Naked as Nature Intended (1961)

 

Is Naked as Nature Intended really about lesbians? British censor John Trevelyan seemed to think so.  Justifying removing a whole scene -involving Pam (Pamela Green) emerging from the shower, grabbing a towel and chatting with scantily clad roommate Petrina (Petrina Forsyth)- by claiming “there could be a connotation that they’re lesbians”.  Upon watching the offending scene, your initial reaction is to dismiss Trevelyan as a doddery old fool, who was reading way too much into an innocuous scene in what is now a rather innocuous movie.  What if Trevelyan had a point though? his lesbian theory isn’t entirely without basis as it first sounds.  None of the female characters in the film, who holiday in Cornwall and end up becoming members of a nudist camp, appear to have boyfriends.  In fact on their journey from clothed civilians to fully fledged nudists they rarely display any interest in the opposite sex at all.  On the other hand they show no qualms about undressing in front of each other (both in and out of a nudist camp context).  The aforementioned Pam and Petrina live together and go on holiday together.  While another couple, played by Bridget Leonard and Angela Jones, also go on holiday together and work together, as petrol pump attendants.  Oh, and Pam and Petrina’s friend Jackie “loves to play tennis”...is your gaydar going off yet?

I don’t want to get too tabloidish, possibly spread bad information and start outing people, but there have always been rumours that at least one NANI cast member was gay in real life.  Irregardless of whether that was true or not, if rumours like that were floating about in the Sixties, and reached John Trevelyan’s ears, it may explain why Trevelyan was extra vigilant about routing out, and censoring, any lesbian leanings to the film.

Is NANI a closeted lesbian road movie?  Even if you don’t buy into the idea of a gay subtext, the fact that this is a British road movie, centred around female characters, and was made in the early 1960s, is in itself quite remarkable and something that Harrison Marks and Pamela Green rarely get credit for.  The number of films that match the criteria of being a female led, British road movie has to be pretty low, even these days.  For the female characters in NANI, the trip to Cornwall and Devon represents an escape from the shackles of an early 1960s, patriarchal society.  For Jackie it is a chance to be free of the watchful eyes of her parents.  For Petrina its time away from taking dictation for her dullard boss, and being eyed up by a creepy male co-worker.  For Pam, who works as an exotic dancer, it is a break from having to turn guys on for a living.  After they hit the road in an American Buick (in real life owned by director Marks) a succession of killjoy, authority figures (all played by Marks’ pal Stuart Samuels) prove an ineffectual opponent for girls who just wanna have fun, and play badminton in the nude. 

NANI playing at the Cameo Moulin Cinema

Of all of Harrison Marks films, NANI is –let’s face it- a bit of a chore to get through.  Like very early Russ Meyer, you can see flashes of the director’s personality that would come to dominate their later work, at this point though it’s mostly buried by a need to confirm to the uptight mores of the period.  What with Cornwall travelogue rather than nudity taking precedent for the first 40 minutes, two thirds of NANI is the cinematic equivalent of someone boring you with their old holiday photos.  While Marks’ corny one liners and tired slapstick routines make it easy to see why he would never achieve fame on the basis of his comedic chops alone.

Up until a few years ago the general consensus was that the material cut from the film by John Trevelyan in 1961 was gone for good, and that the ‘shower’ scene only survived in still form.  Personally, I wasn’t so sure, especially when screengrabs of the shower scene, clearly taken from a VHS source, began to surface on the internet.  A then associate, who was involved in a DVD release of NANI, was having none of it, insisting that no other version of the film existed outside of the British theatrical cut.  The fact that the DVD release in question ended up using a particularly washed out looking print of NANI –which aside from the nudity only really has picturesque views of Cornwall going for it- rendered that particular DVD release an even more pointless exercise.  A longer, alternative version of NANI eventually resurfaced in the States, thanks to Seattle’s Something Weird Video who committed the American release version to VHS.  Released Stateside in 1963, by Crown International, the American version drops the N word from the title, simply calling it ‘As Nature Intended’.  Naked might be absent from the title, but there is considerable more nudity here than was ever seen in Britain, including the shower scene with all its lesbian connotations intact.  NANI actually seems to have been an early example of a British sexploitation film also having an ‘export version’, with stronger takes appearing in the version seen overseas.  In the UK, Petrina’s dull secretarial work might have entirely been depicted in long shot, but US audiences were treated to an additional close up of her thighs as she takes dictation.  In the UK version, Bridget and Angela begin to strip off in a field at which point the camera pans to the ground, not so the US version which lingers a little longer on the sight of a topless Bridget.  For the payoff in the scene where Jackie falls overboard and has to be fished out of the sea, the UK version concludes with Pam and Petrina drying her off while Jackie still has her clothes on.  In the US version however, Jackie is topless and Pam and Petrina dry her off by rubbing her breasts (more of those lesbian connotations).  The US version also includes additional nudity from Petrina on the beach, and an extended version of Pam’s nude ride on a swing.  The new American narration tagged on to this version does strike a bit of a sour note though.  The original British narration might be guilty of being boring, but it doesn’t have the chauvinistic chip on its shoulder that flares up in the American narration.  Any lesbian connotations to the shower scene appear to have gone over the head of the (uncredited) American narrator who instead uses it to wisecrack “they decided it might be best to look at some maps...as if they could read them”.  I suppose a ‘director’s cut’ of the film would port over the additional footage from the US cut, but stick with the original British narration, not that I’m holding my breath for such a version to appear.

