Santas and good taste watch out as Clive, Nick and Me chat about Don't Open Till Christmas and it's behind the scenes documentary The Making of a Horror Film.
As an extra Christmas treat, here is a transcript of my prep notes for the video:
I first encountered Don't Open Till Christmas during my VHS collecting days. We had a local indoor market –long since
demolished and converted into an ASDA- called Pendlebury market which on the
Wednesday served as a flea market. It
was there you'd have stalls selling videos, second-hand books and generally
junk that people didn't want. Older pre-cert
tapes were still relatively cheap in the early 1990s, I paid just two pounds
for The Magic Curse on the Hokushin label back then and two pounds for Cain’s
Cut Throats on VTC. In those
pre-internet days you just tended to grab anything from the pre-cert era and
hope for the best. Of course, it wasn't
long before you learned the life lesson that not everything pre-cert was gold.
I remember picking up Frankenstein Island from Pendlebury Market for £1.75…complete
cinematic dog shit, but at least back then it didn't cost you too much to step
in it. Anyway there were these two old
guys who had a VHS stall at Pendlebury market on Wednesdays and for some reason
their nickname for me was ‘The Kung Fu Kid’.
So I must have been buying a few kung fu movies from them. Although I honestly can't remember having
done so, and whatever allegiance I had to martial arts movies went out of the
window when I picked up a VHS of Don't Open Till Christmas from them. If the Kung Fu Kid is the nickname they came
up for me for buying too many martial arts movies from them, I shudder to
imagine what nickname was bestowed upon me when I started buying movies like Don't
Open Till Christmas. I have to credit Don’t
Open Till Christmas with igniting this fascination I have for second rate
British cinema, along with a lot of the B-level crime film from the 1960s,
mostly made by an outfit called Butchers films, that were still showing up in graveyard
slots on TV at the time. Films which Don't
Open Till Christmas does accidentally resemble at times, especially those scenes
of Edmund Purdom and Mark Jones doing their sleuthing in a mock-up of a
Scotland Yard office, which come across as a throwback to the Butchers and Edgar
Lustgarten cheapies from two decades earlier.
I love how the UK video release of Don’t Open Till Christmas hard selled
the murder mystery angle “Scotland Yard is on the trail but every clue points
them in a different direction, the culprit is right under their nose” then on
the back cover had a still of Alan Lake murdering Belinda Mayne’s character. Thus revealing who the killer in the film is,
and that the main female character dies at the end. I did recently float the idea that this was
the biggest spoiler to ever appear on a UK video sleeve, but someone managed to
go one better by pointing out that there was a UK video release of Planet of
the Apes, that had the final image from that film on the front cover… which
does tend to give the game away a bit. Accidentally revealing who the killer
was on the back of the video cover does rather typify a production that seemed
to be ridden with disaster after disaster.
According to the credits of Don’t Open Till Christmas, this is a film
directed by Edmund Purdom, with ‘additional scenes written and directed by Al McGoohan’. However according to the late Ray Selfe, the
insider story was that the film was begun by Purdom, who made a hash of
directing it. Direction of the film was
then handed over to Derek Ford who either got sacked or walked away from the
film, and Ray Selfe ended up finishing directing it. More recently however Alan Birkinshaw, who like
Ford and Selfe had a background in British sex films, has fessed up to
directing parts of it, and having a hand in rewriting and recasting the film
when it ran into trouble. So the film
had four directors in all.
According to some, Edmund
Purdom only agreed to star in the film if he could also direct it. Now, I'm not sure if that is completely true,
since Purdom was fairly indiscriminant about the type of films he was appearing
during this period, and never seems to have a hankering to direct any of them. I suppose the chance to direct may have been
a carrot on a stick incentive for Purdom to leave Rome behind and come to freeze
his ass off in London. Purdom later
claimed he'd always felt he was ‘a born director’ a view not widely shared by
the rest of humanity. Despite the fact
that he was a Brit, Purdom had been away in Rome and before that Hollywood for
so long that his parts of Don't Open Till Christmas have this excitable tourist
mentality when it comes to filming all of the well known London landmarks. Purdom really, really loved to film that New Scotland
Yard sign. A mentality that you also tend
to get when overseas filmmakers shot horror movies and giallos in London. Where they were obviously determined to see
that the extra money it cost to film for a few days in London was all up there
on screen, and frog marched their casts around just about every London landmark
they could find.
On account of Don’t Open Till Christmas, Edmund Purdom did become a member of
that fairly exclusive club of actors whose one stab at film feature film
directing was a horror movie. Alongside
David Hess, John Saxon and Roddy McDowall, and you might also be able to
include Larry Hagman, Tony Lo Bianco and Darren McGavin…. although those three
did also direct TV show episodes as well.
