An occasional series where I watch and review works inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula…
These reviews reveal plot twists.
Setting: Events begin at Empire State University in New York, then move via an airport and a transatlantic flight to Castle Dracula in Transylvania. It’s the modern day (1980s).
Faithful to the novel? This episode of a cartoon series uses Count Dracula – and a few other horror cliches – in a new storyline. Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends was the third animated take on Marvel comic-book character Peter Parker, aka the crimefighting superhero Spider-Man. But there was a twist this time: after TV series in 1967 and 1981 that featured Spidey as a solo hero, this new version gave him two prominent allies. Bobby Drake aka Iceman, a mutant who can manipulate ice and water, was an established character from the comics. But when the producers were unable to licence Marvel favourite Human Torch, they instead created Angelica Jones (aka Firestar), a young woman who can likewise control fire.
Across 24 episodes shown from 1981 to 1983, the trio faced a wide range of threats as well as regularly teaming up with other good guys from Marvel’s stable. The heroes and villains who transferred from the pages of the comic books onto the small screen included Captain America, Doctor Doom, Doctor Strange, Colossus, Cyclops, Green Goblin, Hulk, J Jonah Jameson, Kingpin, Loki, Magneto, Professor X, Kitty Pryde, Red Skull, Tony Stark, Storm, Wolverine and of course Peter’s Aunt May and Uncle Ben. But there were several non-Marvel characters, too – including the world’s most famous vampire…
As The Bride of Dracula! begins, students Peter (voiced by Dan Gilvezan), Bobby (Frank Welker) and Angelica (Kathy Garver) are attending a dance party being held in the gymnasium of their university. There are streamers, balloons and throngs of people dancing to nondescript instrumental music. But while Peter and Bobby playfully bicker over which of them will get to dance with Angelica (‘Want to boogie?’), she’s distracted by a handsome older man (Stan Jones) who soon takes her outside, hypnotises her, reveals that she’s the woman he’s been seeking ‘for centuries’, and flashes his fangs…
Suspicious, Peter and Bobby look for their missing friend and discover that the stranger is planning on flying her to Transylvania – ‘Where all the vampires come from?!’ cries Bobby. Any doubt over the kidnapper’s identity is then swept away on board his jet-black private jet. He magically changes his appearance – greying hair, a goatie and a cape – and his accent, which now resembles Bela Lugosi’s fractured accent like so many other vampires of the 20th century. He’s Count Dracula!
Peter and Bobby – now in their superhero personas of Spider-Man and Iceman – need to follow Angelica, and their solution is to hold on to the exterior of another aeroplane at 40,000 feet during a freezing storm for the 4,600-mile journey to Romania. Meanwhile, Dracula arrives at his castle in Transylvania with his hypnotised prisoner. ‘Here, my darling,’ he tells her, ‘is where we will spend the next eternity…’ But his plan is scuppered when Spider-Man and Iceman show up. Soon Angelica is roused from his catatonia and can adopt her Firestar persona – ‘I’m too hot to handle!’ she quips to Dracula. Then, after a lot of benign fighting around the castle, Dracula is vanquished thanks to Firestar being able to create some artificial sunlight. Not only that, he loses all his memories of the kidnap attempt. Firestar is a little put out by this development: ‘A girl wants a man to find her unforgettable!’ she says in a hopeless line of dialogue that probably went by unnoticed in 1983.
Best performance: Voicing Bobby Drake is Frank Welker, one of *the* unsung heroes of popular culture. In a career that began over a half a century ago, he has worked on so many film and TV projects that one calculation put him as the third most financially successful actor in history. He’s provided the voices for Batman (in a Scooby-Doo special), various characters in The Simpsons, a young Kermit the Frog (in Muppet Babies), Garfield the cat (after Bill Murray had had enough of the role), Uni in Dungeons & Dragons, Ray Stantz (and Slimer) in The Real Ghostbusters, Jinx the robot in SpaceCamp, a galaxy’s worth of Transformers characters, whales in Free Willy 2, Martians in Mars Attacks!, and Darwin the dolphin in seaQuest DSV. In Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, once you clock that Bobby has the exact same voice as Welker’s most famous character – Scooby-Doo’s stoic pal Fred Jones, who the actor has voiced since 1969 – you can’t stop hearing it. (Welker’s also played Scooby himself since 2002.)
Best bit: The Bride of Dracula! is obviously aimed at children, so the more salacious elements of the Dracula mythos are breezed over. While Count Dracula talks about wanting Angelica as his wife, here that means kidnapping and imprisonment. Nothing genuinely violent or sexual ever creeps into the storytelling – no neck-biting, no blood-drinking, no turning-people-into-the-Undead. But the creative team still have fun peppering the episode with horror-flavoured embellishments.
Castle Dracula is a ruin perched on a mountaintop, first seen with the requisite flash of lightning. (There’s no runway anywhere nearby, so Dracula uses his nebulous magic powers to turn the plane into a bat-shaped craft that can land like a helicopter.) It’s a place of coffins and Gothic architecture and flaming torches and cobwebs – and you really sense the writers and artists having fun with all the cliches. Dracula also has two henchmen with horror pedigrees. When he’s on his mission to bag a wife in America, the Count is assisted by a werewolf called Bruno (Steve Schatzberg). The character is referred to as Wolf-Thing and is modelled after the 1940s Universal Studios character of the Wolf Man. He’s also a skilled creature – we see him chauffeuring Dracula around and then piloting the vampire’s private plane back to Europe. When they reach the castle, we then meet the Count’s other helper – Frankenstein’s Monster, complete with neck bolts and lumbering walk, who acts as a kind of butler.
Review: The Bride of Dracula!, which came early in the show’s third season, was written by Jack Mendelsohn. An artist-writer with a strong reputation in comics and animations, his CV encompasses many big-hitters of American pop-culture TV – Abbott and Costello, Rowan and Martin, Carol Burnett, the Flintstones, The Addams Family, Scooby-Doo, Hong Kong Phooey, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – and he was also one of the screenwriters of the Beatles animated film Yellow Submarine. Here, he cooks up an enjoyably silly slice of superhero nonsense, which uses Dracula and horror tropes to keep thing fun. The less said about a middle-aged man wandering into a university party, waltzing off with one of the female students, and no one other than her two friends noticing, the better.
Story: When San Francisco police detective Harry Callahan investigates a murder that leads to a quiet, coastal town, he uncovers a killer avenging a savage crime from 10 years earlier…
Harry Callahan: After the release of The Enforcer in 1976, Clint Eastwood had announced that there would be no more Dirty Harry movies. But that didn’t mean the character vanished entirely. In the early 1980s, Warner Bros were keen to cash in on Harry’s popularity so licensed a series of 12 novels, all credited to the pseudonym Dane Hartman but in reality written by several authors. Using lurid, pulpy titles such as Death on the Docks, Blood of the Strangers and Massacre at Russian River, the books helped keep the franchise breathing until Eastwood was persuaded to make a fourth cinematic outing. His volte-face was reportedly made in exchange for the studio green-lighting other projects he wanted to do…
In 1983’s Sudden Impact, Harry may be sarcastically called ‘the one constant in an ever-changing universe’, but actually the granite-faced conviction seen in the earlier films has been chipped away. It had been seven years since The Enforcer and the cop is now a notch less arrogant, a touch kinder and a tad more thoughtful.
This was perhaps a necessary switch, given the subject matter and theme of the movie – how badly men can treat women. But age and weariness are also factors. Harry is now in his early 60s, quite a few years older than the mandatory retirement age for real-life police officers, and as the story starts he’s suffering something of a crisis of faith. He even considers quitting the force. When a colleague asks if the current state of society is getting to him, Harry’s answer is bitterly ironic: ‘No, this stuff isn’t getting to me. The shootings, the knifings, the beatings. Old ladies being bashed in the head for their social-security cheques. Teachers being thrown out of a fourth-floor window because they don’t give As. That doesn’t bother me a bit…’ After Harry deliberately provokes a local mobster, out of spite as much as anything, the SFPD brass need to get him away from the heat. So they send him upstate to look into the background of a guy who was murdered after an apparent lovers’ tryst…
Clint Eastwood: In the seven years between appearances as Harry Callahan, Eastwood had directed four movies – cop film The Gauntlet (1977), drama Bronco Billy (1980), action thriller Firefox, and Depression-era tale Honkytonk Man (both 1982), all of which he starred in – and also worked as an actor on the comedy Every Which Way But Loose (1978), its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), and the prison-break thriller Escape from Alcatraz (1979; a reunion with Dirty Harry director Don Siegel). He was by now part of the Hollywood establishment: a gold-standard movie star *and* a tried-and-tested filmmaker; someone who could control his own destiny.
