The first thing I noticed when watching this Tigon film was the incredible cast. It’s like a wet dream for horror fans (Boris Karloff! Christopher Lee! Barbara Steele !) A welcome surprise was seeing that Mark Eden who played Alan Bradley from Coronation Street was also in the cast.
Eden plays Robert Manning who is searching for his brother who was going to Greymarsh, the town where they grew up. Robert heads to the property his brother was staying in, Craxted Lodge and finds a party to be in full swing. He meets a partygoer, Eve whose uncle, Morley (Christopher Lee) owns the property. Eve introduces them but Morley doesn’t know of Robert’s brother and convinces him to stay the night so that he can continue to look for his brother the next day. His sleep is disturbed by a very trippy nightmare that depicts some kind of ritual and a green witch (Steele) presiding over proceedings. The next day Robert is introduced to Professor John Marsh (Karloff) who just so happens to have a collection of torture implements (red flag or red herring?) and is an expert in witchcraft and the occult (red flag or red herring?). Robert continues to search for his brother and have even freakier and frighteningly real nightmares.
I loved this Vernon Sewell-directed British horror film. I love how late 60s Swinging London culture had permeated into the film, with the party being a full-on groovy happening, man with body painting and bright colours. The filmmakers were obviously not just going for the horror crowd but also a counterculture demographic who went to see far-out movies late at night.
But this isn’t the only sequence that utilised a colour palate that could make your eyes water. The dream/nightmare sequences are stunning and very hallucinatory. I love how they end with kaleidoscope-esque visuals. I also love how the jury in the witch’s courtroom all wear animal masks with the goat mask wearer being centre stage. Events are just a little bit kinky too with the muscle-bound blacksmith wearing very skimpy trunks. He looks like he should be in a Frankie Goes To Hollywood video.
I also love how everything is accounted for using logic and rational explanations by the end, a bit like the end of an episode of Scooby Doo. Even the potential plot holes are stitched up (‘Hypnosis!’) But whilst we are led to believe that there is no real (black) magic within the film’s narrative, the film’s final frames prove otherwise.
The entire cast is fantastic and everyone is on top form. Alas, this was to be one of Karloff’s final film appearances before he ascended to the film studio in the sky.
The latest entry in the Confessions franchise sees Timmy Lea change occupations yet again and becoming a driving instructor. Along the way, there are plenty of ‘birds’ for him to have sexy adventures with.
As is customary in these films, there are usually actresses who went onto bigger things who play a prominent part within the cast. This time around its future Oxo mum and Loose Woman Lynda Bellingham. Lynda, unfortunately, died of cancer a few years ago after releasing a book about her journey from diagnosis to treatment. R.I.P. Lynda.
The gags here are just as juvenile, Benny Hill-esque and low-brow as they are in the previous entries. Which meant that I loved this film just as much as I did the other films. Yet again, there are plenty of outdoor shots which gives the film a fantastic time capsule feel.
Windsor Davies, Irene Handl and George Layton are also part of the cast this time round. Lewis Collins also has a non-speaking role.
Timmy Lea and his brother-in-law are still cleaning windows (see the previous film) but somehow blag their way into the world of pop management. The band they start to manage are called Bloater which Timmy’s brother in law then renames Kipper (it’s classier). When Kipper’s drummer is unable to play a gig, Timmy steps in.
This film is just as much of a time capsule as the previous entry in the franchise and just as beautifully filmed. The gags come thick and fast and are just as hilarious. Even the sight gags are very funny and hit their desired target.
One of the bored housewives Timmy does the horizontal bop with during the course of the film is none other than Jill Gascoine! Her onscreen husband is Bob Todd of Benny Hill fame. Rula Lenska also stars. Talk about a stellar ensemble cast.
Kipper are entered into a talent contest called Star Knockers. One of the other pop groups in the film are a female duo of singers called The Climax Sisters. I’m sure there will be those who find this kind of humour not very funny at all. But there are those, like myself, who love it. Confessions of a Pop Performer is just as much a valuable piece of 70’s pop culture as Confessions of a Window Cleaner was.
A soundtrack for this film featuring Kipper’s songs (sample song title- ‘The Clapham’) was released on Polydor Records. I have it. It’s ace.
My first memory of a Confessions movie was the trailer for one of them. An older woman is looking for her cat who just happens to be called Fanny. ‘Ave you seen my Fanny?’ she asks the film’s protagonist Timothy Lea who grimaces into the camera.