Alan Birkinshaw later remembered “the problem with Edmund was that he
was a bit eccentric and he was also a bit of a sex maniac”. I'm not sure being a sex maniac was a
hindrance when it came to directing Don't Open Till Christmas but Purdom’s eccentricity
might have gotten the better of him. One
story about Purdom and Don’t Open Till Christmas involves him directing a scene
involving a guard dog. Where rather than
explaining to the dog’s handler what he wanted the dog to do, Purdom went
straight to the dog and tried to explain to the dog what it's motivation was
and what it needed to bring to the role, as if the dog could understand English.
In a later interview Purdom
claimed the only reason he had to stand down as the film's director was that Dick
Randall had been avoiding paying tax and everyone involved in this film was allegedly
being paid in cash only. This situation
was discovered by Derek Ford, who Purdom alleged, then used this information as
a way of blackmailing his way into the director's chair. While the idea of Randall not paying tax
sounds as if it could have basis in reality, as for Derek Ford’s blackmailing of
Randall, perhaps less so. If Ford did go
to the extreme lengths of blackmail his way into the director’s chair why then
did he walk away from directing the film after only a couple of days? Alternatively, how did Dick Randall manage to
fire Derek Ford if Ford had that kind of leverage over him. It also strikes me that if Ford was
blackmailing Randall, it would have led to a rift between the two of them. Whereas in reality Ford and Randall worked
together on at least two other occasions.
Anyway whatever the
reason, Derek Ford took over directing the movie and I think because of that,
coupled with the fact that he also wrote the film, is why there are a lot of Fordian
themes going on in this film. Ford had a
consistent downer on male photographer characters, as if Derek Ford… sex
filmmaker and swinger… had the right to look down on anyone. This goes back to Tony Booth’s character in Corruption,
the 1960s horror film Ford wrote with his brother. Other predatory, obnoxious male photographers
show up in Ford's film ‘Suburban Wives’, the Ford scripted ‘Scream and Die’ and
Don't Open Till Christmas gave Ford the opportunity to give this stock
character of his a 1980s makeover in the form of Cliff's porn photographer pal Gerry.
For a British sex film director, Ford was always one to call out male
chauvinism. There's a scene in Ford’s film
‘The Wife Swappers’ where a husband is trying to coax his wife into some girl
on girl action for his swinger pals.
Only for her to fume “animals, animals all of you… you've taken the act
of love and dirtied it” and ends up breaking up the party by ordering all the
swingers out of her home. A scenario Ford
sort of revisits here when Cliff sensitively suggests that his recently bereaved
girlfriend Kate can overcome the grief of her father's death by doing a girl on
girl porn photo shoot with a glamour model called Sharon. All of which results in Kate seeing red and
sending her into “animals, animals all of you” mode. This leads to Sharon being threatened by the
killer who runs a cut throat razor over her naked body. Which I suspect might be Derek Ford bring you
one of his kinks to the movies... there's a similar scene in Diversions (1975) when
a lady Nazi touches up Heather Deeley with a switchblade. Ford himself also shows up in Don’t Open Till
Christmas playing a Santa Claus at a circus, whose eyeball ends up falling out. A fairly rare in front of the camera
appearance by Ford, who by all accounts was the type of bloke who liked to
watch others rather than be the one who was being watched himself…if you know
what I mean.
Don't Open Till
Christmas does go against the grain for an early 1980s slasher film. One of the accusations frequent aimed at that
genre is that you can always work out from the get go that the loud jocks and
the female bimbos are going to get theirs and the nice girl who doesn't put out
is going to be the one who defeats the mad killer. Whereas Don't Open Till Christmas doesn't so
much rip up the rule book, rather it gives the impression that no one could be
bothered to read the rule book. In this
film you can be a topless model with the morals of an alley cat and live… you
can work in a Peep show and live… you can be a porn photographer and live… and
you can try and coerce your distraught girlfriend into doing porn and live… and
yet all the decent and nice characters in this film die horribly. Say what you will about Don’t Open Till
Christmas, but it is difficult to second guess who gets to live and who dies…unless
of course you've seen the back of the UK video sleeve which gives away the
death of a major character.
Another way in which Don't Open Till Christmas stands out from the slasher pack is that it's a very British film. Lots of London exteriors, lots of British accents… Pat Astley who is from Blackpool is even in the film, and how often do you get to hear the Sandgronian accent on film. I've never worked out why, when people from Liverpool call themselves Liverpudlians, when people from Manchester call themselves Mancunians… why people from Blackpool call themselves Sandgronians, which makes them sound like Doctor Who villains.
