Jack Malibu (1988)

D. Corey Dickshield
Colour

Jack the Ripper haunts the public imagination like no other killer. He is all mist, frightened women and a mystery which never ends (DNA discoveries will prove easy to ignore, mark my words). He’s a supernatural figure, one who lives inside the London fog and attacks like a knife wielding ghost. Yeah, his name might turn out to be Aaron Kosminski or he might be the dissolute son of a high-born family – it doesn’t matter. The mystique and odd romance of this (let’s not forget) particularly brutal killer will continue for centuries to come.

That’s how you can take the idea out of London and put it in a whole other geographic locale, as we understand how the Ripper works. Similarly you can set the tale nearly a hundred years after the events, as again we all understand how the Ripper works. You can even throw rock ballads in and make it a musical. Ah no, that might just be pushing things a little too far.

Here’s a genuine oddity. A musical set amongst affluent beach front property on the California coast, starring two Celtic singers, and centred around the return of England’s most famous serial killer.

Yes, this is Jack Malibu.

Bonnie Tyler (for it is she) is a Welsh-American singing star who now lives in a big house on the Coast and is at the height of her career. But she’s also the descendent of Jack the Ripper’s last victim and the ghost of that killer is coming back to wrap up unfinished business. A fog (borrowed from the occasion from John Carpenter) rolls in from the Pacific and suddenly there’s a dead prostitute lying on the patio of Bonnie’s house. Called in to investigate is Scottish-America detective, Sheena Eastern (for it is she), who also has a connection to the original Ripper case. And as the fog rolls in again, the two women try to work out what the hell is going on – all the while singing their lungs out.

The songs are over-blow 80s numbers, full of synths and echoing drums, but bizarrely all have titles stolen from great standards: so that ‘Strangers in the Night’ is nowhere near what you’d imagine it to be; neither is ‘Foggy Day’; nor ‘The Lady is a Tramp’. All have terrible tunes with lyrics seemingly scribbled out by a collective of sub-literate, goth obsessed, teenage boys. ‘Excruciating’ is the best word, and the only soundtrack albums bought were surely used to torture terrorists.

The hair is big, the shoulder pads could balance scaffolding, the acting is ludicrously bad (with the accents making some lines unintelligible even to a fellow Brit – and a fellow Welshie at that), the plot is ridiculous and the ending is just too Scooby Doo for words. It’s worth watching though as a ludicrous camp spectacular and the saving grace that at least they realised that if Jack was going to be scary he couldn’t be made to bloody sing.

Killer on Sunset Boulevard (1982)

D. Wayne Hopkin
Colour

Johnny Cash was a pious man. A Christian who put a lot of stake in his faith in God and recorded many gospel tracks – as well as, of all things, a Man in Black Christmas album. But there was also something sinister about Johnny Cash. You don’t bill yourself ‘The Man in Black’ if you want to be loved by everyone. Just as you don’t spend hours practicing a brooding sneer in front of the mirror as a teenager (we don’t think that look just arrived on his face, do we?) if you’re planning to make it as a happy-clappy, Christian entertainer. A faithful man Johnny Cash may have been, but he knew as sure as Alice Cooper knew, that darkness sells. That’s doubly true in films. You can go so far with being pious and Christian on a cinema screen, but you can do a hell of a lot more with sinister.

Even more than the other Monkees, Micky Dolenz clearly craved fame. If you think of the gurning comedy, or the mugging at camera while pretending to play the drums, then clearly this is a man desperate to be noticed. He stood out much more than Took or Nesmith, and made Davy Jones look like a blandly English ex-Coronation Street actor in comparison. There was in Dolenz, an all-round entertainer trying to get out, a counter- culture Sammy Davis Jr – but in reality all he really got to be was drummer in The Monkees.

Here Cash and Dolenz come together in ‘Killer on Sunset Boulevard’. Although, to be fair, it’s hardly a meeting brimming with the anticipation of a Newman/Redford, De Niro/Pacino or even Godzilla/ King Ghidorah.

It’s 1982 and neither of them is at the height of their careers (although Cash would later climb the summit again; Dolenz is no longer able to see it even with high powered binoculars). So it’s an odd combination in an odd film, but one which specifically plays to who they are. From the outside Johnny Cash and Micky Dolenz look odd casting, but on closer examination it’s difficult to think of anyone else playing these roles.

