The Contract (1974)

‘Is there such a thing as a British blaxploitation film?’ was a question I found myself pondering over last weekend. British horror cinema occasionally touched on race relations, albeit very infrequently and with black characters as secondary figures – in films like Curse of the Voodoo (1965) and Naked Evil (1966)- while actor turned one shot director Frankie Dymon, Jr made ‘Death may be your Santa Claus’ (1969) which tapped into integration and castration anxieties in late 60s London.

The two films that come closest to qualifying as British blaxploitation in my book though are The Contract (1974) and The Beast Must Die (1974). A staple of late night television and rarely out of circulation since its release, Amicus’ The Beast Must Die (1974) is well known enough to not require much of an introduction here. Released in some territories as ‘Black Werewolf’. Couple that with the fact that it features an imported blaxploitation star in Marlene Clark, a funky Douglas Gamley score, plus a black hero whose dress sense suggests he shops at the same places as John Shaft, and there is a convincing case to be made that Amicus were chasing the blaxploitation dollar with that one. This being the period where established British horror studios were looking outside of the box for a big hit, what with Hammer diversifying into sitcom spin-offs and muscling in on the Kung-Fu market with The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, whereas Amicus seemed to have looked to blaxploitation as their salvation here.

 

While The Beast Must Die gives the impression of a self-conscious attempt to ride on the blaxploitation bandwagon, The Contract seems to have accidentally stumbled upon the genre’s key themes of racial tension, drug dealing and inner-city crime. The Contract deals with rival black and white gangs of drug dealers in Hounslow, who attempt to decide who controls the territory by sending one of their number to an intense one to one meeting at a deserted warehouse. Its little more than a two hander between Deborah O’Brian (Kubi Chaza) the short haired black chick chosen to represent the African drug gang, who clashes with Jake (Ken Farrington) the white supremacist head of the rival gang of British bikers.

The Contract is dominated by a terrifying, convincingly crazed turn from Farrington (perhaps best known for his longtime stints in British soaps like Coronation Street and Emmerdale) as the blatantly unbalanced Jake, who snorts coke, hurls racial and sexual insults, and takes things up to Frank Booth levels of madness, what with his fondness for settling arguments with Russian roulette games. The Contract is also notable for featuring music by the German band Faust “recorded by Virgin Records LTD” whose Krautrock soundtrack helps convey Jake’s drug fried state of mind. Clad in leather that fails to conceal his hairy chest, sporting equally extravagant facial hair, and with his eyes concealed by motorcycle goggles, Jake leaps around the filthy, abandoned warehouse setting like a demented harlequin, verbally beating his opponent down with his mixture of bigotry and nihilism. “O’Brian! what kind of name is that for a spade”, “women don’t mean anything to me, all they’ve got that I want is between two legs”, “its polite to know the name of the person who is going to blow their brains out…just for the hell of it”. Jake’s hate filled dialogue becomes more and more distorted by the echoey warehouse setting and the occasional overhead airplane as the film progresses. A seemingly deliberate move by director Paul Bernard, adding to the atmosphere of a bad drug freak-out captured on film.



Running only 33 minutes, The Contract was obviously intended as a support feature, and in all likelihood was released in Britain as the co-feature to The Grasshopper (1970) the Jacqueline Bisset/Jim Brown vehicle that has similar racial themes (both The Grasshopper and The Contract were among the scant releases of obscure British distributor ‘Group 6’). Although submitted to the BBFC in 1974, the film is actually copyrighted and set in 1975 (pointed out in the dialogue) suggesting a degree of post-dating by the filmmakers.

Despite its brief running time The Contract managed to make it into the video era- Iver Film Services released it on tape in 1981- before disappearing off the face of the earth. Supposedly a copy was sent to the BFI several years ago for possible inclusion on one of their ‘Flipside’ releases, but nothing came of it. Existing in a never, neverland…somewhere between blaxploitation, a trashy 1970s paperback and angry, political theatre, The Contract is a grey, industrial frightmare of a movie.