UNMAN, WITTERING AND ZIGO: forget the title, feel the fear

Behind the prosaic yet puzzling title of this 1971 British production lies a genuinely disturbing and gripping story which succeeds in unsettling despite building to a distinctly unsatisfying conclusion.

A cherubically  handsome David Hemmings stars as naive schoolteacher John Ebony who lands his first job at the remote Chantry boarding school for boys somewhere on the English coast. He arrives halfway through the term to replace Mr Pelham, form 5B's previous teacher, who has fallen to his death from nearby cliffs.
The official verdict is that he got lost in the fog but as the boys of 5B soon make crystal clear to Mr Ebony, they murdered him after he got on their bad side and they're quite willing to do the same thing to him if he doesn't agree to their terms. His initial response is to fight back but the boys' willingness to follow up their threats with action soon forces him to yield to their demands.
Hemmings is superb as the idealistic young teacher who's slow to recognise he's way out of his depth despite the blunt warnings from his charges (always couched in the politest of terms and never failing to address him as 'Sir'), the disinterest of the school's headmaster (Douglas Wilmer), and the lack of support from his frustrated wife (Carolyn Seymour) who's struggling to adapt to her new role as a compliant spouse.

Ebony's initial enthusiasm for his new career and misplaced confidence in his ability to best his nakedly evil pupils drains away as director John Mackenzie slowly ratchets up the tension, building to a goose-bump inducing sequence where the boys target Ebony's wife to teach him a lesson. Rarely has a squash court felt like such a terrifying place.
It's tempting to describe UNMAN, WITTERING AND ZIGO as a horror movie, but that wouldn't be strictly accurate. It's more of a psychological thriller, soaked through with menace and an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. The school is just a bus ride away from the nearest town but for all intents and purposes it exists in a separate dimension, buffered from the outside world by rolling hills and those treacherous cliffs. The isolation is essential for the boys' threat to be credible. Intruders with more savvy than the Ebonys would call form 5B on their behaviour and the spell would rapidly be broken.
To call form 5B 'boys' is something of a misnomer. As with almost every film set in a school, the actors are much too old for the parts they're playing (future star Michael Kitchen was 23 at the time) but it's less of a distraction here and doesn't overly detract from the purpose of their presence. Credit is also due to Tony Haygarth (only 3 years older than Kitchen) as the cynical art teacher who takes Ebony under his wing, and embodies the disillusionment with the profession which awaits Ebony if his pupils don't get him first.
Like me, you may not fully understand or accept the final climax, and while that's disappointing it's not of a magnitude to destroy what's come before. If you can find it (and the film's not currently available on DVD) UNMAN WITTERING AND ZIGO is a rewarding and engaging watch best experienced late at night with the lights off.

THE COMEBACK: easy listening singer in horrific movie shocker!

THE COMEBACK is one of those obscure, long forgotten films that's worth checking out not because it's an overlooked gem but because the concept is so bizarre.

What was it that convinced producer-director Pete Walker that the ideal person to star in this low-budget 1978 British horror movie would be late 60s easy listening singer Jack Jones?
Yes - Jack Jones. Mr 'Wives and Lovers.' The singer of the theme to 'The Love Boat.'
What was it about his bland singing style and inoffensive good looks that screamed "horror film actor!" to you, Mr Walker?
And what was it, Mr Jones, that made you say yes to this ridiculous script about an easy listening singer who finds himself tormented by strange nocturnal noises emanating from the gothic pile he's renting while recording his comeback album?
Was it the chance for a couple of decidedly tame sex scenes with the admittedly very attractive, pre 'Not The Nine O'Clock News' Pamela Stephenson?
Or was it the opportunity to explore new facets of your talent and spice up your comfortable, safe middle-of-the-road image?
THE COMEBACK definitely gave you the former but it did precious little for the latter. But that's not entirely your fault.
Even had you given a performance of Robert De Niro in 'Taxi Driver' proportions you would still have faced an uphill battle to save this film. THE COMEBACK never really recovers from what may just be the most boring first ten minutes ever committed to celluloid. If the intention is to build an air of mystery, suspense and fear it fails - completely and utterly. The only response it provokes is deep sleep.  
Indeed, an overwhelming sense of lethargy permeates the entire film. No one in the cast can rouse themselves sufficiently to breathe life into their one dimensional characters, or make even a half-hearted attempt to plug some of the most glaring holes in the plot.
While Jones doesn't embarrass himself as an actor he should be embarrassed about appearing in such a cheap, shoddily made production. Now that's the real horror.

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER: the angriest angry young man

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER has much to say about class and alienation in early 1960s Britain and they can all be summed up in one moment which encapsulates the contradictions of the subject matter so powerfully it sent shivers down my spine.

The inmates of Ruxton Towers Borstal are being 'entertained' with a concert staged by a small group of well-meaning but hopelessly inappropriate amateur performers. Having endured a bird caller and excruciatingly off-key light opera the vicar asks the audience to join him in singing "that fine old hymn you've heard so often in chapel 'Jerusalem." It's a hymn so inextricably bound up in notions of empire, patriotism, authority and everything else that the inmates have no use for that I expected to hear a silent response, but as director Tony Richardson's camera pans back and forth across the audience every member is not only singing lustily but is also word perfect. And no one more so than the protagonist, Colin Smith (Tom Courtenay)whose rebellious contempt for the established order has landed him in the borstal.
Smith is not a particularly exceptional youth. Growing up the eldest son in a working class family in 1950s Nottingham, his experiences have given him a very bitter view of life and he's determined not to follow in his father's footsteps, working as a factory labourer for £9 ($15 approx) a week and dieing prematurely and painfully from cancer largely unloved by a wife (Avis Bunnage) who's already got her fancy man lined up and ready to move in. Smith knows what he's against but not what he's for, other than committing petty crimes and romancing Audrey.