This is a movie which combines ‘The Valley of the Dolls’ with ‘Desperate Hours’. Dolenz is a Hollywood star, an actor and musician extraordinaire, one of the most famous people on the planet according to the oddly fawning news broadcast we see (even the E network would consider it a little uncritical). His character is clearly leading the life Micky Dolenz himself has always dreamt of. There’s a gorgeous wife and two daughters, but more importantly the adulation of the world – who could ask for more? Except, Dolenz also has a deranged fan. This fan takes the form of Johnny Cash, who on this bright sunny day invades Dolenz’s home and holds him and his family hostage. What follows is a tense siege where Dolenz gets more and more desperate for his and his family’s safety in the face of his totally implacable opponent.

I’ll be honest, this is not a great film. Dolenz in no way has the acting chops to pull this off, and comes over more a whining child in a playground rather than a husband and father strung out to the very end of his tether. But Cash is extraordinary, so still and dangerous, with eyes that have years of fear and hurt deep within. Cash – unlike a certain Sun Records colleague – is never thought to have made that much impression of a film, but here we have an embryonic Hannibal Lector and the template for a million other screen psychos to follow.

Hell-Dogs of the Full Moon (1972)

D. Horatio Jason
Colour

Having looked at ‘Malcolm on Wheels’ at the start of the week and made the point that British bikers are just far less scary than their American Hells Angel counterparts, I’m now going to make the point again by looking at perhaps THE scariest biker gang ever to grace American cinema. In ‘The Wild One’ Marlon Brando is asked what he’s rebelling against and famously responds with “Whadda you got?”. The Hell-Dogs of the Full Moon would see that as a weak and lily-livered answer. They aren’t just rebelling against what you’ve got, they’re rebelling against what you haven’t even thought of yet, what you haven’t even imagined. As this is not just the scariest biker gang in America (we’re told that more than once; so solid a fact is it within the film that I wonder if there was a little award ceremony where they received a plaque), but they’re actual werewolves.

Yes, werewolves.

Riding motorbikes.

Pretty cool, ay?

Interestingly this doesn’t follow the path of the normal werewolf film. In the normal werewolf film Lon Chaney is bitten and then strives against the rising animal urges within him. He is a human being, a civilised man and he doesn’t want the beast inside to take over. In the normal werewolf film the bite and the consequences thereof are terrible things to be fought against. Not here though, the Hell-Dogs of the Full Moon are werewolves and fucking proud!

So we get incredible scenes of them pulling into trailer parts just at dusk, waiting for the sun to go down and then sating their appetites with huge amounts of blood and violence. This is a tremendously gory and gruesome film. It’s also an incredibly sexist film, the women are either chicks who want to be with the gang, or else they’re meat to feed the gang – no other roles but lovers or snacks, both requiring very little clothing. It fits well within the film’s viewpoint though as we see everything through the eyes of the gang; we never see anybody pursuing them, we never see any of their victims until briefly before the attacks. This is all about the Hell-Dogs of the Full Moon and nothing but the Hell-Dogs of the Full Moon.

What defeats them is their own appetites, their own indulgences. The more they change, the harder it is to turn back and those more advanced in their lycanthropy end up on all fours scampering away into the woods, the part of them that was man totally lost. This does lead to a few scenes in daylight of men in werewolf make-up and leathers riding big motorbikes, and the filmmakers clearly don’t realise how funny a sight that is. But the message is that giving into your wildness means that your wildness subsumes you and you can never go back again. And the fact that they’re defeated by what’s within them, as opposed to some gunfight or narrative voodoo, makes this is a lot more subtle and clever a film than it pretends to be.

The Sound of Wedding Bells (1960)

D. Nigel Ramsbotham
B&W


‘The Sound of Wedding Bells’ is runt of the litter of Cliff Richard movies, and given what that litter looks like you can imagine that it’s a very malformed and feeble runt indeed. It’s the only one of Cliff’s movies to not be a musical, the only one that aims at proper drama and a movie that manages to be both tediously stilted and decidedly weird at the same time. Okay, there are two songs, but one of them is over the end credits and the film seems there to show off Cliff’s acting skills, or at least how far he has to go until he becomes a proper actor


Here Cliff is as a young lad in Northern English town who works in the factory and still lives with his widowed mother. So far so ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, though don’t expect the brooding machismo of an Albert Finney (or for that matter, an Albert Steptoe). What’s truly interesting though is that Cliff’s character is named Harry Webber, which of course is only one syllable off his real name. So there’s almost a sense that Cliff is playing himself: the good and dutiful son who is dedicated to his career and his mother. He does seem happy with his lot at the start of the film, but soon a good-time girl arrives to throw off all the certainties of his world with just a casual glance over her beautiful shoulder.