Slightly surprisingly, then, Sudden Impact is the only Dirty Harry film directed by Eastwood himself. He’d wanted his dual career path from an early stage. While starring in TV show Rawhide he asked to helm some episodes, but was turned down, so it was only once he achieved movie fame in the late 60s that he was able to leverage directing gigs. His first feature was the thriller Play Misty for Me (released in 1971, the same year he first played Harry Callahan) and – at the time of writing – the 93-year-old Eastwood is currently making his 40th. His films are often distinguished by their economy and a no-frills focus on story. Eastwood has never been a director keen on visual pyrotechnics, elaborate camera moves or hyper editing; his style is to-the-point and clean. Some people have praised this efficiency, applauding Eastwood for not overthinking the format. Others, including a few colleagues, have complained that he’s too eager to settle for ‘good enough’ and that his work sometimes lacks finesse.
Villains: * Of all the Dirty Harrys, Sudden Impact gives the most attention to its ‘villain’. We get to know Jennifer Spencer far more deeply than Scorpio or any of the other previous antagonists; we understand her and sympathise with her on a much more primal level… Jennifer is an artist exhibiting her intense, challenging paintings at a San Francisco gallery in an exhibition called Dark Visions. ‘A howl of anguish,’ says the gallery owner appreciatively, and we soon learn where that anguish came from. Ten years earlier, Jennifer and her sister Elizabeth were subjected to an horrific ordeal. They were gang-raped under a boardwalk in the seaside town of San Paulo, an attack we see in a brutal, unforgiving flashback. Now, having randomly encountered one of the rapists in the street, Jennifer is on a mission to execute all the perpetrators. After killing the first guy in a car in San Francisco, symbolically shooting him in the groin (‘Some stiff’s got himself a .38-calibre vasectomy,’ jokes a cop at the crime scene), Jennifer moves back to San Paulo. Under the cover of doing some historical research, she hunts down the others one by one – even continuing her quest after she learns that SFPD Inspector Harry Callahan is on the scene. In fact, she and Harry form a romantic bond after a meet-cute when his pet dog knocks her off her bike.
Jennifer is an embodiment of the eye-for-an-eye mode of justice, and actually has some lines of dialogue that could have been cut-and-paste from Harry’s 1970s speeches on the topic. Harry looks on with both bewilderment and some admiration as she talks about how the system has failed her: ‘Read me my rights? And where was all this concern for my rights when I was being beaten and mauled? And where were my sister’s rights when she was being brutalised?’ For the first time in the series, Harry has found a genuine equal; another character whose opinions on crime, law and order marry up with his. The difference, of course, is that Jennifer is a victim – so therefore her rage and revenge have extra emotional resonance.
Cast as Jennifer was Sondra Locke, Clint Eastwood’s partner and oft-collaborator. Their relationship had begun in the mid 1970s, when they co-starred in Western movie The Outlaw Josey Wales, but was often tempestuous and broke down after about 14 years in a flurry of bad blood and lawsuits. Eastwood had had affairs, fathered secret children and, she claimed, generally treated her badly. During that time, they also worked together on six films: Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Every Which Way But Loose, Bronco Billy, Any Which Way You Can and Sudden Impact. But after the split, Locke’s film career dried up. She sued Eastwood, accusing him of arranging a sham deal with Warner Bros which would tie Locke to an exclusive contract but not actually give her any work. Eastwood settled out of court.
* The movie’s true villains, of course, are the rapists who inflict such a savage attack on Jennifer and Elizabeth. This loathsome group includes George Wilburn (Michael Maurer), whom Jennifer kills in San Francisco; Ray Parkins (Audrie J Neenan), the coarse and sadistic female member of the gang; Mick (Paul Drake), the leader and most violent of the bunch; and Alby (Matthew Child), who was so traumatised by the night, and felt such guilt, that he later crashed his car into a wall and has ever since been catatonic.
Other notable characters: * As the film begins, Harry attends the court case of a clearly guilty thug called Hawkins (Kevyn Major Howard). However, in a speech that echoes the DA from the 1971 Dirty Harry, the judge is forced to throw out the case because Harry acquired the key evidence illegally. Outside the court room, Harry makes his feelings known. Grabbing the punk by the cheap lapel, he snarls some prime cop-movie dialogue: ‘To me, you’re nothing but dog shit, you understand? A lot of things can happen to dog shit. It can be scraped up with a shovel off the ground. It can dry up and blow away in the wind or it can be stepped on and squashed. So, take my advice: be careful where the dog shits you!’ * Threlkis is a Mafia don who’s attending his granddaughter’s wedding at a swanky hotel when Harry breezes in, specially to rile the old man. In front of Threlkis’s family, Harry discusses the murder of a prostitute and drops (untrue) hints that she’d told the cops who was after her. Shaken by the provocation, Threlkis has heart attack, keels over… and, after Harry walks away dispassionately, dies. The character is played by Michael V Gazzo, who in 1974 had given a fine, Oscar-nominated performance in The Godfather Part II as a Mafia underling who rats out his colleagues. * Harry is thereafter hassled by two sets of heavies – goons who work for Threlkis and friends of Hawkins. These two desultory subplots may be half-hearted, but they support the series theme of how justice isn’t always foolproof. They also inject some heat into the film before the main case takes Harry’s attention. * Harry’s bosses at the SFPD include Captain Briggs (Bradford Dillman), Lt Connelly (Michael Currie) and an unnamed commissioner (Bill Reddick). Slightly oddly, Dillman had played the not-dissimilar Captain McKay in The Enforcer – but now has the same character name as the captain in Magnum Force. The writers surely didn’t get mixed up and give a returning character the wrong name?! * Jennifer’s sister, Elizabeth (Lisa Britt), has been catatonic in hospital ever since the attack 10 years earlier. When Jennifer visits her, the doctors say there’s nothing physically wrong but Elizabeth is stuck in a vegetative state due to her trauma. As is the way with fictional representations of this condition, the actress plays her scene with a trace of sadness across her face – implying that Elizabeth understands her situation all too well. * Chief Lester Jannings runs the police in San Paulo, and clashes with outsider Harry on more than one occasion. Jannings warns him, threatens him, tells him to get out of town – even resorting to that age-old US-cop-story cliche of pointing out that Harry doesn’t have any jurisdiction (because he’s not in San Francisco any more). We eventually learn why Jannings is so highly strung. He knows all about the attack on Jennifer and Elizabeth, and his son was there at the time: the now-disabled Alby… Pat Hingle, who plays Jannings, was a pal of Eastwood’s, having co-starred with him in Hang ‘Em High (1968) and The Gauntlet (1977). Later in the 80s, he began an eight-year stint as another police boss: Commissioner Gordon in the Batman movies. * Officer Bennett (Mark Keyloun) is San Paulo’s junior cop who provides Harry with some assistance and clues. He feels he owes the older man: upon his arrival in town, Harry had saved Bennett’s life from a gun-totting robber. San Paulo is a small place, all the better for the coincidences the film needs to keep its plot moving. For the filming, the real city of Santa Cruz stood in for the fictional San Paulo. The vampire flick The Lost Boys shot there a few years later: the same wooden roller-coaster features in both films.
Albert Popwell: The character actor’s first scene is a fake-out, trading on his previous roles in this series (robber, pimp, revolutionary) to make you think he’s going to be a bad guy. As Harry practises his aim at a make-do firing range in the woods, a mystery man appears in the distance. He draws a gun as he approaches Harry stealthily, but then Harry swivels round, huge handgun at the ready… We then realise that Horace (Popwell) is a cop. He’s Harry’s partner, in fact, and was sneaking up on him as a joke. The two share a chat that at times feels like a fetishised advert for guns, and Horace also calls his friend Jamf, which he eventually confirms stands for Jive-ass Motherfucker. Later, after Harry has gone to San Paulo, Horace sends him a pet dog as a companion – a bulldog which Harry names Meathead. (The dog switches gender from scene to scene.) Horace himself later arrives in town for visit, but before he can find Harry he encounters Mick the rapist, who kills Horace as a warning.