The Confessions movies were made in the 70’s and based on the popular books of the same name. In this era of permissiveness and a general feeling of ‘anything goes’, these films depicting Timmy’s sexploits were adapted for the big screen and reaped the rewards at the box office. Confessions of a Window Cleaner was the highest grossing British film for that year.
The film’s premise is Timmy (as played by the strangely simian Robin Askwith) who finds lots of women (as crumpet as I’m sure he’d call them) during his working day as a window cleaner. There are bored housewives for Timmy to give some TLC to and windows of buildings to clean which just so happen to have women in various states of undress inside for him to ogle over.
This movie is basically the same seaside postcard humour of the Carry On movies but notched up a few levels and with more breasts and double entendres then you can shake a pair of knickers at. It’s all so camp.
But if you expect me to sneer at this supposedly low brow level of humour then you will be massively disappointed. I love the Confessions films and this first film in the series is a cracker (to use Timmy’s lingo). The gags come thick and fast and they almost always hit the bullseye (just like the best in the Carry On series). Even the few jokes that don’t work are funny because of that.
In these oh so enlightened times, the Confessions movies would be looked down at by the wokerati. Puritans will hate Confessions of a Window Cleaner. I love it and think the whole series are a fantastic slice of British popular culture. Can we have all of the films released on Blu Ray please?
Another film I remember seeing on the shelves of video shops in the 80’s that I somehow didn’t watch was Xtro from 1982. I finally got to see it for the first time earlier.
Wow. Just wow. Xtro is out there! A man is abducted by aliens. Three years later an alien impregnates a woman after he is hit by a car. The woman then gives birth to the man who went missing years before. And that’s just for starters.
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a woman giving birth to a grown man. This must be one of the goriest scenes I’ve ever seen.
The rest of the film is like the darkest acid trip ever. In other words, it’s great fun.
I love the fact that the film is based in London. If you want to see what life was like in Britain in the 1980’s then look no further (apart from the gore and horror, obviously).
Look out for supporting roles from Anna Wing (who would go on to star in EastEnders) and robotic pop group Tik and Tok.
I’ve always been fascinated by the writing of, and indeed, the legend of playwright Joe Orton. It was so refreshing to discover someone who was, shock horror, a confident homosexual in the 60s rather than some simpering, guilt-ridden closet case. I remember when I arrived in London to study film, a friend told me about an organised tour entitled The Joe Orton Walk that went to the sites of public lavatories where Joe looked for casual sex. A worthy tribute as ever there was one.
Stephen Frears’ 1987 film adapts John Lahr’s fantastic biography of Joe with the working-class boy from Leicester venturing to London to join the RADA (darling) and pursue a career in acting. It’s here that he meets Kenneth Halliwell who becomes his partner and co-conspirator. But this union would come to a horrifying conclusion as the tutored (Orton) would eclipse his teacher (Halliwell) and accomplish everything he wanted to but that which was beyond his grasp (you could say it was ‘Beyond Our Ken’ haha).
We get a fantastic depiction of being gay in London in the 1960s where sex was everywhere with a knowing look or if you knew the relevant places to frequent. We also get a vivid depiction of the gay paradise of that era, Morocco.
Orton was ‘punk’ before ‘punk’. His plays poked fun at society’s hypocrisies through his amazing use of language and his fantastic, laser-sharp wit. The library books he altered the covers of and wrote new liner notes for were another example of his playful subversion. I love the fact that the existing examples of these books have now been preserved for the enjoyment of generations to come. And to think that this act actually earned Orton and Halliwell six months holiday at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. Outrageous.
Frears’s directs amazingly aided and abetted by a screenplay by none other than Alan Bennett. The cast is also uniformly brilliant with Prick Up Your Ears being an example of perfect casting- Gary Oldman as Orton, Alfred Molina as Halliwell and Vanessa Redgrave as the regal but irreverent Peggy Ramsey.
I also loved the parallels between Kenneth Halliwell and Lahr’s wife that the film establishes. This is very perceptive indeed.
And something else which is remarkable about the film is that it’s currently on YouTube for your delectation. Watch it before it gets taken down.
History is the ultimate judge of everything and film is no exception. One director whose work history has been very kind to is British director Pete Walker.