The nudist camp film is a genre that the British public have fallen in and out of love with over the decades.  Considered a hot ticket in the early 1960s, when there was no other way of seeing nudity on the big screen, but rendered obsolete by softcore movies at the decade’s end.  Thereafter the genre became a long standing source of parody- everyone from the Carry On team to Benny Hill took their shots- before achieving a degree of kitsch, campy affection by the 1990s,where they were viewed as harmless relics of more innocent times.  It is a genre that has fallen into obscurity, if not disrepute in recent years, mainly due to the use of children in these films.  Now, not for a moment do I believe that red blooded filmmakers like Harrison Marks, Stanley Long or Arnold Louis Miller were here for anything other than the boobs and buttocks of adult women, and regarded filming anyone else in the nude as a chore.  However, in order to stress that the nudist camps (and by association the films that documented them) were entirely wholesome, family friendly places, they tend to have naked people of all ages wandering about the periphery.  Heaven forbid anyone got the impression that films like NANI solely existed to ogle the bodies of well known glamour models like Pamela Green and Bridget Leonard.  What was once intended to give these films a layer of respectability is now ironically their most problematic aspect.  In 2003, a UK DVD release of Doris Wishman’s American nudist film Nude on the Moon (1961) was censored by the BBFC due to the use of children in its cast.  While Strike Force Entertainment backed out of releasing Arnold Louis Miller’s Nudes of the World (1961) presumably for fear of controversy and BBFC problems (the Miller film was eventually released by a rival DVD label without incurring BBFC cuts or controversy).

the aborted DVD release of Nudes of the World

One form of praise that tends to be bestowed on NANI these days is that it is now a time capsule of a long ago Cornwall.  While you’d logically expect a sixty year old movie to serve that purpose, I’m not sure that NANI really is the window into a bygone Britain that people tend to eulogize it as.  Cornwall has always been deeply into preserving its past, and its refusal to adapt to the modern world remains a big draw for tourists, or ‘emmets’ to use locals’ derogatory term for outsiders.  I’ve holidayed in Cornwall and Devon a number of times over the years, and have ventured into a few of the NANI shooting locations.  Not intentionally I should add, I wasn’t on a pilgrimage or anything.  I’ve been to Clovelly, Land’s End, Tintagel, and the Minack theatre.  Any thoughts of doing ‘then and now’ photos, comparing how they looked in NANI’s days to how they look now, quickly went out of the window.  Simply because none of these places have in all honestly changed that much in the past sixty years.

What you do gain from visiting NANI locations is a newfound respect for the film crew.  More than a few of those locations are an exhaustive trek to get to when you are travelling light, let alone when you had some no doubt bulky, 1960s filmmaking equipment in tow.  It must have been a Fitzcarraldo type achievement to get that equipment up to the top of Tintagel, in order to film Bridget and Angela exploring Tintagel castle.  Don’t even get me started on Clovelly and it’s inaccessible to cars “half mile hill that constitutes the main street”.  Thanks to the magic of the movies, NANI makes it look like a quick hop, skip and a jump down that hill to the harbour, and in no way prepares you for the torture session that cobbled, half mile street will inflict on your feet and ankles.  As for the girls’ mode of transport, only a true emmet like Harrison Marks would have chosen a big, American car like a Buick to drive around Cornwall in.  I shudder to imagine the headaches Marks and Co must have encountered by navigating it around Cornwall’s notoriously narrow back roads...roads never designed with cars in mind, especially not Buicks.  For the public, nudist films might have been fun to watch in the early 1960s, but in this case walking a few miles in the filmmaker’s shoes soon dispels any notion that they were as much fun to make.  Sexploitation filmmakers rush in, where your average emmet feared to tread.     