When he lands in Ruxton Towers the Governor (Michael Redgrave) finds that something positive for Smith to focus on - cross-country running. Smith shows a natural talent for the discipline and the Governor wants to use it to win the challenge cup when a team of his borstal boys takes on a team from a nearby public school. The Governor's an old school man who believes that hard work and discipline can turn his charges into productive members of society and his patronage elevates Smith to a new status among his fellow inmates, but it's not clear whether the troubled young man has genuinely bought in to the Governor's philosophy on life.
It would be easy to see the Governor as a relic of the pre-war past, impotently railing against the advances in his profession which now dismiss his approach as hopelessly outdated and ineffective but it's nowhere near as simple as that. Director Richardson and writer Alan Sillitoe have created a far more complex world which acknowledges that the Governor's authoritarian paternalism is no longer relevant but also recognises that there's no immediately viable alternative available when all that the next generation (Smith) has to offer is negativism. And while the film is certainly on Smith's side it's as critical of the shortcomings of the working class as it is of the upper class.
As representatives of their respective socio-economic categories, Redgrave and a very young Courtenay are superb, demonstrating a subtle understanding of Sillitoe's writing and the complexities it encompasses.
The kitchen sink drama style of British theatre and cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s produced a glut of angry young men. Courtenay's Colin Smith is perhaps their most effective representative making THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER a truly compelling and thought-provoking piece of cinema.

BOYS IN BROWN: rising stars take a wrong turn

This 1949 British crime drama is as uninspired as it's title.
It focuses on a bunch of unfeasibly well-spoken, slightly over-age teenage troublemakers doing time at an implausibly cuddly and cosy borstal for a variety of minor crimes.

If BOYS IN BROWN is to be believed, the British borstal system of the mid 20th century was akin to the British boarding school system minus the homosexuality (although Dirk Bogarde's character is suspiciously softly spoken). Neither were particularly welcoming institutions but if you knuckled down and followed the rules they'd both make a man of you.
Writer-director Montgomery Tully operates under the illusion that he's making a message movie about youth and society, and how the latter must act humanely if it is to keep the former from falling into a life of crime. But the script is so simplistic and the actors so ill-suited for the parts they're playing that the whole thing comes off as a seriously misguided and patronising attempt by  well-meaning middle class do-gooders to tell the lower classes just what's best for them. These boys have done bad things but they're not bad, just a little misguided, and if they'll only listen to the kind hearted liberal governor of the borstal (Jack Warner) everything will turn out ok.
Richard Attenborough's character, Jackie Knowles, is the primary recipent of this benificence. He's got his mum (Thora Hird) and his girl (Barbara Murray) waiting for him on the outside and he doesn't want to let them down again. It can be tough on the inside, resisting the peer pressure from the likes of Alfie (Bogarde), Bill (Jimmy Hanley) and 'Sparrow' (Michael Medwin) but if he just follows the pearls of wisdom in the Governor's lectures he'll be ok. Jackie is a variation on Attenborough's 'Pinkie' in 'Brighton Rock' made 2 years earlier, but minus any depth of character. Bogarde's inexplicably Welsh accented Alfie is so delicate it's impossible to imagine what crime he could have committed to get himself sent to borstal, while Hanley, Medwin and the rest of the gang look and sound like over grown grammar school boys slumming it.
The miscasting is really not the fault of the actors. They were all signed to contracts with studios like Rank and Gainsborough and told what parts to play. Everyone involved in BOYS IN BROWN would go on to bigger and better things, and the kindest way to look on this film is as a training ground for some genuinely talented actors.

ACCIDENT: an academic's life under the microscope

After he outgrew his matinee idol beginnings Dirk Bogarde moved on to some very interesting work, essaying a variety of challenging and varied roles which allowed him to show his true talent as a serious actor.
I've always found his 60s films particularly worth watching, but ACCIDENT tested the limits of my admiration. This 1967 Joseph Losey directed drama is ponderous in the extreme, full of meaningful silences and lingering shots which give the impression that he forgot to call 'cut!' at the end of the scene.

Bogarde plays Stephen, an Oxford University don fretting about the onset of middle age, who becomes entranced by one of his female students. Anna (Jacqueline Sassard) is an Austrian princess with striking features, a frosty demeanor and all the personality of a tree stump, and I've read criticism elsewhere that ACCIDENT doesn't work because Sassard's not a good enough actress to play a convincing temptress. But that ignores the fact that a man going through a mid-life crisis is highly likely to be less interested in a great personality than looks and youth and Anna has both.
Stephen faces competition for Anna's attentions from another of his students,William (Michael York), and - more creepily - Charley (Stanley Baker), one of his colleagues who's also married with kids.
This bizarre love triangle plays out at a glacial pace under the hot sun and rural splendour of Oxfordshire in the summer, with Stephen mostly a passive and frustrated observer of William and Charley's considerably more pro-active pursuit of the emotionless Anna.
The film's languid pace plays up to the characters' sense of boredom and frustration. Stephen and Charley latch onto Anna more as a shortsighted reaction to middle age and their stagnating marriages  than because they're smitten by her particular charms. William's life is equally unfocused beyond the immediate gratification of his feelings for Anna. It all adds up to a pretty depressing picture of life among Britain's academic elite, condemned to live out their years in the emotionally unrewarding splendour and comfort of ivory towers and country homes.
Bogarde is pitch perfect in his portrayal of Stephen's angst and ambivalence over the situation he's created for himself. He clearly sees himself as morally superior to the increasingly loathsome Charley but the expression in his eyes constantly gives himself away. ACCIDENT may challenge your patience but it's worth rising to that challenge for the pleasure of another masterclass from one of British cinema's most talented names.