Music: Composer Lalo Schifrin is back, having missed The Enforcer, and his score is very much a bifurcated affair. Tension and mood are handled exceedingly well, creating a knife’s-edge suspense to many scenes focused on Jennifer and her campaign. When called upon to be more upbeat, however, we are unmistakably in the 1980s. Synth drums, Seinfeld bass slaps and even some hip-hop vinyl scratches have not dated well.
Key moments: Every Dirty Harry film has an early sequence, unrelated to the main plot, which serves to demonstrate the hero’s steely ability to deal with criminals. In the original movie, Callahan stumbles across a bank robbery; in Magnum Force, he happens to be at the airport when a plane is seized by terrorists; in The Enforcer, he drives a car through the window of a liquor store that’s being robbed. Here, we get a scene that includes the most memorable dialogue of the whole series.
Dropping into a diner to buy his regular coffee, Harry is distracted by his newspaper so doesn’t notice that the waitress is trying to silently convey a message to him by putting a huge amount of sugar in his cup. Walking outside and taking a sip, Harry realises immediately that something is up, so sneaks around the back of the building to creep in unseen. The diner is being robbed by a gang who, as well as the cash on site, have realised that they can relieve all the customers of their wallets. (This is the same plan Pumpkin and Honey Bunny think up in the opening scene of Pulp Fiction.) But then Harry appears. At first he’s as calm and commanding as ever, then he starts shooting – risking the patrons’ lives to subdue the gang. When there’s just one criminal left, it’s a standoff – will the creep go for his own gun? ‘Go ahead,’ snarls Harry. ‘Make my day.’ As terse, effective, character-illustrating dialogue goes, this example is one of the greats.
The line was probably written by John Milius, who had also worked on the scripts for the first two Dirty Harry films and was hired to polish Sudden Impact before production, though other writers have claimed credit too. The phrase quickly entered the pop-culture lexicon, being quoted by President Ronald Reagan in a speech about taxes in 1985, by Michael Keaton’s title character in the 1988 horror-comedy film Beetlejuice, and by Marty McFly in 1990’s Back to the Future Part III. Eastwood himself reprised the line during a bizarre and rambling speech given at the 2012 Republican National Convention when he improvised a satirical dialogue with President Barack Obama (who was represented on stage by an empty chair).
Review: There’s a cool cinematographic style, edging towards film noir, running through Sudden Impact. An early scene is filmed at dusk and features a slowly creeping camera as well as evocative close-ups of Jennifer’s eyes as she pretends to seduce one of the rapists so she can murder him. This combination of sex and violence is very Hitchcockian, as is the Bernard Herrmann-type score, and surely it wasn’t a coincidence that the scene takes place within sight of the Golden Gate Bridge, a key location from Hitch’s San Fran-set masterpiece Vertigo.
Elsewhere, the influence of another master director can be detected. Whereas all the Dirty Harry sequels copy the earthy, unsentimental mood set by original director Don Siegel, Sudden Impact also contains something of the operatic and the expressionistic – a tone Eastwood learnt while working with Italian supremo Sergio Leone in the 1960s. Vital scenes, such as those from the killer’s point of view, are staged with a theatrical panache, which really pull us into the drama and the suspense. The film uses big fat close-ups of Jennifer’s eyes as we go in to flashbacks to the night she and her sister were brutalised – *so* Spaghetti Western – while an echo of Leone’s playfulness comes in the form of comedy: a cop eats a limp hot dog while talking about a guy who’s had his dick shot off. And then the finale features a blisteringly arch shot of Eastwood, backlit so he’s a silhouette, with his phallically symbolic .44 Magnum automag by his side: the very image of an avenging angel.
Away from the more flamboyant moments, the film impresses even further. Action and drama are balanced really well, and there’s even room for some humour. Dialogue scenes are constructed unfussily and efficiently, the storytelling has clarity and texture, and the emotional power of the central plot really socks home. There are also, to be fair, one or two line flubs from Eastwood himself. (Was he rushing his own close-ups?) But thanks to Eastwood, screenwriter Joseph Stinson, cinematographer Bruce Surtees and the cast, the film is just tremendously staged and structured.
All this craft elevates a movie that is part police-procedural, part revenge-o-matic, but the biggest reason for the success is Jennifer Spencer. Sudden Impact is not a film built on intrigue. We the audience always know more than nominal lead character Harry, because really the protagonist is Jennifer – she’s who we identify with, follow, maybe even cheer on when we shouldn’t. Sondra Locke, maligned by some critics, actually gives a terrific, watchable performance that’s full of suppressed fury. It’s not just her hair colour that makes Jennifer feel like a Hitchcock blonde – there’s also her enigmatic coolness, which is clearly masking a turbulent interior. That interior is dramatised exceedingly well, through both Locke’s performance and Eastwood’s direction. The movie actually began life as an unrelated thriller intended as a Sondra Locke vehicle, before being retooled as a Harry Callahan sequel. In some ways, that emphasis was never lost.
Nine bigger and bigger waves of corruption, apathy and red tape out of 10
A young couple encounter a strange town in rural America, populated by violent children…
First published in 1977, Stephen King’s short story Children of the Corn tells of a juvenile cult who murder adults in the name of a rustic deity called He Who Walks Behind the Rows. This folk-horror tale has been the seed for an entire harvest of movies – some fairly faithful adaptations, others shlocky spin-offs that use the barest fragment of the idea – so in a new blog series I’m taking a look at these on-screen iterations. There will be famous faces and bigger budgets to come, but we actually start with an obscure short film produced under very interesting circumstances…
By 1983, Stephen King was a major author with several blockbusting novels on his CV. Cinema versions of his stories were also being made with something approaching regularity, often directed by star names: Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976), Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone and John Carpenter’s Christine (both 1983). But as well as high-end Hollywood fare, King wanted to encourage new filmmakers. So he came up with a scheme called Dollar Baby, which gave independent directors the right to adapt one of his short stories for a nominal fee of $1. One director who jumped at the chance was a young Frank Darabont, who much later in his career made three successful studio movies based on King material (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist). Dollar Baby gave him the chance to produce a short called The Woman in the Room.
But the project we focus on here is the first official adaptation of Children of the Corn: a 20-minute short called Disciples of the Crow, written, directed and edited by John Woodward.
We start in Jonah, Oklahoma, in October 1971. (The source story is set in the fictional town of Gatlin, Nebraska.) A small boy, Billy (Steven Young), is worshipping in a cornfield; a spooky scarecrow watches on impassively, a crow circles above. Later, disgusted by the loose morals of their parents, and in thrall to a god called He Who Walks Behind the Rows, Billy leads the other kids in the town in massacring all the adults… We then cut to a decade or so later. Burt (Gabriel Folse, wooden) and Vicky (Eleese Lester, decent) are a young couple who are driving through the sparsely populated Oklahoman countryside on their way somewhere more exciting. Their bickering distracts them momentarily, however, and they run over a child. He’s dead on the road, but they quickly realise that he had already been stabbed. Distraught, confused and fearful for the consequences, Burt and Vicky explore the nearby town, which is seemingly deserted. But then several children appear, led by a grown-up Billy (played now by the film’s director), brandishing weapons and a savage intent…
With only 20 minutes to play with, plot and character work are only sketched, but this is more a mood piece than a fully-fledged story – and on that level it succeeds. Made on a low budget but with a certain amount of style, Disciples of the Crow creates and maintains an unsettling tone throughout. Woodward smartly controls lots of macabre iconography, the sound effect of rattling wind, atonal incidental music, implied violence (sometimes cheated via witty editing) and the wide-eyed panic on actor Eleese Lester’s face in order to build a spooky, threatening world and situation. You *fear* these children, feel they have immense power, which is quite a trick to pull off in a short film.
However, what’s most striking about Disciples of the Crow today, other than how competent it is as a piece of horror filmmaking, is how familiar everything feels in retrospect. The year after this short was made, a bigger-budget, 90-minute movie adaptation of Children of the Corn came along. Visually, tonally, spiritually, the 1984 film shares an awful lot with its small-scale predecessor. But we’ll get into that in more detail in the next review…
Eight prophets will emerge from among you out of 10
A weekly series of reviews looking at the film and TV output of the Comic Strip group of comedians…
Spoiler warning: plot points may be revealed.
Synopsis: The Famous Five are on holiday in the countryside again, but their trip is ruined when they stumble across a secret plan involving a place called Love Island…
Written by: Peter Richardson and Peter Richens. Directed by: Bob Spiers. Broadcast: 2 November 1983, Channel 4. Series: 2. Episode: 1.