         

 

Vampire (1964)

By the mid-1960s George Harrison Marks could stake a claim to being the most famous glamour photographer in Britain. A reputation enhanced by Marks diversifying into directing feature films like Naked as Nature Intended. As well as numerous 8mm glamour films, designed to feature his models taking their clothes off and aimed at the home viewing market.

Regularly billing himself –with trademark immodesty - as ‘The King of the Camera’ and the ‘World Famous Photographer’ Marks was certainly one of the more cineliterate of the characters shooting 8mm glamour films back then, and could boast to owning a bookshelf that creaked under the weight of tomes about the talkies, Charlie Chaplin and Horror cinema. Influences which were visibly filtering down into his own short films. Marks dabbled in horror film themes for a number of his 8mm glamour productions. In ‘The Mummy’ (1966) the eponymous creature plays peeping tom to a number of topless serving girls before attempting to make off with one of them (Teri Martine). ‘Flesh and Fantasie’ (1963) , now more commonly known as 'Nightmare at Elm Manor', sees June Palmer staying the night at a creepy Manor, where she suffers nightmares about being pursued by a cape wearing bald man, and of course loses her clothes in the process. Whilst in ‘Perchance to Scream’ (1967) Jane Paul is transported back to the Middle Ages where an evil monk orders topless women to be flogged and beheaded.

Having let his friend Stuart Samuels play the villains in the latter two films, Marks himself steps into the lead role for 1964’s ‘Vampire’, casting himself opposite topless model Wendy Luton. Like a zillion other 8mm glamour films, Vampire opens with a woman, Carmilla (Luton) undressing, and striking nude poses in her bedroom, before retiring to bed. However all is not well in the land of nakedness, as elsewhere Count Dracula III (Marks) rises from his grave in search of fresh blood. Taking the rather unusual approach of hypnotising his victims with a pendant, Dracula III lures Carmilla back to his crypt where she is soon sporting bite marks on her neck and her very own set of fangs (she has also managed to acquire a pair of panties in the meantime as well). Fortunately for ​Carmilla, she is spared further unpleasantness as dawn breaks, forcing Dracula III back into his coffin.  In a twist on traditional vampire lore, rather than the sunlight reducing her to ashes it instead restores Carmilla back to her pre-vampirised state. Thus allowing her time to wander around the vampire’s lair...pose nude...discover a second vampire asleep in a coffin...faint...pose nude some more...before finally exacting revenge on Count Dracula III.

In light of the comedy name Marks gave to his vampire character it comes as a welcome surprise to discover that Vampire avoids spoofery and is entirely played straight. Hidden under ghoul make-up and with his hair and trademark goatee tinted grey, the Harrison Marks on display here is far removed from the goofy roles he usual gave himself in his own films, or indeed the gregarious ladies’ man, alcoholic, cat lover and pornographer that Marks was in real life.

Special mention should also be given to the eccentric but highly talented Tony Roberts. Marks’ studio manager who built the incredible sets for the glamour films, that over the years would see Marks’ studio transformed into a Chinese garden, an Egyptian pyramid, a French bistro and even an alien spaceship. Roberts lived in a tenement building near to Marks’ Gerrard Street studio, along with the entire Roberts clan which included a brother noted for his love of practical jokes- such as causing explosions and spiking people’s drinks- and a sister who had worked as a Bluebell girl in Paris. Roberts quickly became part of Marks’ inner circle, and together the two men often behaved like a comedy double act. “He was a really nice guy” remembers Teri Martine “kind of on the quiet side, but loved what he did”. Roberts’ sets here really are the business. Decorated in cobwebs and dry ice, his crypt and dungeon creations wouldn't shame a Hammer or Mario Bava film from the period. Its telling that once Roberts’ sets began to disappear from Marks’ 8mm films in the mid-1970s so too did Marks’ interest and enthusiasm for making them.

For an 8mm glamour film, Marks main concerns here seem to have been evoking a horror film atmosphere and savouring his fleeting, ten minutes of glory as a horror film star. Of course that isn't to say Vampire goes completely against type for a Marks production. A huge close-up of Wendy Luton’s breasts, worked into the scene where she explores the vampire’s lair, serves to remind you that –unlike Count Dracula III- it wasn’t Wendy’s neck that Marks’ audience were hoping to get an eyeful of.