Pat, like a couple of cast members had a
background in British sex films, her real name is Patricia Maynard. This was her last credited acting role in a
movie, but Pat always had a second career going as an extra, doing un-credited
non-speaking roles on television. Most
famously she was the first of young Mr. Grace’s nurses in Are You Being Served…
and it's believed she continued working as a TV extra up until the early 1990s
when she stopped acting and went back to Blackpool to live amongst her fellow Sandgronians. She did resurface a few years ago as a
talking head in a documentary about Mary Millington… they got her for that on account
of a brainwave I had. No one knew how to
get in touch with her but it was believed that Pat was back in Blackpool and as
Sandgronia has its own local paper ‘The Blackpool Gazette’ I suggested to them that
they should write a letter to the Gazette, asking the public if anyone knew her
present whereabouts. What ended up
happening was that the Blackpool Gazette was so interested in this story that
rather than just publish a letter they wrote an entire article about her. One that politely emphasized Pat’s
involvement in Are You Being Served and didn't bring up the porn, for fear of
scaring her off or embarrassing her. Anyway
it did the trick and the only person who responded to the article was Pat herself. I must stress that I was only ever on the very,
very periphery of the Millington documentary and even that was a highly
unpleasant experience with warring factions of the production trying to drag me
into their conflicts and ‘creative differences’. If you think Don't Open Till Christmas was a troubled
production, you should hear the story about that movie.
One person who did I manage to talk to about Don’t Open Till Christmas was
Paula Meadows, who is mainly remembered for porn, but had a cameo in the movie
as a short-sighted secretary who ends up being killed and hung upside down
naked in the London dungeon. Paula told me
that was horribly uncomfortable to shoot and she immediately began to feel
dizzy and nauseous from being hung upside down by her feet. Derek Ford, who was a friend of hers, came to
her rescue and held her head up in between takes, but she couldn't wait to be
cut down and leave her stay at the London Dungeon behind her. Paula told me she has never seen the movie “because
I had no desire to see myself as a naked corpse with blood dripping from my
throat”.
At least Paula admits to
be an involved in the movie, which wasn't the case with a certain crew member
who shall remain nameless. I reached out
to this person many years ago with regards to a book project I was working on. I contacted him through the internet explaining
that I was involved with a book about British horror films from the 1980s and
would he be interested in sharing his experiences of working on Don’t Open Till
Christmas. This he seemed pleased to do,
immediately getting back to me and giving me his phone number… which seemed a
little odd given that he didn't know me from Adam. When I eventually called him the number turned
out to be his office phone number, so I went through the usual rigmarole of
listening to about 10 minutes of elevator music before his secretary answered.
I explained to her my reasons for calling, at which point she put me on hold
and left me to listen to yet another 10 minutes of elevator music before this
guy eventually picked up. I politely stated that I was phoning him with regards
to writing a book about 1980s British Horror films and how he’d given me his number
to discuss Don’t Open Till Christmas. This
was then followed by a few moments of silence, before he said “I can’t hear you…
speak louder”. So repeating myself, I
explained I was working on a book about British Horror Films from the 1980s, how
he’d given me his phone number in order to speak about Don’t Open Till Christmas…
at which point he cut me dead by saying “I didn't do Don't Open Till Christmas”. Which immediately killed the conversation
dead, since he went into denial mode about working on the very film he’d given
me his phone number to talk about. Clearly
forgetting that his name was still on the end credits of the film and that he'd
even been filmed working on it in the behind-the-scenes documentary that exists
on Don’t Open Till Christmas. Feeling
myself on the verge of laughing at this guy down the phone, but not wanting to
be rude, I quickly wound up the conversation by claiming “I must have got the
wrong number, sorry”. Jim Morrison was right… people are strange.