Notable cast (with a running total of Comic Strip appearances): * Dawn French (7) returns as George, the member of the Famous Five she played in the first Comic Strip Presents film. George is still a favourite of the gang’s dog: ‘Oh, Timmy,’ she says, giggling, ‘you’re even more licky than last time.’ * Jennifer Saunders (7) again plays Anne, who is now a touch more assertive and confident than she was in Five Go Mad in Dorset. * Peter Richardson (7) is Julian, still the de factor leader of the group. As before, he reacts badly to any threat to their cosy, conservative existence: we see him riled by loud people (‘Perhaps they’re Catholics’), women being good at sport, and any suggestion that sex might exist in the world. * Adrian Edmondson (7) plays Dick for a second time. After his minor outburst in the first Five Go Mad film, when he grew frustrated with the gang’s lifestyle, here he has his head turned by an attractive woman working in the local cafe. He later finds her in a cave down by the beach, and she opens his eyes to a new way of thinking… Before too long he’s strumming an acoustic guitar and singing about love. * Candy Davis (1) is Janie, the woman who works in the cafe. Whereas the Five are eternally happy and exuberant, she’s a more modern young person: she hates her boring job, her boring town, her boring life. ‘We’ve only got 7-Up,’ she says with no enthusiasm when Dick asks for ginger beer. Anne thinks Janie looks cheap, while George suggests she’s mentally retarded. We later see Janie after her liberation by a mystery man called Dr Love – she’s now a proto-hippy, spaced out and laid-back and with flowers painted on her face. * Robbie Coltrane (5) drags up again to cameo as Janie’s mother who tells the Five about the nearby Love Island, where strange things are going on. * Harry Towb (1) and Kerry Shale (1) plays American father and son Wally and Willy Budweiser. They’re in the area, staying at the same farm as the Five, so they can buy up anything they can get their ‘uncultured hands’ on. Both are brash, rude and arrogant, and are inspired by similar characters in the 1960 Edin Blyton book Five on Finniston Farm. * Ron Tarr (2) and Nosher Powell (2) appear as Red and Mr Knuckles, two simple-minded Cockney villains not a million string-vests away from their characters in Five Go Mad in Dorset. (Incidentally, Red owns a burgundy Jaguar Mark 2. Although it looks suspiciously similar to the car later driven by Inspector Morse in the ITV detective show, the number plate seems to be different.) * Fiona Richmond (1) plays Mrs French, the owner of Hot Turkey Farm where the Five are staying while on holiday. She’s also the mother of Red, despite the actress being nine years younger than Ron Tarr. The flirty Mrs F has lingerie exposed under her farm coat, but her suggestion that Dick and Julian could sleep in her room is not taken up. * Ronald Allen (2) returns as Uncle Quentin, ‘the well-known scientist and homosexual’, who since his last appearance has escaped from prison and gone on the run. He’s now styling himself as Dr Love and plans to form a flower-power commune on Love Island * Daniel Peacock (4) also appears as his Five Go Mad in Dorset character, Toby, who’s introduced via a Hendrix-style shriek of electric guitar on the soundtrack. He’s no longer a cocky, posh oik – he’s now under the spell of Dr Love and has become a psychedelic drug addict.
Best bit: Reluctant to spend the night in the same room as the whining Willy, Julian and Dick sleep in the barn. But soon after turning in, they’re disturbed by Red and Mr Knuckles driving a van in and loudly discussing their secret, evil plan. After the men have left, Dick asks Julian if they should call the police. Julian says no. He reckons the telephone wires will have been cut. ‘Yes,’ agrees Dick. ‘That’s usually the case in a situation of this type. And there’s absolutely no point of going into the farmhouse to see if they really have been cut, is there?’ The boys then hunker down for sleep.
Review: When the Comic Strip Presents series began, some viewers will have noticed a similarity to another television comedy anthology. ‘We were following on from Ripping Yarns,’ Adrian Edmondson has admitted. Written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones soon after the end of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Ripping Yarns only lasted for nine episodes between 1976 and 1979 – but it had a lot in common with the Comic Strip Presents series that followed. Both shows gave us different, self-contained stories each week with their regular performers taking on new parts every time. Both series were shot on film, often on location – a format that immediately set them apart from most TV comedies and made them feel more like short movies.
There were difference, of course, such as the range of subject matter. Whereas the Comic Strip series felt able to take on any era or style, Palin and Jones’s scripts were specifically spoofing old-fashioned, boys-own-adventure fiction and pre-war derring do. (All nine Ripping Yarns episodes are set between 1913 and 1935 and feature idealistic British men.) Conversely, by the time of Five Go Mad on Mescalin, the Comic Strippers had already tackled literary pastiche, warfare satire, a rock-band comedy and a social-studies drama.
Also, Ripping Yarns never returned to characters seen in a previous episode. Five Go Mad on Mescalin, however, features the same gang of young, intrepid and politically dodgy kids we met in Five Go Mad in Dorset. It’s the first Comic Strip Presents sequel – and actually debuted on TV a year to the day after the original Five Go Mad.
A big risk when reprising a successful comedy creation, of course, is the principle of diminishing returns. The joke has been told once, so the effect has been dulled. And that’s unfortunately the case with Five Go Mad on Mescalin. (Note: usually spelt ‘mescaline’, the drug of the title is a protoalkaloid that produces hallucinogenic effects.) The central joke of these characters being bigoted and right-wing as well as cheerful and optimistic, which was understated in the original film, has been cranked up significantly. Julian, Dick, Anne and George now talk about how the starving poor shouldn’t have so many children, about how they wish George III had quashed the American Revolution, and – most on-the-nose-ingly – about how the wrong side won the Second World War. Frankly, it’s just not as funny because a lot of the irony has been lost – the kids are now just openly objectionable. The new American characters don’t raise much of a laugh either, nor does the introduction of the hippy element into the cosy universe of Edin Blyton. The weakest film in the run so far.
Five well-known public schools in the area out of 10
A weekly series of reviews looking at the film and TV output of the Comic Strip group of comedians…
Spoiler warning: plot points may be revealed.
Synopsis: A group of people gather at a university campus to take part in an experiment – can they live unassisted in an Iron Age village for a whole summer?
Written by: Dawn French. Directed by: Sandy Johnson. Broadcast: 31 January 1983, Channel 4. Series: 1. Episode: 5.
Notable cast (with a running total of Comic Strip appearances): * Adrian Edmondson (6) plays Peter, a meek man who’s chosen to live for a few weeks with other people in an Iron Age-era mock village. The dozen villagers will have no technology, no electricity, no supplies, no help from the outside world. The village consists of just three small structures and an enclosure. * Jennifer Saunders (6) plays Peter’s wife, Liz. She’s a good-natured, nervous woman who initially wants to keep her bra on under the period clothing. Once in the village, however, she asserts herself as the mumsy leader – suggesting tasks and encouraging everyone to develop a new language of grunts. * Lois Baxter (1) and Gerard Ryder (1) are a married couple taking part in the experiment, Beth and Jake Forester. * Rupert Frazer (1) is team member Simon. * Martin Potter (1) and Elaine Ashley (1) are a pair of mute characters referred to in the credits as Tarzan and Jane. We later find out that they sneak off to a caravan at night. * Nigel Planer (5) is Julian, the overly cheerful teacher-type who’s running the experiment. He takes the group to the mock village, clipboard in hand at all times, then pops back later to check up on them. * Rik Mayall (5) plays the confrontational team member Tarquin. He was in last year’s experiment too, where he wore a loose-fitting outfit and his bollocks kept falling out. This time, he advocates killing any outsiders who threaten their new community. (Beth kindly points out that no one *is* threatening them.) * Dawn French (6) – who also wrote the episode – is Ursula, a highly sexed young woman who quickly takes a shine to Peter (‘Is your seed plenteous?’ she asks him) and later has a bath to get ready for some free-love hedonism within the group. * Peter Richardson (6) is Nick, who doesn’t really take part in village life and instead spends his time trying to cop off with a Japanese girl – played by Megumi Shimanuki (1) – who he incorrectly thinks is called Margaret. * Robbie Coltrane (4) plays Desmond. Although he arrives at the university in a buttoned-up suit, his repression soon gives way to a primal power and he ‘goes native’. We see him sculpting a large, phallic idol, and he refers to himself as Lugg. Later, he eyes up Peter and offers to show him how his ‘magic staff’ works. ‘Yes, that’ll be nice,’ says Peter, not knowing what Desmond means. * The director, Sandy Johnson (2), cameos as a bewildered barman in the university bar.