Evidently Marks must have enjoyed transforming himself from The King of the Camera to The King of the Undead, as he donned the cape and fangs again a year later for a vignette in his feature film ‘The Naked World of Harrison Marks’(1965). One that saw him being imagined as a Dracula type figure. Not that exciting moments such as that could keep Marks awake during a preview screening of that film “we were no sooner in our seats then George fell asleep” recalls Teri Martine “and was snoring so loud I had to wake him up”.

Viewed collectively Marks’ horror themed 8mm glamour films do put forward a credible case that Marks may well have had a couple of decent horror feature films in him, should the opportunity to fully work in the genre have ever arose. Sadly by the end of the 1960s Marks had become firmly typecast in the minds of the British public as a man who photographed and filmed boobs for a living. “I had a screenplay I wrote, a heavily dramatic feature” he later remembered “but no one would take Harrison Marks seriously with a dramatic feature. They’d say ‘go and do one like the last one with lots of girls and laughs’. I thought fuck it that’s what they want, that’s what they get.” Fate it seemed had decided that it was bare breasts rather than bared fangs that George Harrison Marks was destined to be remembered for.

A slightly different version of this review originally appeared in Bedabbled #4 in 2014. Vampire can be seen online for free at the BFI Player 

The Return of Alan Strange (2016)

 

Michael J Murphy's last film- he unexpectedly died not long after completing it- appropriately enough deals with a man reflecting on and finally coming to terms with his career. The Return of Alan Strange also displays a hitherto unknown fondness for 1960s Cult TV, and may well be Murphy's most overtly gay themed movie.

Gone to seed actor Peter Hennesey (Patrick Olliver) was once famous for playing the lead character, a time travelling psychic detective, in the 1960s TV series 'Alan Strange'. That is until Peter Wyngarde-esque revelations about his sexuality all but destroyed his career. Having long since abandoned any pretense of heterosexuality, Hennesey is now an outrageous, extremely politically incorrect gay man, whose glory days are long behind him. As the 1990s dawn, Hennesey is invited to a New Year's Eve party. Only for old wounds to reopen when he is forced to rub shoulders with his ex-wife and former co-star Gaye Delaney (Judith Holding) who has similarly grown old disgracefully, via breast implants and a tell all book about their sham marriage, entitled 'Who's Gaye'. Hennesey also crosses swords with fellow actor Alexander Beck (Phil Lyndon) who took over the Alan Strange role, and whom Hennesey blames for outing him to the press. The New Year's bash isn't without its perks though, with Hennesey getting the chance to flirt with Daniel Bradford (Daniel Bailey) the young aspiring actor who hopes to inherit the Strange role in a big budget reboot. The Return of Alan Strange adds up to a tremendous bitch fest between Murphy regulars, Olliver, Holding and Lyndon, all three clearly having a ball here. The trio are revelations in comedic, uninhibited turns that cut loose from the seriousness of their usual roles in Murphy's movies. By rights Hennesey and his fellow has beens should all register as showbiz grotesqueries, yet for all their sharp edges these are characters with unexpected warmth and humanity to them.

Murphy's own affection for Olliver, Holding and Lyndon is evident in spades, as is their longtime association with him. Clips we see of them in 'Alan Strange' episodes actually being culled from their years before appearances in Murphy films like Death Run, Moonchild and Atlantis. A meta aspect to the film, that allows Murphy's actors, as well as the director himself, the chance to look back at their shared past with a mixture of nostalgia and the occasional cringe at the low budget shortcomings of their youthful endeavors. It is an unusual touch for Murphy, by all accounts the type of filmmaker who regarded his best film as the next one, and rarely shared his fanbase's enthusiasm for revisiting his past works. In any of Murphy's other films, the venom between Hennesey and his fellow Alan Strange veterans would have boiled over into murder, bloodshed and revenge. Despite an amount of teasing that it is about to go down the horror movie route though, The Return of Alan Strange breaks rank by emerging as a moving little drama about reconciling with estranged friends and putting your house in order before saying goodbye. A coda made even more poignant given Murphy's own death soon after. It's not the ideal place to start when it comes to Murphy's career, but it is a fitting end.