This sweetheart is Jeanette Scott, a sexy blonde who wants to go to the bright lights of London. In her skin-tight white trousers and pink angora jumper she looks every inch the 1950’s American pin-up girl, and plays the role with appropriate American brassiness. Unfortunately that truly unsettles a film where she’s supposed to be all hot and wild for a far more frigid Cliff. Imagine the twenty-five year old Angelina Jolie trying to get it on with Sir John Gielgud and you have a good idea of their scenes together. But the script says there has to be sparks between them: so they meet, kiss, seem to fall in love (although interestingly those words are never used) and before they know it they’re engaged. As their relationship progresses it becomes clear that Cliff is going to have to decide whether to marry this fast woman follow her to a fast lifestyle in London. That would mean leaving his life, and most importantly his mother behind.


What’s interesting, for the accepted narrative that it was The Beatles who came along in 1962/1963 to blow Cliff away, is how neutered he was even a year before. Already his image is safe and dutiful and as far from a rock’n’roll child as it would be possible to be. The ending sees him separate from the gorgeous, yet wild fiancée, leaving her to head off to London by herself (where she’ll certainly meet a much more exciting man), while Cliff stays behind with his dear old mother. Yes there’s the possibility of romance with safe and conservative librarian, Una Stubbbs, but this is a film about a boy who loves his mother above all else. For a movie starring a rock’n’roller at the height of his fame that’s a decidedly odd note to end up on – and yet given how Cliff’s career and life has progressed – a really appropriate one.

Marie Antoinette (1985)

D. David Spartan
Colour


Having started the week with Paul Muni inventing fire, we now come to another strange supposedly historical movie where actual history is totally unimportant. Those of you who’ve read deeply into the life of Marie Antoinette, or know something of the French revolution, avert your eyes now. As what we have is not strictly a portrayal of life in the court of Versailles, one that looks at the ins and outs of the bloody events of the 1790s, but instead Toyah Wilcox as ‘Marie Antoinette – Demon Bloodsucker’.


In the days of ‘Abraham Lincoln – Vampire Hunter’, this probably makes a lot more sense. Back in the 1980s, though, it must have been a shock to see a pop star as a French queen stalking through the streets of Paris to suck the necks of children. What makes it more surprising is that there’s zero context for this. We start with what looks to be a standard historical biopic (well as standard an historical biopic as you can get with Toyah Wilcox as the lead), all stately homes, bodices and BBC accents; but before long we’re nicking ideas from old Universal and Hammer movies and she’s out on the grimy Parisian backstreets as the arch nocturnal huntress. Other musical luminaries – Adam Ant, Richard O’Brien, Lulu – appear with their tongues firmly placed firmly in their cheeks to either aid her or try to stop her, as this Austrian-French Queen (she was actually Austrian, but Toyah insists on playing her with a wandering accent that’s just this side of Inspector Clouseau) goes all Countess Bathory while wearing tight, heaving corsets. Then the French revolution comes along; the masses, tired of being oppressed and no doubt livid at having their blood sucked, rise up. It initially seems that the chaos will aid this vampire Queen but her fall isn’t far away.


In the background of this bright and shiny pop video, which for some reason has been stretched to feature length and inexplicably had all the songs left out, is – of course – the evil of Margaret Thatcher. At one point Toyah even tells her lady in waiting, who is concerned about the Queen’s nightly expeditions that “this lady is not for turning”. (It’s a pity that Thatcher didn’t say “There’s no such thing as society” until later, as the filmmakers would have salivated right down their chins at a line like that.) Obviously this is a project its makers felt passionate about, but in their passion and over-whelming hatred for the British Prime-Minister, what they’ve lost is any sense of subtlety. It’s a film which doesn’t just want to dislike Thatcher, it wants to state loud and proud that she actually feasts on the blood of the poor and the blood of their children. This is a literal demonization and that makes it – even if you’re broadly sympathetic to where the film is coming from – easy to not take seriously. Often within the echo chamber of the left or right, people just lose all sense of the wider world and convince themselves that all that exists is their passion and beliefs. Toyah Wilcox as Marie Antoinette sounds very, very silly and – even with a shouted political agenda – it is very, very silly.

The Beatles: The Future (1976)

D. Winston O’Boogie/Apollo C. Vermouth
B&W, with flashes of bright and scary psychedelic colour


Here’s an absolutely bizarre and barely seen movie which is exactly the kind of film this blog is duty-bound to bring to wider attention. ‘The Beatles: The Future’ is a surreal faux documentary which looks at what would have happened if The Beatles hadn’t broken up. Constructed using fake talking head clips, fake footage of The Beatles and even really amateurish cartoons, this is a head-spinning montage which revels in love for the 1960s and disappointment in the 1970s. Clearly the filmmakers believed the 1960s was the ushering of a utopia which cruelly never actually happened, and that the 1970s (which when this began filming were only three years old) were struggling to cope with all that failed promise. The Beatles were of course the great symbol of the 1960s and perhaps another group of filmmakers would have used their continuing presence as the salve that the decade needed; another film would have suggested that if The Beatles were still around the 1970s would have been much brighter and better. But that’s not what this movie does. Yes, The Beatles were part of the more hopeful age of the 1960s, but if they’d stayed around for the following decade they’d have been tarnished along with everything else.


