Director: Richard Loncraine
Screenplay by: Andrew Birkin, Dave Humphries
Starring: Dave Hill, Noddy Holder, Jim Lea, Don Powell, Tom Conti, Alan Lake, Ken Colley, Johnny Shannon
Country: UK
Running Time: 91 min
Year: 1975
When in the mid-70s, Slade, then one of the biggest bands in the British Isles announced they would make a film, people imagined something knockabout and laddish, a lively, rowdy fun time not unlike contemporary groups’ films such as Mud’s Never Too Young to Rock (1976). Indeed, a horror parody called The Quite-A-Mess Experiment was mooted by manager Chas Chandler as a vehicle for the band. However, instead, Noddy, Jim, Don and Dave decided to do something more rooted in reality, in the hardships of their beginnings in the Black Country clubland, something more akin to That’ll Be The Day (1973)/Stardust (1974). With Richard Loncraine (then a former BBC documentary man, later to direct such varied TV and films as The Haunting of Julia, Brimstone and Treacle, Blade on the Feather, McKellen’s Richard III and myriad Anglo-HBO fodder) directing, what we got was a bleak but brilliant story of the pain of fame.
Beginning at a wedding, it leaps into a shot through a window zooming out as a wedding party leaves a house. Filmed mainly on location in Sheffield, London and Nottingham, it is set in a vague approximation of the 60s like the aforementioned David Essex films, but this is a 60s that never swung, still rooted in the 50s (like many parts of the Midlands and North of England in the 70s). We see Dave Hill’s Barry and Jim Lea’s Paul as the backing band to Alan Lake’s wedding singer Jack Daniels, intercut with scenes at a Sheffield foundry where Don Powell’s Charlie works. Thus the opening credits and Nod singing his heart out on How Does It Feel, a real hairs on the back of the neck moment. Meanwhile, Noddy Holder is Stoker, a Screaming Lord Sutch parody who gets stuck in his coffin on-stage, and tours around with his band the Undertakers in a pink hearse. The band essentially form while urinating in an underground urinal. Thus begins the brutal and dramatic rise and fall of Flame…
The milieu of the film is superb. The grimy bingo hall with the stage full of the variety agent office full of black and white photos of artists stuck in the 50s, the grimy transport cafe with a pinball machine and squeezy tomato sauce holders…
The four lads are all terrific. Only Noddy Holder managed to parlay something of a career on screen (he played a version of himself in the ITV retro-sitcom The Grimleys, and cameoed in the 40th anniversary of Coronation Street saving the street’s destruction via a fake preservation order). However, they are all playing something very close to themselves. Johnny Shannon is terrific as the sleazy agent Ron Harding, somewhat overshadowing Tom Conti as his more modern replacement and yet it’s almost Alan Lake who steals it. Lake, a notorious alcoholic and then husband of Diana Dors, was a ferocious presence both on and off screen, as a kind of mix of cut-rate PJ Proby. Elsewhere, solid turns from the likes of Ken Colley, Michael Coles, Bill Dean, DJs Tommy ‘the vicar of Rock’ Vance and Emperor Rosko (the latter as himself), newsreader Reginald Bosanquet as himself, Bill Dean and an uncredited Nigel ‘King Arthur’ Terry.The film is important not only as a film, but as a chronicle of a lost time. It is a bit choppy at times, and incoherent, but that’s because the story it tells is so large.
Extras include interviews with Conti and Holder, a making of and a commentary, plus some featurettes.
The commentary by fan Mark Kermode and director Loncraine is very informative. We learn how Don Powell had severe acting problems after a car accident that killed his girlfriend, and that the terraced streets in the opening were already abandoned, and the chimneys were specially lit.
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