Conjuring: The Book of the Dead (2020)

 

When it comes to Richard Driscoll films, I was ten years clean until I foolishly caved into curiosity after his latest film popped up free and legally on YouTube. Was the relapse worth it? Oh hell no...if anything Tricky Dicky has gotten a whole lot worse now that he has been reduced to working on micro-budgets. Simultaneously passionless and narcissistic in a way that only a Driscoll film can be, Conjuring: The Book of the Dead is the sort of sequel to Evil Calls: The Raven (2008) which caused me to swear off watching his movies a decade ago.

Under his acting name Steven Craine, Driscoll once again steps into the role of horror novelist George Carney. Still haunted by memories of Robin Askwith shagging his wife, Carney has become hooked on vicodin and gets farmed out to authenticate a rare, occult book by his publisher Martha (Lysette Anthony). She also slips him a parchment, which allows Driscoll to pass this off as an adaptation of M.R. James' 'Casting the Runes' in the opening credits. Thereafter it's a slow shuffle around the showbiz graveyard as Carney converses with characters played by Oliver Tobias, Bai Ling, Sylvester McCoy, Michael Madsen, Tom Sizemore, as well as flashback appearances by Robin Askwith and Dudley 'don't ask me to pronounce necronomicon' Sutton. People tend to rag on British sex comedies of the 1970s, weeping over how lack of work forced 'some of our favourite actors' into appearing in them. Oh please!! Of course in those cases, by 'some of our favourite actors' they tend to be referring to people who's day jobs involved appearing in sitcoms, summer shows or stage farces, so were hardly taking much of a step down there. Behind the scenes stories, not to mention publicity photos, hardly supports the idea that those acting greats were having a wretched time by appearing in close proximity to naked young ladies either. No, if you truly want to know career degradation, check out the elderly actors and once promising, once successful people who here get plunged into the green screened, bottomless hell that is a Richard Driscoll film. Everyone looks miserable and painfully aware that they are blotting their own acting legacies by appearing here, even Driscoll himself can't help but look thoroughly bored throughout.

For all the attempts to fill the screen with fan convention names here, Conjuring: The Book of the Dead still registers as 'The Richard Driscoll Show' -watch chronically uninteresting scenes of Driscoll thrashing about in bed whilst having an erotic dream about Bai Ling or hunched over a laptop trying to knock out a best seller. Since the budget barely stretches to anything resembling 'action' Driscoll falls back on long ago footage from Evil Calls: The Raven- recycled here as a 'visualisation' of a graphic novel that Carney is working on. A decision that also allows Driscoll to work Jason Donovan and Eileen Daly, into the credited cast here.

Barely anything happens in Conjuring: The Book of the Dead, and when it does it barely makes any sense. Only once does Driscoll's shysterism become amusing- Carney chats with an occult tour guide played by Tom Sizemore who is about to conduct a tour whilst dressed as a headless ghost and therefore can't possibly take his costume off. Which is awfully convenient, since while it is Sizemore's voice you hear, you can sure bet it isn't Sizemore under that costume. The scene in question is also meant to be taking place at Al Crowley's old haunt The Absinthe House in New Orleans, but anyone who has ever visited Driscoll's native Cornwall -or has seen Legend of the Witches- will likely recognise the location as The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle...which is a long way from New Orleans.

Female characters in the film range from mean bitches who like it rough (Lysette Anthony's publisher) to crazy bitches who like it rough (Bai Ling's occult expert). Was this all just an excuse for Driscoll to have rough sex onscreen with Lysette Anthony and Bai Ling (not at the same time, in case you were wondering) or get some dirty talk from Lysette? "Do you want to put it in my mouth or my cunt" she asks him...can't you just feel the M.R. James influence shining through in dialogue like that.

To add insult to injury, Driscoll sold the YouTube rights to the dreaded 'Watch Movies Now' channel. Best avoided like the plague due to their policy of cutting sex and violence out of movies, presumably in order to make their uploads family friendly and bombard you with the maximum amount of ads. The censorship here manifests itself in 'fogging' out the screen nudity, which results in one (presumably nude) actress being rendered a ghostly, grey mass in-between Driscoll and Bai Ling. An image that inadvertently manages to be more unsettling than any of the dross Driscoll could dream up. If you're a Richard Driscoll fan, there's no hope for you.