Walker was actually the son of music hall star Syd Walker. His first job was as a comedian at a strip joint in Soho (!) He also made 8mm ‘glamour shorts’ before making full length (pun not intended) softcore films at the end of the 60’s with titles like School For Sex, Cool It Carol and Four Dimensions of Greta.
The 70s-tastic Pete Walker
But it was in the 70’s that Walker turned his attention to exploitation films and primarily the horror genre.
House of Whipcord is one such film and was made in 1974. This is a lurid movie with an equally lurid title. It concerns specially selected women who were judged to be far too liberated and sexually free and are thus thrown into a mysterious correction facility so that they would receive punishment for their wicked ways.
The film exposed the huge gulf within British society at the time- on one side were those who embraced the progressive changes Britain was undergoing regarding women’s changing roles that empowered and liberated them from simply being mothers and housewives. On the other side those who were more traditional and conservative. They were angry at the new permissive society and were the kind of people who wrote venom-filled letters to the national newspapers whilst spewing bile behind their net curtains. A figurehead for these people can be seen as Mary Whitehouse and her ‘Caravan of Light’ who campaigned against everything and wanted offensive and ‘corrupting’ films to be banned (Mrs Whitehouse would come into her own in the next decade during the Video Nasties moral panic), television programmes she didn’t approve of (the watershed was introduced because of her campaigning) and even pieces of poetry that didn’t meet her outdated moral standards (the publication Gay News was disbanded after she took them to court over a poem they published regarding Jesus and one of his foot-soldiers).
House of Whipcord- Within These Walls on steroids
House of Whipcord is a genuinely brilliant piece of exploitation and horror that holds up a mirror to what was happening in society at the time. Britain was still so repressed that it was easy for mavericks to break boundaries and challenge taboos. In fact, there were those who at this time who were delighting in poking holes in the more archaic elements of society. Punk was just around the corner and tellingly Walker was approached by Malcolm McLaren to make a documentary about The Sex Pistols. This was only cancelled because the band split up before the film could be made.
House of Whipcord is also a fantastic addition to the Women In Prison subgenre. It feels like Within These Walls on steroids. There are also elements of Kafka’s The Trial thrown in for good measure. This is highlighted by the shadowy figure of Judge Bailey who lays down the law within the facility but whose laws are completely unclear. This is an authoritarian nightmare that still feels all too real.
Special mention needs to go to the cast. Celia Imrie starred in the film at the start of her career and she speaks about the movie at numerous points in her autobiography. She makes it sound like the film was a cinematic shocker that she starred in when she was young and needed the money. However, you get the feeling that she is kind of proud to have been in such a production with it almost attaining a kind of ‘cool’ status.
Barbara Markham is spectacularly unhinged as Head Warden Mrs Wakehurst who turns from measured to biblically psychotic in an instant (witness the sequence in which is lurches at her husband wielding a knife whilst screeching ‘If thine eye offends thee, PLUCK IT OUT!’)
An actress who would be cast by Walker in a total of five of his film and stars here is the magnificent Shelia Keith. Her portrayal of sadistic warden Walker is as cold and brilliantly extreme as Markham’s is. Think of Vinegar Tits from Prisoner Cell Block H but much more extreme.
The next of Walker’s films that stands out for me is Frightmare also from 1974. In 1957 Dorothy Yates and her husband Edmund are convicted of murder and cannibalism (!) and sent to an asylum until the film’s present-day (1974). They are then released supposedly fully cured and living a quiet life. But are they? The answer, of course, is of course not! The film shows Dorothy not being cured at all but using the cover of giving tarot readings to people who she then kills and eats.
‘The cards predict cannibalism. Yes, really…’
The film also deals with Jackie (Edmund’s daughter from a previous marriage) who regularly visits the couple offering gifts of animal brains whilst falsely telling them that they are actually human remains and that she is actually killing people so that her stepmother doesn’t relapse and remains free. It is also revealed that her father had actually faked being complicit in the crimes and feigned madness so that he could stay with his wife. Jackie lives with Debbie, a wayward 15-year-old who is the actual daughter of the couple who was placed into an orphanage as a baby just after her parents were institutionalised. She has recently been expelled from there as she is too much for the authorities to deal with and so spends most of her time with her boyfriend who is the leader of a violent biker gang.
Walker’s film goes to the darker places that other horror films of the age wouldn’t have dared to. Frightmare has enough deprived goings-on to have even the most jaded of horror fans salivating with glee.