Best bit: The big joke with the gang’s experiment is that the Iron Age village is not a remote, rural encampment far away from any 1980s amenities. It’s built slap-bang in the middle of a modern university campus. So when we see Tarquin trying to spear fish in a stream, it’s a stream over which runs a concrete bridge and the only thing he catches is a used condom. Other students even wander through the village on their way to the cafeteria. As well as an absurd backdrop to the drama, it means that our guinea pigs’ fidelity to the experiment is not quite so true. When starving hungry after three days, for example, they resort to kidnapping some rabbits from the uni’s animal-husbandry department.
The filming location for Summer School was the Brutalist architecture of Brunel University in Uxbridge, just to the west of London. Built in the 1960s, its distinctly ugly buildings can also be seen in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)Summer School (1983)
Review: As the days go past in the village, the sexual frustrations and tensions grow within the camp. Tarquin suggests a democratic approach to pairings – he thinks it would be best if ‘we shag all the girls in rotation’ – while both Ursula and Desmond set their sights on Peter. So far, so conventional – the script is a spin on a sex farce, albeit a sex farce in an unusual location. But the longer it goes on, the more Summer School begins to dabble in edgy material not usually covered in comedy, ranging from the everyday to the extreme. Events then take a surreal turn as one of the team is found dead after a night of passion. Before you know it, everyone has fully devolved into prehistoric culture: chanting and dancing, wearing warpaint, and building a funeral pyre.
The script was written by Dawn French – so this is therefore the first female-written Comic Strip film – and often feels more like a Play for Today than the episode of an anarchic TV comedy. The piece has things to say about the breakdown of society when deprived of comforts, but while generally amusing on a conceptual level, there aren’t exactly a volley of hilarious moments. Sadly, Summer School lacks the conviction a dramatic play would have and the disjointed storyline doesn’t really draw any conclusions. It’s all watchable, of course, thanks to the talented cast and a general sense of unusualness. The strange but effective incidental music is a treat too. Eerie, low didgeridoo sounds are mixed with early-80s electro bleeps to suggest plenty of threat – from both primal nature and something unnatural.
Six fellow travellers on the path of knowledge about our forefathers out of 10
A weekly series of reviews looking at the film and TV output of the Comic Strip group of comedians…
Spoiler warning: plot points may be revealed.
Synopsis: A struggling heavy-metal band from London set off on their ‘tour’ – actually just one gig in Grantham – while being filmed by a documentary camera crew…
Written by: Adrian Edmondson. Directed by: Sandy Johnson. Broadcast: 24 January 1983, Channel 4. Series: 1. Episode: 4.
Notable cast (with a running total of Comic Strip appearances): * Adrian Edmondson (5) plays the vocalist and lead guitarist of the metal band Bad News. He styles himself as Vim Fuego, but really he’s called Alan Metcalfe (so this is therefore the second Comic Strip film in a row to poke fun at an artistic character called Alan). Bad News have huge confidence and bravado (‘I could play Stairway to Heaven when I was 12,’ says Vim. ‘Jimmy Page didn’t actually write it until he was 22.’) but nothing to back it up – no fans, no recording contract, little talent. Nevertheless, they’re ambitious and are being filmed for a documentary as they head to a gig in Grantham. * The episode’s director, Sandy Johnson (1), plays the director of the documentary. We hear him from out of shot and he occasionally appears in frame too, getting increasingly exasperated with both the feeble band he’s covering and his inept camera operator. Johnson often gives himself Hitchcock-like cameos in his work: he crops up a few times in Jonathan Creek, for example. * Bert Parnaby (1) appears briefly as Vim’s neighbour who complains about his loud music. * Nigel Planer (4) is Den Dennis, the band’s dopey rhythm guitarist. He’s especially nervous of the documentary crew and is aware that he must perform certain ‘spontaneous’ moments correctly for the camera. He’s also the puritan of the group: he flounces off when someone suggests the band could be like the New Romantics and only returns after Vim confirms that they will remain heavy metal. * Rik Mayall (4) plays bassist Colin Grigson. He can’t play very well but the band need him as they use his brother’s PA system. A poseur from a posh family, Colin tells an elaborate story about getting high with a chick and kicking in the TV while watching Whistle Test and setting fire to the curtains, only for Den to undercut it all by asking if Colin’s mum was angry when she got home. * Peter Richardson (5) is the spaced-out drummer, Spider Webb. When the others pick him up from home, a young woman in a pyjama top is pleading with him not to go out and leave her alone… but we overhear that he’s paid her to pose as his girlfriend. * Dawn French (5) is Tracy, a schoolgirl the band chat up when they spot her in the street. She jumps in their van and becomes a groupie, accompanying them to Grantham. In a chilling joke about the music industry’s attitude to underage girls, the gig venue’s manager suggests Tracy stay behind in his office while the others soundcheck. * Serena Evans (1) plays Tracy’s pal Cheryl. * Jennifer Saunders (5) plays Sally Freidman, who interviews the group while they’re on the road. She’s ‘Britain’s number-one sexy-chick rock journalist’ and is introduced via an artful sequence that’s lit like a TV ad for a tabloid magazine. Later, she asks a tortuously complicated question – rattled off by Saunders in a continuous long-lens shot that features all six of the main cast – only for the take to be ruined by a truck stopping in front of them. * Neville Smith (1) is Rob. He’s the manager of the Roxy Grantham, the venue of Bad News’s gig. Only four people and a dog show up (including Tracy) so Rob refuses to pay the band.
Best bit: While stopping for lunch at a motorway services, Den gets into a argument with the woman behind the counter. He’s aggrieved at being charged £2 for sausage, beans and chips because you only get one sausage. Then a while later, as the band sit at a table, he suddenly notices the menu up on the wall. ‘Wait a minute,’ he interrupts, outraged. ‘It says sausages up there! Not just one sausage.’
Review: Bad News Tour is presented as a ‘mock documentary’ – or, if you will, a mockumentary. This format coupled with the subject matter has inevitably led to comparisons with the near-contemporary comedy film This Is Spinal Tap (1984). Both projects were cooked up at the same time, so there’s no suggestion of copying – the Bad News script was actually inspired by a 1976 BBC documentary about the Kursaal Flyers. But the similarities are uncanny. Like Bad News, Spinal Tap are a British metal band with delusions of grandeur, a habit of embarrassing themselves, and inter-group tensions. Both are being filmed for what they hope will be a triumphant documentary, but which actually exposes their failings, and the directors of the documentaries both appear on screen, playing an active role in the story. There’s also the curious oddity of each film featuring a joke where a band member is indignant over the food on offer: while Bad News’s Den is appalled by only getting one sausage in his sausage, beans and chips, Spinal Tap’s guitarist Nigel Tufnel complains because some bread is too small to use for sandwiches.
However, it’s the differences that are most interesting. Whereas Spinal Tap are veterans and has-beens, Bad News are inexperienced and never-likely-to-bes. Spinal Tap are famous and have released several records; Bad News are yet to be signed. Spinal Tap plan an audacious theatre show based around an elaborate Stonehenge set; Bad News play their one and only gig on a small stage in an empty cinema in Lincolnshire. And perhaps most noticeably, whereas Spinal Tap’s musicianship has a polished sheen, when we hear Bad News play live it’s raw, ropey stuff. All this means Bad News are underdogs and that makes them more relatable. The whole cast understand the tone of the joke so well – playing things broad and full of unfounded swagger, but not without heart. Nothing is cruel or patronising. You can also really tell that the four members of the band are performers who know and trust each other.
The first Comic Strip Presents film written by someone other than Peters Richardson and Richens, Bad News Tour was the brainchild of Adrian Edmondson. A decent musician with experience of writing music and playing live, he based the script on his memories of being in school bands. Nigel Planer was also no stranger to a guitar, having played one as his stand-up character Neil the hippy. Rik Mayall was less confident: ‘He thought he could almost play,’ Edmondson joked in 2018, ‘and he was right: he could *almost* play’.