The Beatles – none of whom are really played by the same actors from one scene to the next, let alone right away from the movie (so working out who is who is can be a trifle hard) – are instead portrayed as doing all the ridiculous 1970s rock star stuff. This is a movie which comes to slaughter, rather than praise, its idols. The not so fab four preach a Marxian tune of shared belongings, but move to Monaco to stop paying taxes; they talk peace, whilst employing thuggish bodyguards; they festoon themselves in ridiculous kaftans and shawls, demanding attention even as they claim to be “just four ordinary lads from Liverpool” (the accents are atrocious btw); and when they do play a concert, it’s a pompous three hour event in front of the pyramids at sunset which proves disastrous, leading to a stampeded “where eight people and fourteen beautiful camels died tragically”. They also have other more Beatles-centric concerns, with Yoko and Linda very much to the fore so that the band end up releasing albums as ‘The Beatles Collective’; including a four disk number, the side Ringo is in charge of apparently benefiting from actually being some fun.


Actually for a musical film there’s little in the way of music. Obviously they couldn’t afford the rights to actual Beatles songs and your jobbing songsmith can’t just knock out a genuine Lennon/McCartney. So what we have here is ramshackle affair with little music and from scene to scene difficulty in telling which Beatle is which, but if you’re a Beatles fan and want to watch something which is occasionally witty and clever and pointed about the failures of heroes, then this is a bit of a slog but well worth tracking down.


My favourite scene? In 1973 when The Beatles are getting truly bad coverage, a press conference is called. John Lennon tears up poster-size covers of the NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and others – all of whom have had the temerity to criticise the band – but for each one torn up The Beatles take off an item of clothing. It ends with four chubby and hairy Beatles impersonators in a line, wearing only Y-fronts and socks, doing the kind of stamping dance which one imagines inspired Madness. I don’t know what it all means, but in it’s clearly fucking mad way, it captures the whole shabby vagabond spirit of the film.

Nickleby (1963)

D. Randall MacDougall
Colour

So, once again I find myself defending an Elvis adaptation of a classic which gets more than its share of stick. Complaints I’ve read include that it’s all done without leaving the studio, that all the songs are boringly old fashioned and that it’s ridiculously hard to follow. And individually it’s difficult to make an argument against any of those points. They’re pretty much all on the nose, flaws that have to be acknowledged before any defence of ‘Nickleby’ can be made. But just picking out those individual faults ignores that a lot of this film actually works, and that casting Elvis Presley as sensitive, earnest, idealistic school teacher Nicholas Nickleby isn’t the irredeemably dumb idea many would expect.


For starters, handing Dickens’ long and sprawling novel to a fillet-happy butcher was a brilliant stroke. I said that casting Elvis as a sensitive, earnest, idealistic school teacher isn’t as stupid as one might expect, but actually the whole school teacher thing is only really alluded to. There is no Dotheboys and no Wackford Squeers. Some may see this as a bowdlerisation of the worse kind – but I think it’s bloody genius. It means that the focus is Nicholas’s time with the Crummles and their theatrical troupe – and if there’s ever a place where Elvis is going to feel at home, it’s near the bright lights of the stage, occasionally getting up to belt out numbers.


Okay, the songs aren’t great, but even so it’s never going to be dull to watch the King of Rock’n’Roll take on ‘Goodbye, Dolly Gray’, ‘I’m Henry the Eighth, I am’ and ‘The Man who Broke the Bank of Monte Carlo’. The choice of predominantly English music-hall songs is an interesting one, as the setting is Victorian New York, not Victorian London, which at least it removes the need for Elvis to attempt any kind of accent. If there’s one thing we’ve observed from these Elvis adaptations of classic novels, it’s that the boy really doesn’t like accents.