 

Bats (2021)

Scott Jeffrey and Rebecca J Matthews make so many movies that it’s hard to keep up with watching all of them, let alone writing them up.  Plots, titles, as well as their fast turnout ethic are in the spirit of 1980s pulp horror novels, with movies like Rats Reborn, Cannibal Troll and Crocodile Vengeance all sounding like adaptations of the type of well thumbed horror paperbacks that you tend to find in second hand bookshops.  Despite that it has taken them until Bats to actually make a movie set in the 1980s.  Mercifully the period setting doesn’t appear to have gone to their heads.  Let’s face it, the world doesn’t need any more 1980s horror pastiches made by people who were probably doing the backstroke in their father’s balls during that decade.  So, it is pleasantly surprising that Bats doesn’t press down as hard as you’d expect on the 1980s nostalgia bandwagon.  The main evidence of Jeffrey and Matthews getting their 1980s groove on here being a mix-tape worthy soundtrack, a few fashion and make-up choices, a plot infused with a touch of Chernobyl era anxiety, and the luxury of a full set of opening credits- remember those? 

It’s the land before texting phones and laptops...aka The Eighties...and the King family return home to their village after years in exile.  A result of the place being declared uninhabitable, after some unspecified nuclear disaster.  Surely there won’t be any problem in returning to a village that was the subject of a nuclear disaster only a few years before, and who wouldn’t be lured back to a place with the oh-so welcoming name ‘Nosferatu Village’.  The bereavement theme running through recent Jeffrey productions like The Rise of the Mummy and Evil Genie extends to Bats as well.  The pre-horror ‘drama bits’ in the film evolving around J&M’s reigning queen of glum facial expressions Megan Purvis, whose character Jamie King is struggling with the sudden death of her boyfriend.  The move back to Nosferatu village also unlocks bad memories for her grandmother Georgie King (Kate Sandison) who is haunted by memories of the people who bought it when things went all Threads in Nosferatu Village.  There is lots of weeping in Bats, which might have been more aptly entitled ‘Night of the Blubbering’.  The cast of this film really could cry you a river.  Megan Purvis scales Harvey Keitel levels of screen wailing, while the actress playing her younger sister seems to be channelling an enraged monkey in a cage when it comes time for her to turn on the waterworks.  Bats also sports Nu-Brit Horror’s regular eccentricities when it comes to put-on American accents and age-blind casting.  Poor Kate Sandison doesn’t look old enough to play the mother of the leather jacket wearing dude, who likewise seems too young to be the father of two grown up girls.  Fortunately the scenes that allow the cast to flex their muscles on the bereavement storyline don’t overstay their welcome, and Bats quickly kicks into horror mode with the appearance of a part bat, part man creature.  A left over from the nuclear disaster, which has somehow remained undetected in the King’s attic all these years. 

The monster costume is hands down the best J&M have had in a long time, imagine the creature in The Blood Beast Terror but actually done right, and Bats benefits from a meaner, darker tone than we’ve come to expect from J&M of late.  This film has no qualms about killing off sympathetic characters without mercy, and while some of J&M’s recent films may have been fairly bloodless, here the pair splash out on some Kensington gore for the bat creature’s vampire like attacks on the King family members.  Purvis’ character is also the recipient of an Evil Dead-esque ‘baptism of blood’, the catalyst for her character going from an emotional wreck to blood splattered hero of the piece, who isn’t above losing a few body parts in order to stay alive.  The gore highlight here though comes when Batty McBatface lets out an almighty shriek, which causes one character’s head to burst open.  A pleasantly, unpleasant 1980s style practical effect. 

I will admit to also deriving amusement from the fact that characters here use a baseball bat to defend themselves from an actual bat –very appropriate- or failing that turn to the well known lethal instrument that is a rolling pin (shades of Carnivore: Werewolf of London going on there).  For a film that is played dead serious there are some ridiculous plot details on display here, I guarantee you’ll laugh your ass off at the revelation that someone has thoughtfully left a Samurai sword behind at a deserted church for the heroine to arm herself with....cheers for that vicar.  I have heard a rumour that the film’s shooting title was ‘Nosferatu Village’ (still used as a location name).  Making you wonder if J&M weren’t hoping to capitalise on news of a Nosferatu remake that was floating around a year or so ago...seemingly an influence on the bald headed, pointy eared, fang toothed look of Batty McBatface.  It feels like they were expecting Nosferatu to be a big thing in 2021.  Of course the Nosferatu remake has failed to come to fruition (the IMDB actually lists two remakes of Nosferatu as currently ‘in production’) presumably explaining why this film ended up forgoing that title in favour of ‘Bats: The Awakening’ and now plain old ‘Bats’.  J&M being able to knock out films so fast that, they now appear to be making imitations of movies that have yet to see the light of day.  Overall, I’d say that Bats is J&M’s most entertaining, successfully realized creature feature since ‘Don’t Speak’.  Oh, and Nosferatu Village....C’mon someone has to use that as a movie title one day.