As well as a satire of youthful arrogance, Bad News Tour is also playing around with the filmmaking form. Edmondson has said that Eric Idle’s All You Need is Cash – a fake documentary about an ersatz Beatles – was an influence, but Bad News Tour exposes the mechanics of making a documentary even further. In a key moment, the band’s van breaks down but the director refuses to help fix it – he says he’s not allowed to interfere with the story. Vim points out that this principle doesn’t prevent the director telling the band not to swear so much. He will interfere when it suits him, when it helps craft the narrative in a certain way. We actually see plenty of examples of documentary artifice – staged moments, retakes, engineered drama – and we come to realise that the band are not the only ones guilty of trying to present a certain image to the world. In fact, while their sins are hubris and naivety, the documentary makers are engaged in the more craven act of manipulation. Taken literally, the joke sometimes doesn’t work – why would the fictional production team leave multiple takes of the same moment in the final edit? But as a piece of comedy it *excels*.
A weekly series of reviews looking at the film and TV output of the Comic Strip group of comedians…
Spoiler warning: plot points may be revealed.
Synopsis: August 1960 – a beat poet and his clique hold a party at the house of a young fan.
Written by: Peter Richardson and Pete Richens. Directed by: Bob Spiers. Broadcast: 17 January 1983, Channel 4. Series: 1. Episode: 3.
Notable cast (with a running total of Comic Strip appearances): * Making his Comic Strip Presents debut is Keith Allen (1), an alternative comedian who broke through on the Soho comedy scene around the same time as the Comic Strip regulars. He cameos here as Brian Epstein, the manager of the Beatles, but plays the part nothing like the real man. In the opening scene Epstein pitches his acts to a producer played by Michael White (1), who was the real-life producer of the Comic Strip Presents series. * Adrian Edmondson (4) plays Desmond, an enthusiastic young fella who has a house by the sea all to himself (because his parents have gone away). So, after signing a legal waiver, he plays host to a famous beat poet and his hangers-on for a weekend-long party. At times, Edmondson’s delivery drifts into the same kind of strained extremes he used as Vyvyan Basterd in sitcom The Young Ones (the first series of which was made at roughly the same time as this film), though Desmond is a much more benign and optimistic character. * Nigel Planer (3) is Charles, the poet’s unflappable and patrician agent (and, it is hinted, occasional lover). The Beat Generation is one of Planer’s favourite Comic Strip films. * For the third time in four Comic Strip projects, Dawn French (4) plays a character who’s meant to have – indeed, does have – overt sex appeal. Flirty fangirl Eleanor hangs off every word of poet Alan. She’s thrilled by the idea of a wild weekend with ‘so many crazy artists and poets’, though is saddened when Alan seems to dislike her legs. * Peter Richardson (4) is Alan, the sunglasses-wearing poet at the centre of all the adoration. He affects a cool nonchalance, and modestly says that his success is like going to an orgy in clean underpants. One thing Alan doesn’t seem interested in, by the way, is poetry. He never recites any. * Rik Mayall (3) plays Jeremy, who’s first seen driving Alan and Eleanor to the house party. He’s an angry, manic soul who then spends a long time on the phone to an ex who’s dumped him and moved to Australia. (As a cry for help he simulates suicide.) Jeremy is a frustrated soul generally. ‘People think it’s easy being a rebel!’ he snaps at one point, Mayall suddenly sounding very much like his Young Ones character, Rick. ‘Well, it’s bloody not.’ * Daniel Peacock (3) plays Kix, an anarchic but not very good poet who steals vending machines and crashes cars. He’s said to be the most promising illiterate of their generation. Halfway through the episode, he finds two underage girls – Judy and Tracy, played by Zoe Clarke (1) and Kim Pappas (1) – and invites them to the party. ‘Got any younger sisters?’ he asks. * Robbie Coltrane (3) is Kurt, a potential publisher for Alan’s latest work. * Jennifer Saunders (4) plays Anne, an American filmmaker hanging out at the party (we never learn if she was invited). She falls for Jeremy, saying she likes his style and his naked aggression, and even suggests they kiss while they walk along the beach. (Coincidentally, Saunders’ character in the first Comic Strip Presents film was also called Anne.)
Best bit: As the outsider, the only major character who’s not part of the ‘scene’, Adrian Edmondson’s Desmond is our point-of-view. He represents that feeling most of us will have experienced of wanting to make friends with people we consider to be cool. But when he tries to take advantage of the permissive culture and nervously tells Eleanor that he’d like to ‘do it to her’, she just laughs at him and cruelly tells the others what he’s said. She does eventually let him have a go… but seems bored with the process and reads a magazine as he thrusts away.
Review: After the specific pastiche of Five Go Mad in Dorset and the scattergun satire of War, now comes a mood piece. It’s the cusp of the 1960s, where artistic, hedonistic and sexual possibilities seem endless. Our lead character is a British version of Allen Ginsberg, who was one of the leaders of the American beat-poet movement that flourished in the 1950s. The Beats rejected the formality of traditional poetry, often abandoning rhyming schemes and logic and preferring a free-form sensibility akin to jazz music. (The word beat was a pun: it referred to the rhythmic metre of their work, but also suggested underdogs who had been beaten down by society’s conventions.) Ginsberg and his colleagues such as Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure and Diane Di Prima explored themes instinctively and organically: ‘First thought, best thought,’ as Ginsberg once said. They also dabbled with drugs and carefree sex.
This Comic Strip Presents film pokes fun at all this pretension by presenting us with a leading British poet, Alan. The more he talks, the more he exposes himself as a bore with nothing interesting to say. He just drones on with inconsequential anecdotes. Not that his acolytes notice. ‘It’s so damn crazy when you talk weird, Alan,’ purrs Eleanor, while Desmond adds, ‘Yeah, come on, everybody, let’s go crazy apeshit.’ For them, it’s not about the work or the artistic calling. All the peripheral stuff is much more exciting: partying, laughing, having sex, looking good and being seen as one of the in-crowd. When something genuinely emotional enters this world, such as Jeremy’s anguish over a failed relationship or the extremes to which Eleanor will go to be liked, no one else cares. The temptation of having a good time is just too strong to be concerned with reality. Or as one of Ginsberg’s most famous poems begins, ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.’
The film plays all this out with a French New Wave aesthetic, a hungover jazz score (with saxophonist Colin Jacas surrealistically appearing in shot) and self-conscious, black-and-white photography. A touch too aimless for its own good, The Beat Generation drifts from character to character, from joke to joke, without ever really hitting home.
A weekly series of reviews looking at the film and TV output of the Comic Strip group of comedians…
Spoiler warning: plot points may be revealed.
Synopsis: England in 1985 is a nation overrun by war – Surrey, for example, has just been invaded by the Warsaw Pact. A young couple move into a new house but are soon separated by the chaos going on around them…
Written by: Peter Richardson and Peter Richens. Directed by: Bob Spiers. Broadcast: 3 January 1983, Channel 4. Series: 1. Episode: 2.
Notable cast (with a running total of Comic Strip appearances): * Dawn French (3) plays Hermine, a sultry film-noir dame in a trenchcoat. She and her partner Godfrey are moving into a house in the country, where they can learn to mix their own cocktails now there’s a war on. But as soon as they arrive the house is invaded by hapless, blindfolded guerrillas; Hermine and Godfrey are separated as they flee the carnage… * Daniel Peacock (2) is Hermine’s partner, Godfrey from Islington. He wears punk make-up and a T-shirt but speaks with a posh accent. As the separated couple search for each other in the war-torn landscape, their random encounters with other characters gives us the episodic structure of the story. Peacock is very watchable. * Adrian Edmondson (3) is one of several cast members who plays a multitude of roles, a la a Monty Python film. Amongst many characters, he’s a wild-eyed, red-haired hippy playing Russian roulette; a faux-Mexican who thinks he’s in a Spaghetti Western; and the leader of a group of British POWs who have secretly dug an escape route (not just a tunnel, but a whole subway network that links with the Northern Line and everything). * Rik Mayall (2) – making his debut in the Comic Strip Presents series – has a very un-Mayall-like character. As well as some other minor roles, he plays a dimwitted American called General Erwin, a man who can’t read a map and doesn’t know how wars work, and who is far more lethargic and slow-talking than the actor’s usual performances. * Among the parts played by Nigel Planer (2) – who’d likewise missed the opening episode of this TV series – are a bald man at the Russian roulette game and a stoic Soviet officer who falls in love with Hermine. * Peter Richardson (3) features as a US Army officer called Wally; a Mexican bandit called Miguel (really a Brit called Donald); and a prisoner of war who’s learnt how to disguise himself as a Scotland football fan. * Jennifer Saunders (3) also appears in the Russian roulette scene, then crops up as both a bored, cynical cafe owner (‘The middle-class are all selling up and becoming refugees…’) and a peppy member of a POW escape committee. * Robbie Coltrane (2) has a few roles. One is a dodgy and dated Japanese businessman-cum-prison warden… complete with ‘Asian’ make-up and cod accent… and jokingly called Harry Kiri. It’s a Tenko take-off, only if Tenko’s Major Yamauchi had been an 80s capitalist: he wears calculators on his lapels instead of military medals. Later, Coltrane also plays a Russian military officer during a Soviet occupation of Soho. Given the similarity in accent, shall we assume that this is the same character Coltrane later played in two 90s James Bond films? Perhaps Russian gangster Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky had an army background.
