lines survive the Galton & Simpson script, but why is she got up to look like Jean Harlow with peroxide hair and a beauty spot, and sporting that hilarious Irish accent? The boys seem all wrong too - Bennett was unaccountably popular at the time (THE FAMILY WAY, THE BUTTERCUP CHAIN, TWISTED NERVE, PERCY) but Holder looks terrible in that awful wig, neither are in the least appealing. One of the few amusing moments is Lee's nurse pulling up Hywel's underpants over his bare bum. Milo is a lot of fun as usual, and I had forgotten comedian Dick Emery is also in it. Add in the missing eyeball, and the body being moved around, and the boys (Dennis is meant to be bisexual, while Hal is gay) robbing the bank naked (so no evidence on their clothes!) and it all gets sillier and sillier, and looks like one of those dreadful early '70s British efforts like DORIAN GRAY, GOODBYE GEMINI, ALL COPPERS ARE, etc. - as we detail at Trash/London labels. 
The play is the thing here, not this awful movie. Director Silvio Narrizano though had hits with his GEORGY GIRL in 1966 and that odd Terence Stamp western BLUE, as well as a prolific tv career. 

ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE, also 1970, fares a lot better, as directed by Douglas Hickox, with sterling performances by Beryl Reid and Harry Andrews, who play the material 'straight' without the need to camp it up, as that eager brother and sister wanting to get their hands on the thuggish young Mr Sloane - Peter McEnery is a good choice here. Everyone's lack of morals is nicely detailed as Kath (Beryl) and shady businessman Ed (Harry) lock horns over the sexy young lodger Sloane.

Sloane, a handsome, sexy and completely amoral young man, joins Kath's household as a lodger and proceeds to manipulate her and her brother, Ed. He is recognized by Kemp (Dadda) as the murderer of Kemp's former employer, whereupon Sloane murders Kemp. Sloane's "just desserts" are not what one would expect.

Harry Andrews is perfect here, eagerly hiring Sloane as his chauffeur, and Beryl Reid has another great comic role after her stage and screen success in THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE, and she certainly goes to town with it here (in that see-through day-glo mini-dress) as she and Andrews provide a comic masterclass in how to play this kind of material. I also saw Beryl reprising her Kath role on the stage in a Royal Court 1975 production with Malcolm McDowell dangerously menacing in leather as Sloane (right).  I had seen McEnery as HAMLET - in Leicester! - around then, and of course he was Boy Barrett in VICTIM, and those films with Hayley Mills, Jane Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Glenda Jackson etc. We also saw him SHADOW OF A GUNMAN at the Young Vic and he was later in a revival of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC in the late 80s, but his last credit was in 2008.

So, the film of MR SLOANE is still good fun, LOOT is just simply dreadful.