Elsewhere we have Nicholas’s virtuous and beautiful cousin Kate, for whom Nicholas holds a torch; there’s his villainous uncle Ralph (Harry Morgan, who later showed up in a more friendly role in ‘Frankie & Johnny’); and his slow witted sidekick, Smike. And that’s the real problem with this film, even with the Smithfield-esque butchering there is still so much plot and context needed to make the story works and no place to put it beyond clunking dialogue and clumsy asides. (“Ah, Mr Nickleby. I saw your Uncle Ralph the other day in his counting-house and a less pleasant cove I have scarcely glimpsed” is an actual piece of dialogue.) As the film progresses it becomes truly hard to work out why X hates Y, or what the history is between A and B, or why F is behaving in quite that way to G (and who the fuck is G anyway?) Indeed in an adaptation this confused and liberal, knowing the book becomes a positive disadvantage – as plot, character and relations are all gleefully subverted for ease, simplicity and sometimes just plain perversity. For example, we have Nicholas’s rather queasy love for his own sheltered cousin, Kate. Although given that that character is his sister in the book, it was possible for the film makers to embark on an altogether more troubling exploration of incest.


So, yes it’s flawed and yes Elvis is not playing Nicholas Nickleby – in looks, temperament or the fact he keeps belting out tunes – in any way that Dickens would recognise. And yes it’s hard to follow just what the hell is going on. But that’s to ignore that for most of the film Elvis is having a great time. This is the best Elvis ‘putting on a show’ movie ever made, and to hark on about its problems is just to close your eyes and ears to how damned entertaining it is.

The Great Gatsby (1962)

D. Randal MacDougall
Colour


I don’t care what anyone says, Elvis Presley as Jay Gatsby works!


This is a movie which gets a lot of stick, even from Elvis fans. Yes that’s right, even those ultra-defensive individuals who’ll fervently make the case that EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING the man did was brilliant to every semiquaver, will slag off this film. Complaints I’ve read include that the period detail looks unconvincing, that the supporting case is painfully uncharismatic and that the songs are crap. That last one is particularly odd, as the songs really aren’t that bad, if you slog your way through Elvis soundtrack album after Elvis soundtrack album (I don’t recommend this as a leisure activity by the way) you will find dozens of worse examples. Other complaints are that the script doesn’t really capture the book, that it’s poorly paced and that – really – ‘The Great Gatsby’ shouldn’t come with a quasi-happy ending.


And I’ll be honest, a lot of that is true. The period trappings are a little staid with any detail coming from stock footage and fake backdrops. Obviously the more contemporary setting of ‘Wuthering Heights’ was better, but the 1920s – if we’re honest – is not so far away from Elvis’s milieu as to be ridiculous. Michael Landon as Nick Carroway and Linda Evans as Daisy Buchanan are both bland as hell, clearly miscast and losing all their television charisma on the big screen. As for the songs, yes there are some turgid examples, but then there are a couple of catchy ones – the Leiber & Stoller ‘Money, Money, Money’ (clearly no relation to the Abba track) is a particular foot stamper. And really, we’re going to criticise an Elvis adaptation of a classic novel because it doesn’t show sufficient fidelity? It’s an Elvis adaptation of a classic novel - Different Rules Apply!


It seems to me though that all these criticisms miss the point of the enterprise, as this entire film – more than ‘Loving You’, more than any of the concert movies – is a film all about Elvis. This is a movie, this a character, that Elvis Presley just owns! Think about it: the tale of a self-made man who comes from nothing to live the life of opulence; the story of a man who dared to dream big and had all those dreams come true; a man who achieved so much from so little and so must have felt a stranger in his own skin. This could be the Elvis Presley story. Elvis is Jay Gatsby in a way that he is never any other part. In a way that completely negates later interpretations by Robert Redford or Leonardo DiCaprio. On screen this is him at his best, pure and undistilled. This is a magnetic performance of sheer dynamism, a brilliant showing which truly captures the highs and lows of not only the story, but Elvis’s whole career.


Apparently Elvis was disappointed not to get an Oscar nomination, I can truly see why.


Those naysayers are wrong as even though there are plenty of flaws, those flaws all melt away in the face of Elvis’s performance. Yes, in isolation it’s hard to imagine Linda Evans inspiring anybody’s eternal passion, but Elvis manages to convince that this is the case; just as he makes it believable that he’d take Michael Landon as a friend (and not just someone to pelt with wet toilet roll whenever he saw him); or that Jay Gatsby could and should come out somewhere on top. Okay, the ending is contentious and I would find it ridiculously dubious in any other adaptation, but here the near happy ending is one all Elvis fans should root for. As this isn’t F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’, this is Elvis Presley’s. And who wouldn’t want to see a happier ending to ‘The Great Presley’?

