For a short period in the early 1960s Bryan Forbes was responsible for some of the most interesting films being made. After forming Beaver Films with Richard Attenborough he wrote the screenplays for The League of Gentleman and The Angry Silence (both 1960). As a director his early films included Whistle Down the Wind (1961), possibly still one of the best films about children ever made, and The L-Shaped Room (1962), a masterclass in kitchen sink realism. In 1964 he directed Seance on a Wet Afternoon, based on the novel by Mark McShane and with Attenborough producing and starring.
Seance on a Wet Afternoon is a beautifully moody piece, although the film ultimately doesn’t live up to the sum of its sterling parts. It stars Attenborough as the downtrodden husband of an unstable medium (Kim Stanley). Together the two embark on a clumsy kidnap plot in order to collect the reward money. Stanley, in a rare film role, received an Oscar nomination for her very unsettling performance, although Attenborough too delivers the goods. Almost unrecognisable in a false nose, moustache and glasses, he plays a very oddball part. Always an oustanding character actor, this is a role in which he excels and it is probably only surpassed by his chilling performance as John Christie a few years later in 10 Rillington Place.
The film is enhanced by the John Barry soundtrack, and Forbes wisely chose to work with Barry again on his other masterpiece of mood The Whisperers (1967). Made in the winter of 1963, the British cold and damp really soaks through this movie; the locations are excellent – the West End, suburbia and mist filled woods. For location buffs, the house where much of the films action is set is in Wimbledon, South West London, and the derelict Staines Speedway is also featured.
Forbes films are always recognisable by the presence of Nanette Newman, the director’s wife who always appears in his cast. Here she plays the mother of the kidnapped girl, married to Mark Eden (now forever known as the beastly Alan Bradley in Coronation Street). But apart from an appearance by the great Patrick Magee, Seance on a Wet Afternoon doesn’t have a memorable supporting cast and for me the interest lies in Attenborough, Barry and the location shooting. Sadly, apart from The Whisperers, Bryan Forbes stopped making interesting films after this. King Rat (1965) isn’t that memorable, nor is the Michael Caine vehicle Deadfall (1968). And by the 70s things started to become dire with International Velvet (1978). But for a very, very short period he knew how to make great movies.
The Devil you Know is my first foray into the world of Felix Castor, the opening novel in Mike Carey’s successful horror series. The book was partly a success for me; I liked it enough to buy the second instalment of the series, although I’m holding back on the decision to invest in all five. Carey mixes a noirish thriller with the supernatural, where an alternative London is crowded with ghosts, zombies and loup garous, which are a sort of animal-spirit hybrid.
The Devil you Know has a stunning plot, which involves exorcist for hire Castor investigating the haunting of a document archive in London. Particularly effective is the novel’s opening, where Castor reveals a ghost at a children’s birthday party. It’s a well written and suitably creepy piece that wouls stand up on its own as a great short story. What lets the book down is both its length (200 odd pages of this sort of thing is great, 470 is far too much) and Castor-as-narrator with his often clichéd and grating style which can make Sam Spade sound like he’s giving a Shakespeare soliloquy. And what disturbs the most is that the living characters are as unconvincing as the dead in this novel; villains are pantomime drawn, and Castor’s associates don’t really stick in the mind.
That Mike Carey has written five Castor novels suggests that he’s doing something right. However The Devil you Know comes across as very hurriedly written, and this author does appear to bash his books out. There are some great ideas though, such as Castor’s talent for sniffing out the ghosts he’s called upon to destroy, and at times this novel is genuinely and satisfyingly scary, but Carey needs to ditch some of the well worn scenarios that appear to be grafted on for effect – for example the Dr Lektorish prisoner that Castor calls on for a chat, which didn’t add anything to the book for me. But if you like literary ghosts, then the one haunting the central story of the book will probably satisfy you. Her plight is creepy, sad and well thought out.
Shall I move onto the second instalmant Vicious Circle? Oh, go on then.
There’s something unsettling about London on film in the 1970s. Streets appear a little too empty. What traffic there is flows freely, with cars slowing down to park easily so their drivers can reveal what’s concealed inside the boot. Police come across as particularly inept, and allow teenage gangs to run riot on their motorcycles. Teenagers in general tend to fall into two general camps in 70s horrors; the easy victims or the out and out nasties. It’s a bleak and creepy 70s landscape.
Creepier still if it’s a Pete Walker film. Frightmare was directed by Walker in 1974 and follows his similarly gruesome offering from the same year House of Whipcord. Like the earlier film, Frightmare leads the viewer down an increasingly dark and narrowing path, where no-one is saved and the viewer is left particularly aghast. Or all the 70s horror films, it is one of the most shocking.
Frightmare begins in the 1950s, where a lone figure (Andrew Sachs) is murdered at a run down funfair. Jumping to the present day, Edmund and Dorothy Yates (Rupert Davies and House of Whipcord’s Sheila Keith) are released from a mental institution. Apparently they are now cured of their irritating cannibal tendencies. So we can all rest peacefully. No, hang on a minute, this is a Pete Walker film…
If you’ve dared to watch the trailer, the film provides reassuringly melodramatic music to its horror, and as well as the London setting Walker uses a desolate but far from comfy farmhouse, where open fires provide easy access to red hot pokers. The nastiness of Frightmare will be no surprise for anyone familiar with Walker’s work. The director kept British cinema alive in the 1970s, although perhaps alive is the wrong word to use for a series of films generally dealing with some degree of bloodbath. Walker directed a series of successful films before retiring in the early 1980s. Rumour has it that he became a property developer. As well as horror films, Walker knocked out a series of mild sex comedies, the most well known probably being Tiffany Jones in 1973. He almost directed a movie starring The Sex Pistols, possibly more interesting than Julien Temple’s limp Great Rock and Roll Swindle. But we’ll never know. Walker’s final film was a brilliant swansong. The House of Long Shadows brought together Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, John Carradine and Christopher Lee.
Pete Walker creates an absurd world that is really beyond criticism, and his recent appearance at the BFI easily proves this. An amiable and eloquent gentleman, he comes across as something of an English Roger Corman. An exceedingly nice man who just happened to make horror films, there’s little point in digging too deeply into the meaning behind the flicks. The films, if you like this sort of thing, are just fun, and Walker is happy to admit that he stopped directing at a relatively early age simply because he’d run his course as a filmmaker. And, more to the point, how could you possibly top The House of the Long Shadows?
Walker’s cinema remains elusive and obscure, making him the truest cult filmmaker. His movies rarery, perhaps never, appear on television and are difficult to track down on DVD. So sadly many of his feature have escaped my attention, such as this intriguing looking film with the bizarre casting of the singer Jack Jones and the future Mrs Connolly Pamela Stephenson:
The Comeback looks fantastic, but I’ll have to make do with the trailer for now – that familiar deep voice telling me
Perhaps he is going mad. Or perhaps there is someone there…