There’s also a playful pop at the more respectable films on release at this time and what Walker thinks of these- Jackie drags her new boyfriend out of a screening of the arty farty Blow Up- and for good reason. Why watch that when you could be watching (or even starring in) a Pete Walker film?
Another facet of Walker’s work that I love is that his films capture the world in which they’re filmed in and feel like beautifully filmed time capsules. The fact that a certain demographic was lapping up films like Walker’s with a healthy section of the cinema-going public loving all things horror and exploitation was also very revealing of the time. The drive-in and 42nd Street audiences weren’t just confined to America during this time.
There’s also a fantastic strain of black humour at play within the film with events sometimes becoming so extreme that they become surreal and darkly funny. This reminds me of the dark comedy that rears its head during the endings of both Straw Dogs and Taxi Driver. Within Frightmare, this reads as completely intentional with an almost vaudevillian Grand Guignol tone during certain scenes.
Again, Keith features and plays the role of the cannibal housewife Dorothy resplendent with pale palour and red eyes. She attacks each character she takes on with such unbridled zest and zeal that her presence feels an essential part as to why Walker’s films are so noteworthy. Walker talked about working with her saying-
“Sheila Keith was a lady who lived a quiet life with her dogs and her cats and came into work to do, brilliantly, whatever was asked of her. She was like your nice old aunt who would serve you cucumber sandwiches before ripping into a dismembered limb – without complaining.”
I honestly think that Walker and Keith make for one of cinema’s great director/actor partnerships in much the same way De Niro and Scorsese or John Waters and Divine do.
Another Walker favourite of mine is Schizo made in 1976. Figure skater Samantha is just about to get married but we see that a former partner of her mother is travelling to London from the North East to seemingly stalk her.
The film feels ahead of its time as issues that are more widely spoken about now such as stalking, voyeurism and obsessive behaviour directed towards a single person hadn’t been tackled in film before. All of these concepts and dysfunctional attributes would have been new and revelatory to audiences back then in much the same way as those introduced to audiences watching Hitchcock’s Psycho (crossdressing, multiple personalities) or Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (celebrity stalking, obsessive fans) for the first time.
There are also questions as to who the stalker is, why he’s stalking Samantha and what role she has in all of this. There’s a huge sting in the tale and I’m certainly not going to spoil any of this here.
More than with any of Walker’s films before or since, Schizo really captures the time and locales it’s set in with London being beautifully captured in the year that, ironically, punk was about to explode. Just as punk marked an explosion not just within music but also within other art forms, Walker’s films can be seen as part of that movement.
Walker actually thought there were no subtexts to his films but was pleasantly surprised by what he saw when he reinvestigated his work. He said-
“But recently I had to record commentaries for the DVD releases so I saw the films for the first time since making them, and you know what? They’re not as bad as I thought. But searching for hidden meaning . . . they were just films. All I wanted to do was create a bit of mischief.”
But there is meaning and subtext to be found in all films whether this is intended by the screenwriter and/or director or not. Walker and his screenwriter David McGillivray and their views on the British society of the time are there for all to see and marvel at throughout their work.
Walker’s last film was made in 1983 and was his most polished movie to date, the big-budget House of Long Shadows which cast horror royalty Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee all in the same picture. After this film, Walker retired from making films and instead set about restoring old cinemas.
Boxsets of Walker’s films have been released but curiously, only in the US. It’s time for 4K restorations of his work for Blu ray releases in his home country. It’s time for the outstanding back catalogue of this amazing auteur to be finally recognised and released in the UK. Walker’s work documents a secret history of a time in British cinema that was gritty, forbidden and utterly intoxicating. I think the BFI would be the best company to issue these releases and tout Walker as the major force he truly was within the British film industry even though he may have been frowned upon by others within that industry at the time. And if the BFI do release his films then they should also show a retrospective at the NFT for good measure.
I first came across Beryl Reid when I was a child. She starred in the kids programme Get Up and Go and appeared regularly on Blankety Blank. I knew nothing of her penchant for starring in brilliant examples of cult cinema. But as my love of all things cult and horror developed I got to see some of the best examples of her work within these genres.
The first of her cinematic endeavours that I saw was the very risque The Killing of Sister George (1968). This was shown one late night on Tyne Tees Television and as soon as I saw the scene involving George getting into a cab that two nuns were already occupying I knew that this was strange cargo and also quite brilliant.