Shakin’ Around the Christmas Tree (1984)

D. Davey Rice
Colour


Shakin Stevens, the leading Welsh Elvis throwback entertainer of the 1980s (or indeed, if we’re fair, any decade), is a good man. We can see that in the opening shots of this film, where on Christmas Eve, Shaky – as he’s known to his fans – is seen carrying his guitar into the children’s ward of the local hospital and serenading angelic blonde haired, sick kids with carols. There is a sincerity to his performance, a caring in his eyes, which shows what a decent person is. Yes, like a proto-Noel Edmonds (or a latter day Jesus, take your pick), Shaky is determined to give up his Christmas pleasure to help out people less fortunate than himself. And he just keeps on giving, as after visiting the hospital, his manager calls him to tell him that he will be playing a gig for veterans that very evening – right until the chimes of midnight themselves. The problem is that Shaky is currently in Cardiff, while the gig is hundreds of miles away in Newcastle. The race is on.


History is a distorting lens. Just because they were cool we remember bands of the 1980s who achieved moderate commercial success, but don’t recall the biggest selling British male star of that decade with the same clarity. Shakin Stevens was that man, for a few years a never ending hit factory which made him much bigger than say The Clash, The Specials or The Human League. You would never believe that from the amount which is written about them these days, but the chart placings don’t lie. You’ll also find it difficult to believe from this film, released at the height of his commercial success, designed to cement his place in the pantheon and reap the rewards, but maybe starting his soon to be unstoppable downward slide. Essentially it should have been a perfect vehicle, string together specially filmed footage of Shaky singing his greatest hits – ‘This Old House’; ‘Green Door’, ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ (which actually came from this film’s soundtrack) – wrap it up in a bit of plot and the money should just roll in. The problem is that the songs are ones we’ve heard before and, in the MTV/Top of the Pops age, have seen before too. And in Shakin Stevens we really do not have any kind of leading man. Much like Clint Eastwood, Shaky seems to have decided that he’s much better at staring than at dialogue. That however is the only comparison it’s ever going to be possible to make between Shaky and Clint. Shaky has no charisma, clearly hates every line he’s given and moves through the film as if waiting for it to end. It’s a sensation the audience well knows.


And that’s before we get to the comic relief.


If we take The Krankies at face value, then for some reason Shaky’s Scottish tour manager, Ian, has decided to bring along his young son, Jimmy, to help organise the gig. Even though it’s Christmas Eve, Jimmy is still inexplicably dressed in his school uniform. More detrimental is that Jimmy clearly does not know how to behave and cheeks everyone he comes in contact with and causes a great deal of mischief. Obviously Jimmy is an asbo waiting to happen, but in 1984 terms that translates to Jimmy needs a clip around the ear. Of course, if we take them as what they actually are, then Ian has brought his wife, Jeanette, along and she has decided to pretend to be one of the naughtiest ten year old boys in the world. Why she is doing this is never explained. What’s clear though is that their broad comic slapstick provides some of the most excruciating moments ever seen in cinema. Yes, even more excruciating than watching Shaky act.


So a lumped together film starring people who were starting to look stale in 1984 and which has very little in the way of redeeming features. Why then am I bothering with it? Well, because in the part of Neville, the Shaky super fan who uses every available form of public transport to follow his hero all the way from Cardiff to Newcastle, we have Daniel Day-Lewis. Yes, that Daniel Day-Lewis – only a year or two before he became a proper leading man himself. And he’s brilliant at it, carrying off the over-eager smile and the looks of slightly unhinged adoration - all adding up to full-on worship of his idol. it’s totally brilliant and totally unbalances the film to the point where it pretty much capsizes, but it’s a shining and distinctly creepy light in this otherwise turgid sea of crap and mediocrity.


Merry Christmas, Everyone indeed!

Wuthering Heights (1961)

D. Don Siegel
B&W


This is called learning from your mistakes. This is called poring over the smouldering wreckage of what went before, having the humility to admit that that particular journey was started with the brake wires cut and a rubber toy in place of the steering wheel, and then correcting those massive errors going forward. This is called not crashing the same car into the same wall all over again; or more appropriately this is called not just churning out any old crap for a cheap buck. This is the way things should have been.


Yes, Elvis in ‘Wuthering Heights’ is fantastic!


As an Elvis obsessed little boy who became an Elvis obsessed man, I take great pleasure in bringing these neglected gems of his much maligned film-work forward. And it gives me particular joy to polish up, buff until its gloriously shiny and then present this gem – with a wide soup-bowl shaped grin on my face – for your perusal. The last time Elvis tackled a classic, you might remember, it was ‘Hamlet’ and the results can be politely described as not good. There was Elvis in a doublet and hose, trying to master iambic pentameter with that Memphis drawl and singing whole soliloquies whilst ridiculous ghostly bongo players kept rhythm over his shoulder.