Having recently re-visited
the film for the first time in many years I was struck by how silly and funny Don’t
Open Till Christmas actually is, which I suspect comes from Dick Randall and
perhaps Alan Birkinshaw. I can never
think of Alan Birkinshaw without remembering a nickname someone wickedly came
up with for him a few years ago… Alan Clumsyhands. I think it was the horror journalist Alan Jones
who first dubbed him that. Jones wrote a piece about Killer's Moon, where he
made the case for Birkinshaw being the British Ed Wood. The punch line being that if Tim Burton ever
made a biopic of Alan Birkinshaw it would be called Alan Clumsyhands…as a play
on Edward Scissorhands. I don't know if Birkinshaw
really does deserve the British Ed Wood tag, his later work for Harry Alan Towers,
done when he had a bit more experience and a bit more money behind him, is quite
competent and professional. Even so
certain nicknames do stick, and rightly or wrongly, Birkinshaw will always be
Alan Clumsyhands to me. Years ago Dick Randall's widow offered to
give me Birkinshaw’s home phone number… no idea why, I didn't ask for it or
even bring him up in conversation. However
after my phone call with the other Don’t Open Till Christmas guy ended so badly,
I declined the offer to go a potential second round with another Don’t Open
Till Christmas crew member. I live in
fear that if I ever met or talked to Birkinshaw, I'd put my foot in it and accidentally
call him Alan Clumsyhands.
The film which Birkinshaw's
cult reputation rests on, 1978’s Killer’s Moon has a similar trait to Don’t Open Till Christmas of containing dialogue that sounds tongue-in cheek yet is
delivered onscreen in such a straight face fashion that I think it disorientates
people and leaves them confused as to whether what they are watching is meant
to be intentionally or unintentionally funny. This is especially true of the
scenes between Alan Lake and the Peep show girl where she promises not to try
and escape from him… whilst crossing her fingers in full view!! Then when she later does try and escape, finds
the door is locked and asks him to give her the key so she can get away from
him. Her behavior in the film makes as
much sense as what is written on her T-shirt “Ti-Ti Decontracte
Diffusion No Parking”. The
mystery of what that means has eluded people over the decades… is it product
placement? is it an anagram? a coded message for Russian spies? No one seems to
know. The way it is presented, black letters
on a white background and with each line of text getting smaller, makes her look
like a walking eye test. Maybe that is
the mystery of the t-shirt, maybe it is an eye test for masturbators to
reassure them that their visits to Soho peep booths won’t result in them
needing glasses.
I do find it hard to
dislike Dick Randall, while I'm sure that money, slobbering over actresses and
dodging tax were part of his motivation, Randall was a genuine showman who liked
to give the people what they wanted. Which
in this case was gore, boobs, Caroline Munro singing and a visit to the London Dungeon. Paula Meadows described Randall as “a good
natured man with infectious smile who just wanted to get on and make a movie in
the simplest, cheapest way and rake in the most money possible”. In the case of Don’t Open Till Christmas
though, Randall’s timing was spectacularly bad.
The height of the video nasty controversy was not a great time to
release a sleazy, gory British slasher film.
You can tell in the behind the scenes documentary that Dick Randall was growing
concerned that certain scenes would give him trouble with the censor and that
in Britain a film like this is regarded as a ‘nasty’. The production did have a bit of insider
information about that area, since one of the financers of the film was Des
Dolan who had been the general manager of Go video, which got into trouble for
releasing Cannibal Holocaust and SS Experiment Camp on UK video. So Don't Open Till Christmas can lay claim to
having been partly financed on the back of video nasties. Should you ever want to put a face to the person
who released Cannibal Holocaust on UK video, Des also has an acting role as a
policeman in Don’t Open Till Christmas. Conveniently
Mark Jones keeps referring to Dolan by his first name every time Dolan is
onscreen “search the place, Des” which was apparently an in joke.
I suspect Dick Randall's
name did end up on British censor James Ferman’s shitlist, maybe not up there
as high as Michael Winner and Jess Franco but definitely a few names down. Since everything Dick put out during this
period… Don't Open Till Christmas, Slaughter High and Living Doll went out cut
back then. If you think about it Dick
Randall was the only person during this period who was consistently making
horror movies in Britain. All the big horror
companies like Hammer and Amicus had faded away by this point and we were
entering a time when horror itself had become a dirty word. Leading to the emergence of these unbearable
la-di-da filmmakers claiming “we haven't made a horror film, darling… it’s a
dark romance… a gothic fantasy…a psychological thriller… but don't go calling
it a horror film, darling”. Don't Open Till
Christmas was the square peg in the round hole of such dishonesty and pretentiousness. I think it would be pushing it to call Dick
Randall the Eighties equivalent of Hammer or Amicus but he was definitely the
1980s version of Tony Tenser. He kept a
lot of older exploitation film hacks in employment, gave breaks to younger
talent and brought a lot of entertainment to the video shelves in what was a
depressing decade for many. For all the
mockery I give Don't Open Till Christmas, it is gentle mockery. I do have a lot of time for this shambles…
some would say too much time. Don’t Open
Till Christmas may be a shambles, but it's our shambles. Long live disreputable, ultraviolet horror
and the bottomless treasure trove of B-movie goodness that Dick Randall left
behind.