One of the earliest British gay-themed films ever made, this tells the tale of June ‘George’ Buckridge, the soon-to-be eclipsed star on the TV soap opera Applehurst. We see her relationship with the Baby Doll-like Childie and also the interventions of television executive Mrs Crofts. But does Crofts have her own agenda?
This lesbian drama has the amazing tagline ‘The story of three consenting adults in the privacy of their own home’ which obviously mimics the mantra of liberals and homophobes alike regarding ‘the gays’. It’s also a reference to the wording of The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 decriminalising homosexuality.
There’s something aesthetically pleasing about Beryl Reid in all of the films and TV programmes I’ve seen her in. This film is no exception. She plays George and she dominates proceedings whenever she is on screen. Her character is irreverent, rambunctious and a sheer delight. She was ‘punk’ years before the punk movement actually erupted. Also, notice how she plays her rebellious character to perfection and got under the skin of George. This is very evident in her body language. No unconscious crossing of the legs or keeping them together when she sits down. She can manspread with the best of them. This is a headstrong woman who lives life on her own terms rather than conforming to societal norms regarding how a ‘lady’ should act.
A primary theme of the film is the power play within the character’s relationships. This is nicely shown in the ‘contrition game’ scene in which rather than being degraded by George’s task, Childie makes herself enjoy it thus taking away the power from George and being in control herself.
The film depicts its characters like human beings with all of their foibles rather than as freaks in a sideshow to be leered and grimaced at by ‘them there normal folks’. The film prompts a new discussion on societal perceptions of gay people in a Britain in which homosexuality had just been decriminalised (this was carried out in 1967- the year before this film was released).
The next film of Reid’s that was noteworthy for cult film fans was The Beast in the Cellar (1970).
Some kind of animal is attacking and killing the military at a nearby army base. A couple of sisters who live in the neighbourhood fear that it’s actually their brother Steven, who is locked in the basement of their house, who is actually responsible for the attacks.
This is a fantastic slice of horror by the British studio Tigon which was responsible for so many brilliant exploitation movies of the era. There is a prevailing atmosphere of quiet dread that builds throughout the film with the genteel and quaint lives of the sisters hiding their dreadful secret regarding their brother and his backstory. The film explains this near the end of the movie- Steven was violently maltreated by his father after his shell-shocked return from the First World War. When their parents both pass away, the sisters didn’t want their brother to become the vile man that their father became and so to make sure he isn’t called up for the Second World War they hide him in the cellar and keep him drugged (via his water supply) so that he is sedated and controllable. After the physical beatings by his father and after being locked up for so long, Steven has become feral and akin to some kind of wild madman with a hatred for the male members of the military whom he associates with his father.
There are some very good performances within the film but it’s Reid’s that shines the brightest and makes the film truly special. As Ellie, the sister who seemingly hasn’t progressed from when she was a child, she sinks into the character eerily well. From the scenes in which she reminisces about her father and the details regarding her family, it feels like you are watching a child instead of an adult. This works very well as it elicits a warmth from the audience regarding the character with a sense that the sisters carried out an extraordinary act in exceptional circumstances.
There’s also the theme of a dark family secret being hidden from view by the facade of the two ‘respectable’ spinster sisters that the film explores well. You’d never guess by the appearance of the women that they committed such a terrible thing to their brother.
These ingredients make for a very enjoyable film indeed.
The most far-out and trippy of Mr Reid’s excursions into all things cult was Psychomania from 1973. In this film she plays Mrs Latham, the seance-holding mother of the leader of a biker gang called The Living Dead(!) She holds the secret to how people can come back to life after they have willingly killed themselves and tells her son how to accomplish this which he does. He then passes on this knowledge to the other members of his gang who one by one take their own lives so they can come back and live forever.
This film can be seen to capitalise on several different film genres that were popular at the time- horror films, biker movies and also the kind of unreal entertainment for stoners to watch whilst they were off their bonces. This film can also be seen as genuinely countercultural.
There are many nods to an anti-authority sensibility within Psychomania with a scene in which the gang members are helped to escape from cells in which they are being held. The concept of ‘normality’ and the whole notion of domesticity also come in for a battering within the film. There are sequences in which we see the bikers terrorising locals in what looks like a New Town concrete open-air shopping centre. There is even a scene in which they ride through a supermarket whilst gleefully trashing it and running over shoppers.