There is nothing so ludicrous on display here, this one is playing to Elvis’s strengths. I have no idea whether there was ever a plan to set this in Victorian Yorkshire, with Elvis giving us his best “Ecky thump, it be right perishing out moor”; but if there was, then it was thankfully scrapped. (Seeing Elvis trying to speak like Sean Bean is no more appetising than imagining Sean Bean quiffed up and trying to play Elvis.) Instead the action of this film is set in Wuthering Heights, a suburb of Nashville.


It’s a brilliant conceit. Here we have the cute as several dozen buttons Tuesday Weld as Cathy (the same year in which she met Elvis in the far less inspiring, and indeed wild, ‘Wild in The Country’), an aspiring and truly headstrong country and western singer who has got herself engaged to a Pat Boone-esque crooner, Edward Litton (played with appropriate lack of charisma by someone called Dave Fellows – quite, me neither), but who’s that smouldering his way back into town? Why it’s Elvis as Heathcliff , the boy she grew up with and the great romance of her life.


Even for a modern day version of the story, it’s one which deserves the description ‘inspired by’ rather than ‘adapted from’ Emily Bronte’s novel. Indeed it can be more accurately described as a musical remake of the Laurence Olivier/Merle Oberon version – as both films leave out the second and more interesting part of the book. But in the end fidelity doesn’t matter, as this is brilliant. Siegel (helming Elvis for the second rime) shoots for and gets a beautiful, noir soaked black & white; Elvis’s role requires little more than to just show up and be broody and soulful, and he does more of that with one look than most actors can manage in a career; and Weld is suitably intense and passionate, as well as utterly convincing as a lifelong object of desire. While if Fellows is as uninteresting as a sheep farmer in 1800’s Yorkshire, well he’s supposed to be.


Okay, if the film was perfect the songs would be a lot better – such numbers as ‘The Boy Heathcliff (Back in Town)’, ‘Don’t Run Away, Cathy’ and ‘It Ain’t the Wind That’s Wuthering;’ are never going to show up  on any Elvis ‘best of’, no matter how many volumes it stretches to. But then this is the rare thing, a musical where the music isn’t that important. No, ‘Wuthering Heights’ isn’t about the songs, it’s about sheer sex appeal, it’s about pouting and rebellious youth, it’s about giving up everything for passion, it’s about personifying cool – and in that regard it succeeds on every measure.

Bonfire Bill (1964)

D. Sidney Hayers
Colour

There’s something quite terrifying about Tommy Steele’s teeth. They loom out of his face at you, seeming to lurk and then leap forward, far further than could humanly be possible. They’re floating white obelisks which will hide in the dark determined to gnash at you when your weakest moment arrives. They are not just too big for his mouth, they’re too big for his head, too big for his entire flipping body. They are horrifying teeth, monstrous teeth, the kind of teeth great white sharks would be intimidated by. I have written a lot of horror in my time, but I can think of no more terrifying image than Tommy Steele’s teeth in 3D cinemascope. Can you imagine those giant, shiny whites thirty foot high and reaching out to you? It’s the kind of sight which would make the toughest strong man wet himself with fear.

Equally there’s something quite terrifying about the being known as Cliff Richard. It’s the fact that he’s so perky and smiling, and yet so absolutely sexless. He should have – as the first British rock star – been a figure of snarling, rebellious, unfettered libido. Instead he was a eunuch type character who maiden aunts thought would be quite nice for cuddle. Of course we mock him for having sung ‘Bachelor Boy’ and then never marrying. But I think we should take it more seriously than just a joke. I think Cliff Richard has taken the word ‘bachelor’ and absolutely ruined it. Back in the day your ‘confirmed bachelor’ was a swinging and happening ladies’ man, a proto Don Draper. Now it’s a euphemism for a man who is a bit creepy and odd, but – hey – is okay with that. Thanks a lot, Sir Cliff. And it’s amazing how early in his career this happened, how young a man he was when he truly embraced this oddball image. Here he is in 1964, totally anodyne and as unthreatening as a corner table. Elvis is similarly declared to be neutered post-Army, but this is the same year he had ‘Viva Las Vegas’ (with ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘The Great Gatsby’ not long behind him). Cliff however is already your granny’s favourite, and not a very discerning granny at that.

