Director: Hilton Edwards (Return to Glennascaul); John Gullerman & Don Caffey (Strange Stories); Derick Williams (Strange Experiences: Grandpa’s Portrait & Old Silas); Bob Bentley (Maze); Tony Bicat (Skinflicker); Geoff Lowe (The Terminal Game) and Nichola Bruce & Michael Coulson (Wings of Death)
Script: Hilton Edwards (Return to Glennascaul); Jerome Lawrence, Robert E Lee (Strange Stories); Bob Bentley (Maze); Howard Brenton (Skinflicker); Nichola Bruce, Michael Coulson (Wings of Death); Geoff Lowe Lowe (The Terminal Game)
Cast: Michael Laurence, Shelah Richards, Orson Welles (Return to Glennascaul); John Slater, Valentine Dyall, John Laurie (Strange Stories); Peter Williams (Strange Experiences: Grandpa’s Portrait & Old Silas); George Votsis, Stephanie Cleverley, Mary Hodlin, Betty Ogden, Jo Irvin (Maze); Hilary Charlton, Will Knightley, Henry Woolf (Skinflicker); Dexter Fletcher, Kate Hardie, Tony Haygarth, Paula Jacobs (Wings of Death); Jack Galloway, Stacey Tendeter, Roy Herrick (The Terminal Game)
Running time: 189 minutes
Year: 1951-1985
Certificate: 15
This is a third BFI collection that revisits the heyday of the supporting programme with a compendium of bizarre and eccentric British short films, presented for the first time in high definition. Viewers are in for a strange cinematic journey, through yet more low-budget weirdness, oodles of atmosphere and a fair bit of dated charm. Here’s my thoughts on each of the shorts, in turn, oldest first.
Return to Glennascaul (1951)
We start off with Return to Glennascaul, an atmospheric, Academy award-nominated tall tale, recounted with relish by Orson Welles, who was taking a break from the filming of Othello at the time. During a spooky Irish midnight, lone traveller, Welles, picks up a stranded motorist, in the form of Sean Merriman (Michael Laurence), who tells him all about his previous nocturnal encounter at an Irish crossroads with Mrs Campbell and her daughter. This is a by-the-numbers ghost story, but it’s effectively told and executed, and the black and white photography adds to the film’s otherworldly vibe. Plus, it ends on a comic moment, which is a bit of silly fun. It’s just a pity that some of the soundtrack is a bit ‘soft’ near the beginning; otherwise it’s a decent opener for this new collection.
Strange Stories (1953)
These are two episodes of the syndicated series Your Favorite Story that was broadcast on US screens back in February 1953. The two stories here are The Strange Mr Bartleby and The Strange Journey. The former is another ghost story, (based on a story by Herman Melville), this time wrapped up in a bit of detective work as lawyer, Mr Gilci, is asked to find a certain Mr Swain, who disappeared 19 years earlier. However, during his investigation he meets Mr Bartleby (played by Dad’s Army regular John Laurie) who seems unwilling, or is perhaps unable, to leave the dead letters office where he used to work. Bartleby even has his own strange catch-phrase: “I would prefer not.”
The second strange tale, The Strange Journey, sees crooked accountant H.T.Backcock (Colin Tapley) accidentally killing his boss on board a train. Realising that he needs to go on the run, he and his wife abscond the country on a slow freight ship bound for Tasmania. But partway into the trip they start to suspect that the ship’s captain (Peter Bull) is on to them resulting in some grave misunderstandings with very serious consequences.
Neither of the two strange stories is particularly noteworthy, but are still fairly entertaining time wasters and have a dated charm all of their own. However, the acting is good, especially John Laurie who gives a suitably distraught performance as the eponymous Bartleby, his yearning for permanence offering a clue to his mind-set. Plus, some impressive London locations are used, which probably went down well with US viewers at the time.
Strange Experiences: Grandpa’s Portrait & Old Silas (1956)
These are two rather peculiar micro-budget episodes of unease hosted by Peter Williams, who firstly relates a tale, Grandpa’s Portrait, concerning a portrait of his grandfather, who used to be a sea captain; one who survived the blitz and seemed to have nine lives. The said portrait later saves our narrator’s own ‘bacon’ in this rather slight story with supernatural undertones.
The second four-minute short, Old Silas, has our narrator telling us about a friend of his who confesses to having killed a particularly nasty poacher exactly a year before his confession. The problem is, however, as he died, the poacher cursed our narrator’s friend, informing him that he’d die at precisely 11pm on the anniversary of his death. And, sure enough, just as he’s told our friendly-neighbourhood narrator this, comes a sudden knocking at the door, producing an extreme reaction from the confessor.
Both of these a fun little shorts, although neither are particularly original.