Censor (2021)

I had the misfortune of watching Censor and Erik Bloomquist’s Ten Minutes to Midnight (2020) during the same week, and while I can understand the buzz around these two films based on the performances of their lead actresses, of which it is impossible to walk away from without feeling admiration, I have to say that in all other respects those two films represented the most irritating, pretentious, time wasting experiences I’ve had in a long time.

It’s the mid-eighties, and young, bookish film censor Enid (Niamh Algar) is busy snipping away at films she believes may deprave and corrupt the general public. Only for herself and fellow censor Sanderson (Nicholas Burns) to be caught up in a media storm when a film they passed uncut is linked to a copycat crime. Enid’s exposure to the output of mysterious moviemaker Frederick North (Adrian Schiller) also triggers childhood flashbacks to her sister’s disappearance and leaves Enid convinced that her now adult sister is being forced against her will into appearing in North’s notorious films. I have heard some describe Censor as a ‘love letter’ to the Video Nasties era, on the basis of which I have to question just what kind of love letters these people have been receiving over the years. Censor traps you in a succession of rooms with some of the coldest, depressing and unlikeable characters imaginable…the censors are a bunch of pen pushing, office dullards, the video nasties are depicted as fodder for sub-morons, and the people behind them predictably turn out to be one-dimensional assholes. That’s some love letter.

Censor gives the impression of being directed by the set-designer, it’s a film that gets a charge out of drawing your attention to antiquated technology- characters banging away on typewriters, listening to fax machines, writing on notepads, VHS tape dropouts, and of course VHS tapes themselves being ejected from VCR machines. Structurally it echoes Saxon Logan’s Sleepwalker (1984) in the way that the opening two thirds unfold like a talky, real world issues based Play for Today episode, only for the last third to go full on blood splattered horror. However the transition between those two, very different worlds is handled far less easily here than in the Logan film. I’m not entirely convinced the director really wanted to make a horror film at all, the whole sub-plot about the sister being abducted and reappearing years later in horror films seemed bolted on to the plot and lacking in credibility. It’s so farfetched and unbelievable that you can see the ‘twist’ about the sister coming long before it drops onscreen.

Admittedly, Censor is a work of fiction and doesn’t have to adhere to historic facts as much as a straightforward documentary, but if you are going to set your film in a specific time period and around real life events it surely has to have some basis in reality. During this period, the BBFC was run by James Ferman, a proud do-gooder and liberal, who had an openly combative relationship with film industry people who didn’t share those values…Michael Winner springs to mind. Yet in Censor, we are led to believe that the head of the BBFC would welcome a sleazy film producer into the BBFC offices like a VIP, and just weakly stand by as this guy makes inappropriate comments to a young, female censor by offering her a role in one of his upcoming movies that’ll involve her being raped and murdered onscreen. Would that really have happened on James Ferman’s watch?...C’mon. Likewise we’re meant to believe that the films banned during the Video Nasties furore weren’t predominately made in America and Europe, but were in fact shot on home soil by shadowy, underground filmmakers and directly funded by the video distributors themselves. It gives the narrative here some much needed oomph –without it Censor would just be a film full of uptight people huddled around a VCR and television taking notes- but again has no basis in reality. Were film censors ever really mobbed by the press as they left their offices like scandal hit celebrities, or considered tabloid worthy enough to also be papped in their private lives?...I think not. As I say Censor is a work of fiction and therefore some artistic license should be afforded the filmmakers, but there are way too many "that would never have happened" moments here. Even when the BBFC were under fire during this period, be it the initial video nasties furore or the Bulger/Child's Play 3 controversy, I tend to remember the interactions between the press and the BBFC being fairly dignified, press conference type affairs, and always focused on Ferman. Underling censors never fell under media scrutiny back then, as far as I remember.