Best bit: Amongst all the satirical comedy are some surreal, Pythonesque jokes. When a fridge explodes, raw sausages are flung at Hermine from off-screen. Later, Edmondson plays a prisoner of war who’s being forced to watch a TV screen playing a clip of dripping water. ‘Help me… Help me… Change the channel!’ he cries.
Review: The spine of War is a very loose story about a young couple in love, who are separated by circumstance and must wander through bizarre encounters until they find each other again. But really the ‘plot’ is just an excuse for some sketches on a theme of the madness of war. If you wanted to be pretentious about it – and you probably know, dear reader, that we don’t shy away from that kind of thing on this website – the film is an example of Dadaism.
Founded in the first couple of decades of the 20th century, Dadaism was an anarchic artistic movement that rejected logic and authority and instead embraced arch nonsense. Where its name came from is a matter of dispute, but one story goes that the word was found by German writer Hugo Ball while skimming through a dictionary. He was tickled by its playful meanings, all of which seemed to fit the bill. ‘Dada is “yes, yes” in Rumanian, “rocking horse” and “hobby horse” in French,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘For Germans it is a sign of foolish naiveté, joy in procreation, and preoccupation with the baby carriage.’ Initially, the movement had a political edge: by exploring and exploiting gibberish for its own sake, Dadaists were deliberately contrasting the horrors of the First World War. They wanted to remind people of the humanity that was, in their view, being ignored or taken for granted during the carnage. ‘The war is based on a crass error,’ wrote Ball in 1915. ‘Men have been mistaken for machines.’ The movement didn’t last long, but according to the Smithsonian magazine Dadaism has been hugely influential on all kinds of 20th-century art – modern art, abstract and conceptual art, performance art, pop art and installation art.
In War, the second episode of Channel 4’s The Comic Strip Presents strand, we see a Dadaist approach again and again. The situations are all designed to highlight how individuals and their emotions are getting lost in the craziness of conflict. In one sequence there’s a literal interpretation of the blind leading the blind, with a gang of vastly inept soldiers blundering around and endangering themselves and others. Elsewhere, there are spoofs of gung-ho, GI Joe-style militarism that has no care for the human cost, plenty of examples of apathy and disillusion, and some fun pastiches of war movies such as The Deer Hunter (1979), Apocalypse Now (1979) and The Great Escape (1963).
But what the film doesn’t have is much real-world logic: in half an hour, we get a hotchpotch of styles, locations, eras and attitudes, with Hermine and Godfrey’s journeys feeling like trips through a psychedelic dream. Despite this lack of conventional storytelling, everything’s kept entertaining by the thoroughly committed cast, as well as Simon Brint and Rod Melvin’s cabaret-club incidental music, which switches from chintzy to soulful without you really noticing.
Spoiler warning: These reviews reveal plot details
A cop from New York City is selected to search for the missing French hero Inspector Jacques Clouseau…
This comedically bankrupt and tattily directed travesty is a direct sequel to the previous film in the series, Trail of the Pink Panther. In fact, the two movies were made concurrently, so the plot stretches across them both and there are shared cast members. But whereas Trail had used old footage of the late Peter Sellers in order to include the character of Inspector Clouseau, Curse deliberately has the policeman off-stage for most of its runtime… and then recasts him.
Clouseau, we’re told as the film begins, has been missing for a year and the French authorities want to increase their efforts in finding him. Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) is ordered to use Interpol’s computer system to select the world’s best available detective for the job. However, he doesn’t want Clouseau found due to their long-standing feud. He therefore rigs the machine – one of those charming early computers that has a supercilious voice and can answer any question you ask it – so it suggests an imbecile…
The cop assigned to the case is the NYPD’s Officer Clifton Sleigh. We first see him as he’s going undercover disguised as a busty prostitute, which gives you some idea of this film’s comedic ambition. Sleigh is played by Ted Wass, previously a star of the TV sitcom Soap, and he gives a blandly bland performance of a criminally underwritten character. Sleigh is just as haphazard and clumsy as Clouseau, but with none of the charm or the bravado. Nothing about him ‘pops’ or is memorable. Visually, he’s reminiscent of the Christopher Reeve version of Clark Kent – glasses, preppy outfits – but this klutz is not putting it on. When Sleigh first meets Dreyfus, for example, he knocks him out of a second-storey window. Not surprisingly, the attempt at a new leading man for the series faltered with this solitary appearance.
Meanwhile, a gangster introduced briefly in the previous film – Robert Loggia’s Bruno Langlois – orders Sleigh’s assassination because he does not want Clouseau found. Sleigh evades every attempt on his life, not through guile but by blind luck. He barely notices that he’s under threat, in fact. He’s too busy calling in on characters from old Pink Panther films and asking them irrelevant questions. We see him visit Clouseau’s now-bitter valet Cato (Burt Kwouk), the disguise-master Auguste Balls (the singularly unfunny Harvey Korman), jewel thief Sir Charles Litton (David Niven, who died before the film’s release) and Clouseau’s ex-wife, Simone (Capucine). The latter two are hanging out with Sir Charles’s nephew, George, meaning Robert Wagner returns to the series 20 years after his previous appearance.
A great deal of tedious larking about, some of which involves Quadrophenia’s Leslie Ash, then leads Sleigh to a wealthy spa owner called Countess Chandra (Joanna Lumley, who’d played a different character in Trail of the Pink Panther). We’ve earlier seen her hanging out with a heavily bandaged man, so when Sleigh bizarrely encounters the actor Roger Moore at her spa we know that it’s really the missing Inspector Clouseau after extensive plastic surgery.
This iteration of Clouseau, of course, is played by the actual Roger Moore, who shot his extended cameo during a break from making his sixth James Bond film, Octopussy. He’s the film’s one true success, aping Peter Sellers’s cod accent and clumsy physicality without ever going too far over the top. His performance is all the more admirable when you consider that, according to Joanna Lumley, these scenes had to be rushed through in single takes due to bad scheduling. Perhaps that explains the rest of the movie too.
Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal plot twists.
Regulars: The lead character is the king’s second son, Edmund, the Duke of Edinburgh (Rowan Atkinson). He’s so embittered by his lowly standing in the family that he creates a new alter ego: the Black Adder. He has two hangers-on cum confidantes: the dim Percy, Duke of Northumberland (Tim McInnerny) and wise servant Baldrick (Tony Robinson). Atkinson goes for a weasel-like, screwed-up-face-and-whiny-voice performance, which sadly is not as funny as he thinks it is. Meanwhile, Robinson’s playing it remarkably straight and McInnerny doesn’t make much impression; neither does Edmund’s older brother, Harry, the Prince of Wales (Robert East). Edmund’s father is King Richard IV and is loud, aggressive and very, very Brian Blessedy. Queen Gertrude (Elspet Gray) is foreign and scatter-brained, and sadly underused – she’s funny, but rarely feels vital to what’s going on. An empty-headed messenger boy (David Nunn) appears in a few episodes, as does Edmund’s unwanted child bride, Princess Leia of Hungary (Natasha King). Perry Benson from You Rang, M’Lord? plays a yokel in episodes five and six, though it’s not clear if it’s meant to be the same man.