Here we have an oddball children’s film which shows how utterly irrelevant these original British rock stars had become in the mid-sixties. All the cool kids are screaming at The Beatles and The Stones, while Tommy and Cliff sing to their younger brothers and sisters while idly remembering how nice it was to have testicles. Cliff is the eponymous Bonfire Bill, the man who brings bonfires to all communities every November the fifth. He’s a spectral and other worldly being, but one with boyish charm and a great singing voice. We get to watch him sing songs like ‘Party Every Year’ and ‘November the Fifth – The Day for Fire’ which are every bit as boring and pedestrian as those titles suggest. More impressively, he performs Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’ with so little heat it wouldn’t even singe the thinnest slice of bacon. On the other side is Tommy Steele as Councilman Ciljoy, wearing a grimace which has served him well in dozens of revivals of ‘The Christmas Carol’. He's a sour-faced misery who doesn’t want bonfires in his town this year, thank you very much, and so bans them.

I think we all know who will win this battle of the out of time 50s’ singers though.

What’s truly depressing about this film is not how toothless (and it is quite a feat to make a toothless film starring Tommy Steele) and sexless these pop stars were by 1964, but how this film exists having torn the guts out of its own setting. There is no mention of Guy Fawkes, there is no mention of the actual roots of bonfire night. That is a story which involves oppression and brutality, one which ends with hanging, drawing and quartering. All of those details are ignored. Instead we get bonfire night as the gift of this impish Easter Bunny-eque character, albeit one with less sex-drive than any rabbit ever born. It’s a dispiriting watch, and the audience can only wish that the chief antagonist – instead of just glowering – would make good use of those teeth and eat Cliff instead.

Hamlet (1960)

D. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

B&W

It’s frequently forgotten that every year of his cinematic career, Elvis turned out his version of a literary classic. As the biographies tell us, they were an attempt to keep up his pretence of being a serious actor, and – because they were made so cheaply and all Elvis product made money – were not a bad little investment. However, much like everything else in the realm of Graceland at this time, ‘quality control’ was an unknown phrase and an alien concept. As such these adaptations reside in an odd place even in fans’ minds. They generally aren’t good enough to stand earnestly in their own right, but lack the brio and campy sunshine of Elvis’s best films. Indeed, some of them are downright awful. As such they stand apart as neglected orphans.

 

This blog exists to put its arm around neglected orphans.

 

First off, remove that sneer from your face and ask yourself: is Elvis as The Prince of Denmark such a terrible idea? At the time he had the requisite youth and callowness for the part, looked striking in doublet and hose and was guaranteed to attack the role with great sincerity. What’s more, a few years’ earlier another very American performer, Marlon Brando, had given us his Shakespeare for the same director in ‘Julius Caesar’. And yet, from the moment Elvis’s Memphis drawl drags out his first line: “The air bites shrewdly, Horatio, and it is mighty cold” a sinking feeling will seize at the spine of even the truest believer.

 

It’s Elvis’s inability (or unwillingness, apparently) to even stab at the accent which makes for a truly jarring viewing experience. Whereas John Gielgud (Claudius), Deborah Kerr (Gertrude) and Claire Bloom (Ophelia) lead the audience to believe that the Danes of Elsinore speak in a very received pronunciation, BBC way; the presence of Elvis makes us wonder where on Earth The Prince went to University to pick up that accent. I love Elvis, but even I find it a tortuous experience. Imagine some enthusiastic American teen on stage at the RSC, making no effort to marry his performance to that of the great English actor next to him, or grasp the rhythm of cadences of the language, or understand that when performing Shakespeare you’re supposed to have some kind of idea as to what these lines actually mean. Whether you’re thinking of Elvis as Hamlet or, say, Justin Bieber as Hal next to Michael Gambon’s Falstaff in some mad hypothetical production – none of it works together, none of it gels, none of it makes any sense whilst sober.

 

And that’s before we get to the fact that no Elvis film can exist without a musical number. To be fair, when Mankiewicz had his brainwave and decided that the way to deal with this need for songs was to insert them organically, it probably seemed like the best available idea. However, when watching Elvis deliver ‘To Be or Not To Be’ staccato while wiggling his hips to a salsa beat, the average viewer begins to wonder whether there are such things as good ideas. Although this may be unique in Hamlet adaptations in introducing a second ghost, as surely that spectral bongo player who appears behind Elvis’s left shoulder as he sings isn’t in Shakespeare’s text.

So what we have is a film Elvis felt embarrassed by, and rightly so. Everyone connected with this film should feel embarrassed. Those who watch it certainly do. And yet it’s a film in which you can see Elvis trying, a gifted performer struggling against his own limitations and the wrong-headed ideas of those around him. To see the wide eyed, full of repressed hurt, way he delivers: “O! that this too solid flesh would melt; Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew; Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon against self-slaughter!” one can only wish that someone had taken the care and time to make this whole mad enterprise – somehow and against all probability – actually work.