Tank Malling (1989)

The only feature film directed by James Marcus, whose claim to cult fame is having played ‘Georgie the Droog’ in A Clockwork Orange. Marcus appears to have made Tank Malling as a diversion from acting in the TV series London’s Burning, enrolling another London’s Burning cast member, Glen Murphy, for a supporting role.

The geezer’s geezer Ray Winstone plays John ‘Tank’ Malling, a disgraced journalist whose attempt to expose morality campaigner Sir Robert Knights (Peter Wyngarde) badly backfired on Malling, destroying his career and sending him to jail on perjury charges.  Knights’ populist grandstanding and TV appearances are a front for powerful establishment figures to abuse and murder underage girls, participate in Satanic rituals and engage in kinky sex.  Flashbacks to their freaky activities include a judge beating his meat to a dominatrix working over a gimp, a naked man drinking blood from a goblet and an old perv babbling “I want her to be conscious, she will be conscious won’t she?” next to a girl who is OD-ing.  Malling gets a second shot at bringing the degenerate bunch down when former lover Helen (Amanda Donohoe) shows up and tries to talk him into stealing a diary containing all the sordid dirt on Knights’ cronies.  However, Knights himself is but a puppet figure for a fascist organisation, represented by Dunboyne (Jason Connery) who is really pulling all the strings here.

After a reportedly disastrous theatrical run –it made just £6,392 at the UK box-office- Tank Malling was cut down from 108 minutes to 91 minutes for home viewing.  According to those who caught the longer version, the 91 minute edit is a faster paced and more palatable affair, but with around 17 minutes currently missing from it, Tank Malling does make for an inevitably choppy and confusing viewing experience. 

Take a drink every time Ray Winstone yells his head off in Tank Malling and you’ll probably end up as pissed as Don Henderson’s character.  Winstone attacks the role with all his trademark bluster, verging on self-parody at times, and even the usually reliable Amanda Donohoe follows his lead, and goes way over the top here.  Helen’s first appearance in the film is memorably greeted by Malling grabbing her throat and bellowing “FARKOFFFFFFF”.  Watching these two demented thespians screaming near unspeakable dialogue at each other isn’t without amusement (“What about Tank Malling? What about his career?? and what about his fucking balls???”) but even in the shorter version the verbal boxing matches and sexual tension between the two does drag on a bit.  Marsha Hunt (Dracula AD 1972) plays Malling’s girlfriend, who effectively serves as referee to the pair, reining them in by slapping Helen around the face and reminding Malling he is a “jerk off”.  Hunt and Winstone also contribute what has to be the least sexy sex scene of 1989.  There’s some choice footage of Soho in the opening scenes, but hardly enough to warrant the film’s aka titles ‘Beyond Soho’ and ‘Soho Connection’.

A secondary plot, in which Glen Murphy and ex-boxer John Conteh play Dunboyne’s enforcers, has the air of a vanity vehicle.  Each of Murphy and Conteh’s scenes seeking to emphasize what a tough, cool duo they are, but at least the film comes alive when they are around.  Whether it is a rooftop confrontation with a pimp, ogling a stripper played by Carolyn Cortez (whose breasts you might remember from ‘Edge of Sanity’), gay bashing Malling’s old queen publisher or slicing up the breasts of a Soho prostitute while ‘Stranger in Paradise’ plays on the soundtrack.  A scene that was cut by the BBFC for Tank Malling’s appearance on UK video, but reinstated for the 2010 DVD release.

Peter Wyngarde, in his final acting role, is relatively restrained for the majority of his screen time, holding all his energy back for one spectacular moment of barnstorming when Knights wigs out “these devils must not be allowed, I will refuse them, you cannot continue slapping the wrist of the wayward child, you must use the iron fist, and stamp out this canker...THIS CANKER!!! ”.  You’ll feel the ground beneath you shake when the mighty Wyngarde finally roars.  Unfortunately nearly all of the film’s characters, including Malling himself, are just so dumb and ineffectual that you care little when they fall victims to Dunboyne’s evil machinations.  Dunboyne might be a ruthlessly ambitious fascist, but you have to hand it to him, he is about the only character in the film who has two brain cells to rub together. 

Suggesting that showbiz favours were being called in here, the cast includes old hands like Wyngarde and Don Henderson, and also stretches to cameos from TV pretty boy Nick Berry and Page 3 girl Maria Whittaker.  Although the reduction of Tank Malling from 108 minutes to 91 minutes, means that Jess Conrad’s (still credited) role as ‘celebrity’ has hit the cutting room floor.

For a film that breezed through a couple of empty fleapits in the late 1980s, Tank Malling could lay claim to have anticipated a few cinematic trends.  Donohoe’s leggy, blonde, short haired femme fatale pre-dates Sharon Stone’s Basic Instinct look by a few years, and had this come out in the late 1990s, the scenes involving Murphy and Conteh’s hitmen would have invited criticism as a Pulp Fiction rip-off.  Most obviously, Tank Malling is the punch drunk uncle of the geezer gangster movies that would really come to prominence during the DVD era, paving the way for low-budget filmmakers to target a young, male, working class audience, with films that revel in shooters, hardman posturing, nostalgia casting of faces from the past, and visits to strip clubs.  On account of Marcus’ workmanlike direction (an ugly, overly dark DVD transfer doesn’t help) and perhaps because it was produced during the censorious, Ferman era of the BBFC, Tank Malling is a rather underwhelming genre prototype that is far less outrageous than what was to follow.  For a 21^st century audience, the most shocking aspect to Tank Malling will be that no one ever yells ‘caaaant’, no...not even the once.  I mean, punters would be demanding their money back on account of that these days.