And this is another reason why it was truly brave for a star like Reid to choose to star in such fare. Whilst other esteemed actors would only have starred in such a film if their career was on the skids, Reid didn’t look down her nose at this type of entertainment. Indeed, she accepted roles in these kinds of films and performed them with such zeal that it’s obvious she loved these quirky additions to her filmography. This reminds me of other actors who did this like Vincent Price and Donald Pleasance.
History judges all art and history has judged this film very well indeed. Even the BFI issued it on Blu-ray a few years ago which just goes to show how cherished it is in terms of British cinema. Ironically, such an outsider piece of popular culture should now be embraced by the cultural elite. But don’t let that put you off.
A fantastic time capsule of a movie with beautiful cinematography and is a daring depiction of a grisly topic (suicide) that is handled both darkly and humorously. Oh, and it has a soundtrack to die for.
These are just a few of the brilliant entries in Beryl Reid’s oeuvre. And there are plenty of others with her starring in a film adaptation of Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane, her recording of an album of music hall songs (really) and, of course, Get Up and Go which featured a cat from the Moon. And that’s why we salute her brilliance.
This trippy 1968 British Lion film concerns the free-spirited Rebecca (Marianne Faithfull) who leaves her more conventional husband, Raymond to go and meet a man called Daniel (Alain Delon) who she met for the first time as she was working at her father’s bookshop who seems much more interesting and passionate. The journey is undertaken on her prized Harley Davidson Electra Glide and entails her travelling from France to Germany. It was Daniel who gave her the bike as a wedding present. The film captures the inner pontifications of Rebecca as she ponders convention and how suffocating it is and her desires for Daniel rather than the more stoid Raymond.
After having a few too many shots in a German bar she climbs onto her motorcycle again to finish her journey to meet Daniel. It was at this point that I thought that there shoudl have been more films made of Rebecca’s adventures on her motorcycle and even a spin-off TV series. But then I saw the shocker of an ending and realised why there weren’t more films made.
This film was not only a star vehicle for Faithfull (who doesn’t disappoint) but also feels like British Lion dipping it’s toe into the kind of mind blowing and tripped out films made for those who were fully ensconced in that swinging scene, man. Several sequences look like acid-soaked flashbacks with their psychedelic colours and dream like qualities.
I also loved the daydream style sequences within the film such as the circus sequence in which Rebecca is standing on top of a moving horse whilst being whipped by ringmaster Delon. There’s also a very special sequence in which Rebecca is riding along on her bike and superimposes the faces of her beaux on the billboards she sees.
The film had the more provocative title of Naked Under Leather in the States. This was after they made the filmmakers cut out several scenes of smut.
Alain Delon Marianne Faithfull Roger Mutton Marius Goring
This is a fantastic, over the top and quite crazy piece of filmmaking and is still regarded as a brilliant cult film and for good reason.
As soon as I saw that this 1965 Amicus film was directed by Freddie Francis I knew that the direction and photography would be beautiful. And I was right! I was also excited as I knew that this was a horror anthology film and starred two heavyweights of the genre, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
As well as Cushing and Lee the cast also includes Alan ‘Fluff’ Friedman, Donald Sutherland and Roy ‘You’re a Record Breaker!’ Castle. We even get Kenny Lynch appearing in a cameo role.
Travellers in a train compartment are joined by the very sinister Dr Schreck who whips out his deck of tarot cards and tells each of his fellow traveller’s fortunes. Each fortune told is a separate episode in this anthology.
The separate stories involve vampirism, a vine seemingly related to a Triffid that comes to life, lycanthropy, voodoo and black magic and a severed hand. I want to give more details away about each segment but there are so many brilliant twists and turns that writing any more would be like trying to tiptoe through a field full of landmines.
Each episode is completely different from each other, taking place in a real breadth of locales and circumstances which keeps the film as a whole really varied and interesting.
This film has all the ingenuity of five separate mini episodes of Tales of the Unexpected. Each concept is unpredictable, genuinely ingenious and likely to surprise most viewers.
A joy from start to finish with perhaps the biggest twist coming after each of the characters fortunes has been told.
History judges all art and history has judged this film very well indeed. Even the BFI issued it on Blu-ray a few years ago which just goes to show how cherished it is in terms of British cinema. Ironically, such an outsider piece of popular culture should now be embraced by the cultural elite. But don’t let that put you off. 
meathookcinema.com 