The scene where Enid procures a banned horror video from a rental shop also strikes you as rather implausible. The guy behind the counter is a nervous, hyper paranoid head case who lives in fear of police raids, and yet she is able to talk him into selling her a banned cannibal movie, under the counter in a brown paper bag. This despite the fact that he has never met her before, she isn't even a member of this video shop and doesn't look like the video nasty renting type at all. Surely all that would have set the alarm bells ringing with him...and why would he sell it to her outright when he is seen to be doing a brisk trade in renting it out...and as a film censor she'd surely have a legitimate way of seeing the film for research purposes rather than risk compromising herself by resorting to illegal means. Based on ahem...'personal experiences', you usually had to do a bit of 'above counter' dealings with VHS shop people and strike up a rapport with them, before they trusted you enough to offer you 'under the counter' videos with the word cannibal in the title. I don't want to sound like one of those pedantic people who complain that an entire film was ruined for them because it was meant to be set in say… 1979 but one tiny scene has a character wearing a watch that wasn't manufactured till 1981. As a work of fiction, Censor is allowed to bend the truth a little bit. Trouble is, there is so much of that going on here that it does begin to grate after a while if you already know a bit about the subject, and risks dropping a heap of misinformation into the laps of those who don't.

For a film called Censor, it is also frustratingly on the fence about the actual subject of censorship. Enid’s views and right to censor movies goes unchallenged, the film runs with censorious ideas that exposure to violent films can trigger emotional trauma and leave a person unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. Only too then do an about turn with a revelation that exonerates Enid and Sanderson from the tabloid witchhunt and ends with a fantasy scene ridiculing the idea that the removal of Video Nasties from society would miraculously transform Britain into a smiley, happy-clappy utopia. All the contradictory messages about censorship floating around in Censor, just strengthens the belief that this film is lacking when it comes to either a strong POV or genuine insights into the subject. For my money, the final word on the frankly done-to-death topic of Video Nasties was Jake West’s documentaries Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide (2010) and Video Nasties: Draconian Days (2014). Collectively those two nailed the pre-cert era … perfecto. The emergence of this film only adds to the feeling that nothing more needed to be said…Censor merely represents the dull, middle-class gentrification of this subject.

Taxi Driver (1999)

I have to admit an unlikely fondness and nostalgia for this Ghanaian sitcom, which thanks to the wonders of Satellite television we were able to pick up in the UK on Friday nights in the early 2000s. The world of Taxi Driver is one of bizarre plots, terrible yet enthusiastic acting, broken English, and the worst back projection you're likely to see outside of a 1960s ITC show, all taking place in unenviable dirt poor Ghanaian locations. The show has the ability to look like a trashy early 1980s SOV movie even though it was actually made in 1999. Week after week though, I found myself tuning in to the adventures of taxi driver T.T (pronounced 'Titty') as he cruises the mean streets of Ghana, picking up bickering passengers and getting drawn into their problems. As played by Psalm Adjetefio, Titty is like a mixture of Barry Evans and Idi Amin, forever yelling, threatening to slap people and occasionally breaking the fourth wall to share some philosophical nuggets with the audience. Memorable passengers include the far out Jamaican, the flash DJ who gives Titty a taste of the high life, the cash strapped prostitute who throws herself at Titty "are you a hen for you to be having sex with every cock?". Best of all is the guy who claims to have murdered his wife and ends up stripping down to his underwear and running around with a pick axe.

It's all very moral and usually ends with Titty giving his customers a dressing down over their transgressions with each episode having a heavy handed message about adultery, greed, prostitution or stealing other people's goats (a subject so important that it warrants a two parter). Judging by a search of the Internet, the show's good vibes and positivity hasn't rubbed off on its star Psalm Adjetefio in recent years. His marriage collapsed after his wife became less 'submissive' to him and he ended up chasing after a younger actress who he later publicly denounced as a 'pure demon' who had come to him in the guise of a human "I pray that no man goes that way, forsaking your children and going for a demon of a woman. Learn from my experience. Don't do it" he claimed "I haven't been lucky, it's like the women I got were boiled from Satan's kitchen". Adjetefio has also courted controversy in recent years by breaking with his family friendly persona and appearing in an adult oriented film, although he has yet to be offered enough money to bare all. "My buttocks are not cheap" Adjetefio has stated "any producer who wants me to strip may have to pay an amount of money heavy enough to last till even my great grandchildren grow to reap the dividends". You don't get to see Psalm's expensive buttocks in Taxi Driver, but you do get a catchy theme tune that has managed to stick in my head for around 20 years even though I still can't decipher the lyrics to it. Offering proof that you can find just about anything on Youtube, and finally giving me some evidence that I didn't just make this show up, five episodes of Taxi Driver are to be found on this YouTubechannel...move over Travis Bickle.