Maze (1969)
This, the final film on disc one of the set proves itself to be a somewhat enigmatic travelogue set around late sixties swinging London. Apparently ‘a meditation upon multiple mysterious London entanglements’, this all seemed a bit pretentious to me, but if you like watching people drink tea, and sitting on park benches then knock yourself out. The only thing I liked about it was its groovy soundtrack by friends from the English progressive rock group Family.
Skinflicker (1973)
This is probably the most disturbing of the shorts in this collection, as it’s a found footage type of film (so ahead of the game at this point), whereby we get to witness the planning and execution of the brutal kidnap and forced suicide of a government official by a group of revolutionary terrorists. They rope in a porn filmmaker to record their nefarious deeds, but he ends up scarpering off before the end and informing the cops as to what’s going on, who arrive too late to save the official. The 8mm footage is intense, but also quite irritating, particularly as it features one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever had to spend time with; a low rent Dudley Moore lookalike named Henry. The other revolutionaries are more agreeable, one being a nurse. The filmmakers cleverly use both black & white and colour footage, which gives the film a more realistic vibe.
Public information films
The second disc also features a couple of public information films from 1973, namely Broken Bottle warning us to be on the look-out for broken glass, hidden in the sand, on the beach and Don’t fool around with fireworks, which is self-explanatory, featuring rowdy teens accidentally blinding a girl by hurling a firework in her general direction.
The Terminal Game (1982)
This was Geoff Lowe’s graduation film from the National Film School, and has Jack Galloway investigating the bizarre circumstances of a colleague’s death while working at the Invex Company, a kind of ruthless silicon-valley type of organisation, bent on designing software that can further infringe the public’s ever-diminishing rights. This is a very ambitious film, which serves as an interesting failure, but it’s still well made and its subject matter is probably more prescient now than it was back in the early eighties.
Wings of Death (1985)
A grief-stricken young man, Stephen, (played by Dexter Fletcher), arrives at a rundown hotel dragging a large suitcase full of sand behind him. He then spends the rest of the film taking heroin, having vivid nightmares and hallucinating horrible things before finally taking his own life. Probably the biggest star of the film is the set design, which is excellent, since the hotel is a revolting creation populated with equally revolting human beings, especially the owners, a nightmarish version of ‘George and Mildred’, if ever there was. Again, this is a student film, but one with high production values. It famously played as a support to the original Nightmare on Elm Street movie.
Perhaps not as strong a collection of shorts as the previous two collections, but this is still an interesting array of films that you just can’t normally view these days, so well done BFI, again, for bringing these rarities to light.
Short Sharp Shocks Vol 3 is being distributed by BFI on Blu-ray. There are a number of substantial extras included in the package, namely:
A Vandyke Production: Roger Proudlock and Strange Stories (7 mins) – The BFI’s Vic Pratt looks back on the tiny post-war independent film company that produced Strange Stories. This is an interesting short documentary about the film company who actually shot one of their features ‘as live’.
Getting Lost (20 mins) – An interview with Bob Bentley, the writer and director of Maze. He explains how Maze was his version of French New Wave cinema, mixed in with some elements from Greek mythology. The filming was apparently done around Covent Garden, in the early morning.
Touch a Nerve (26 mins) – An interview with Skinflicker director Tony Bicât, who started out in theatre before trying his hand at filmmaking. The BFI asked him to shoot a teaser for £300 before they later gave him the full £3K to make the film. When it was screened for the board some of the management wanted to destroy the film as they felt that he’d gone too far!
Actor Henry Woolf’s personal pencil-annotated copy of the Skinflicker script by Howard Brenton.
A Game of Two Halves (28 mins) – An interview with The Terminal Game writer and director Geoff Lowe, who admits that Brave New World and 1984 were his main inspirations for the film. Apparently a friend of his programmed a BBC Basic computer for him to be able to achieve some of the effects that he was after.
Playing Music (8 mins) – Renowned composer Colin Towns looks back on his score for The Terminal Game. Colin had just come off scoring the supernatural film Full Circle when he was asked to compose music for this film. He thought, for a student film, that The Terminal Game was incredible and he enjoyed creating an abstract soundscape for the film.
The Terminal Game original trailer (2.5 mins) – All played very seriously and rather too po-faced.
Wings of Death: Behind the Scenes (7 mins) – A chance to see plenty of behind-the-camera material, which shows that they had some serious snow fall at the time of the shoot.
Co-director Nichola Bruce’s chronological edit of her 8mm footage of the shoot.
Flying High (31mins) – The directors of Wings of Death look back on the film and its origins, while they were at Art College together. They see the film as being a tragedy about heroin and nihilism. The duo later did the storyboards for John Boorman’s The Emerald Forest.
Rare photographs taken on the set of Wings of Death by Steve Pyke.
Image galleries for Maze, Skinflicker and Wings of Death
Newly commissioned sleeve artwork by renowned illustrator Graham Humphreys
Leave a Reply