Notable guests: Peter Cook brings some blockbuster casting to the opening episode when he plays Richard III, who Edmund accidentally kills at the Battle of Bosworth. Richard then returns as a beheaded ghost to put the frighteners on Edmund. In episode two, Alex Norton appears as Scottish nobleman Dougal McAngus. A bearded Angus Deayton also gets one line as a Jumping Jew of Jerusalem. The Queen of Spain’s Beard features the stellar double act of Miriam Margolyes and Jim Broadbent as the Spanish queen, Infanta Maria Escalosa, and her translator, Don Speekingleesh. The same story includes Howard Lew Lewis from Maid Marian and her Merry Men as local man Mr Applebottom. The actor is also in episode five seemingly playing a different yokel. In episode three, Bill Wallis and David Delve play two knights who are sent to murder Edmund. Frank Finlay is the big-name guest star of episode five. Comedy double act Stephen Frost and Mark Arden appear in the same story as two dim guards, while Valentine Dyall is a member of the king’s counsel. In the final episode, Edmund forms a new gang mostly played by famous actors: Sir Wilfred Death (John Hallam), Three-Ringed Pete (Roger Sloman), Guy de Glastonbury (Patrick Malahide), Sean the Irish Bastard (Ron Cook), Friar Bellows (Paul Brooke) and Jack Large (Big Mick). In the same story, bad guy The Hawk is played by voiceover specialist Patrick Allen, while Rik Mayall crops up for an uncredited cameo (as a bonkers prisoner called Mad Gerald).
Best gags:
Episode one: The Foretelling (15 June 1983). In August 1485, Prince Edmund oversleeps and is late for the Battle of Bosworth. When he finally arrives, he mistakes the king, Richard III, for a horse thief so beheads him…
* When told that the enemy Henry Tudor will ravish her and every woman in the court, the Queen says she won’t bother getting changed.
* After the battle, Prince Harry keeps statistical totals of how many each person killed: battle averages, he calls them.
* Richard III’s head floats above his body in a prime piece of 1980s green-screen.
* “Don’t Dickie me, Duckie!”
Episode two: Born to be King (22 June 1983). In 1487, Edmund has to arrange the revelries for the King’s return from the Crusades…
* Edmund bemoans how virtuous his mother is: “She daren’t look down in case she notices her own breasts.”
* Edmund’s attempts to arrange the entertainment: “We’ve only got one act and she’s shaved her beard off.”
* Edmund says the festivities will have a spartan feel. “Greek?” asks Harry.
* When Edmund reads out a love letter of his mother’s, Percy stands behind him mouthing the words along gleefully.
Episode three: The Archbishop (29 June 1983). November 1487. A wealthy landowner leaves his fortune to the church, so the king kills the Archbishop of Canterbury for the cash, then replaces him with Edmund…
* Edmund’s ‘Black Russian’ codpiece – more or less a dildo.
* Edmund and Harry ride along on horses. Behind them, Baldrick and Percy pull a carriage.
* Edmund: “Exactly what did God do to the Sodomites?” Baldrick: “I don’t know, my lord, but I can’t imagine it was worse than what they used to do to each other.”
* Baldrick’s summation of the perks of being Archbishop: “Basically, there appears to be four major profit areas: curses, pardons, relics, and selling the sexual favours of nuns.” Edmund questions who would pay for the latter. “Foreign businessmen, other nuns…”
* Baldrick gets a splinter from holding the fragment of the cross Jesus was crucified on.
* Percy reverentially shows off that he owns a finger bone from Jesus’ corpse. Baldrick is stunned: he thought they only came in boxes of 10.
Episode four: The Queen of Spain’s Beard (6 July 1983). Richard IV has decided to marry off his son Harry to a Spanish queen… However, he’s already spoken for, so the plan moves on to Edmund.
* Harry says he’s already engaged to “Princess Leia of Hungary and the Grand Duchess Ursula of Brandenburg. And Queen Beowulfa of Iceland, and Countess Caroline of Luxembourg, Bertha of Flanders, Bertha of Brussels, Bernard of Saxe-Coburg, and Jezabel of Estonia. No, no, sorry, that should be *Betha* of Saxe-Coburg. And Jeremy of Estonia.”
* The slow-witted message boy keeps mirroring Edmund’s body language as they talk.
* The interpreter’s attempt at relating the Infanta’s flirting, putting odd emphases on almost every word.
* Baldrick’s first mooted plan (not yet cunning): to convince the Infanta that Edmund is gay. (A number of euphemisms are then trotted out: left-footer, riding side-saddle…)
* Edmund finds a local girl to marry, so he won’t have to wed the Infanta, but when the priest calls her ‘miss’, she corrects him. She’s already married.
* A terrified Baldrick is sent to sleep with the Infanta: after the bedroom door is closed, we hear the interpreter relaying her sex talk.
Episode five: Witchsmeller Persuivant (13 July 1983). Plague has struck in 1495. King Richard IV is ill, and a Witchsmeller has pointed the finger of blame at Edmund…
* The family who die from plague *instantly*, while someone’s back is turned.
* When the locals burn a witch, they also burn her cat on a tiny stake off to the side.
* During Edmund’s trial, the Witchsmeller takes a horse’s refusal to talk as it having something to hide. When it does make a sound, Harry asks, “Was that a yay or a neigh?”
* Witchsmeller: “Can you see that man standing over there?” Witness: “Which?” Witchsmeller: “That’s him!”
* The Witchsmeller asks if a witness can see the son of Satan in the room. We then see a row of onlookers, one of which has red skin and horns.
Episode six: The Black Seal (20 July 1983). St Juniper’s Day, 1498. Stripped of his title, Edmund spurns his friends and assembles a new gang so he can take his revenge…
* Three-Ringed Pete is losing an archery contest, so kills his opponent.
* Guy holds up a coach. “Did I say ‘Your money of your life’? Slip of the tongue. Your money *and* your life.”
* When we first see Jack Large, we assume he’s a giant of a man. Jack is actually the midget beating him up.
* Edmund: “All for one…” His gang: “…and each man for himself!”
* The Hawk’s torture device, which has a spike to go up the bottom, sheers to cut off the ears, axes to chop off hands, a ‘coddling grinder’ and feathers to tickle Edmund under the arms.
Best episode: The Queen of Spain’s Beard, thanks in large part to the two hilarious guest performances.
Cunning: In episode two, when Edmund says he needs a cunning plan, Baldrick says: “I have a cunning plan,” and insists it’s pretty damn cunning. (It’s to convince McAngus to stick his head down a cannon.) In the next installment, Baldrick claims he has “a cunning plan that cannot fail” – but we don’t hear it as we then cut away to two guards discussing dinner plans. Later, when they’re tied to a bonfire that’s about to be lit, Baldrick again says he has a cunning plan, but Edmund’s not interested.
History: The conceit of the series is that, once he became monarch, Henry VII (1457-1509, who came to the throne in 1485) rewrote history. Turns out, Richard III wasn’t actually a deformed maniac who imprisoned his nephews. Also, although he *was* killed at Bosworth, it wasn’t Henry Tudor’s forces that got him – he was really accidentally murdered by one of his own. After Richard III’s death, his nephew Richard IV ascended to the throne – and the series is set in this reign, which Henry later expunged from the records. As well as numerous medieval cliches, the series also satirises Thomas Becket’s 1170 murder (in episode three), 17th-century Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins (episode five) and the Robin Hood myth (episode six). The whole thing, I suppose, is based on undermining the Shakespearean take on history.
Unbroadcast pilot: In 1982, the BBC made a single trial-run episode of The Black Adder, which has never been transmitted or officially released – but is freely available on YouTube. It’s a strange beast. It’s seems to be set in Elizabethan England, although there is a king as well as a queen, neither of whom in named. It has small studio sets and no location work. Edmund is much smarter than he is in the series proper. In other words, it’s more like to the format later used in Blackadder II. The pilot has the same story as episode two, Born to be King, but there are some different actors in the regular roles: John Savident as the King, Robert Bathurst as Harry and Philip Fox as Baldrick. Sadly, many gags fall flat and the studio audience don’t seem especially impressed. At one point, Edmund and Baldrick have a discussion that involves many uses of the word cunning.
Review: Written by Richard Curtis and star Rowan Atkinson – they cooked up the idea while working together on Not The Nine O’Clock News – this just doesn’t feel right. In retrospect, many things are ‘just off’. The whole series certainly looks impressive, with big studio sets and plenty of location filming (although, the Battle of Bosworth is dramatised without the luxury of extras!). But sadly that just means more empty space where the laughs should be. Significantly, the best moments tend to come with small groups in small rooms, such as Edmund, Baldrick and Percy discussing religious relics – a scene that also pushes the show into more deliberately anachronistic territory. Another big problem is that all the characters – except maybe Baldrick, ironically – are stupid. This doesn’t make for much variety and the comedy generally lacks bite. Considering the funnier dynamic used in later series, neither Edmund nor Baldrick are as good as they could be. It’s easy to see why big changes were made for series two…
Ian Farrington 