The Rotters' Club... What a Carve Up! (1961)

I’ve just finished reading Jonathan Coe’s novel of the same name, published in 1994, and which uses this film both as a major plot point in the way which influences his main character, writer Michael Owen, and also the broad storyline in which a wealthy but faithless family is brought together for the reading of their patriarch’s will only for some haunted home-truths to be savagely delivered in the most gruesome fashion. Coe’s aim is to satirize the landed elite and the conservative classes who gave birth to the Thatcherite glory years in which everything was sold off and greed was not only good but glorious. It is, as so much of his work, fiendishly clever and also very funny as he captures the mood of the times in thorough and entertaining ways.

There’s no deeper motives behind the original film except perhaps of a lampooning both of the usual class cliches of the time – it’s almost Carry on in style – but also the genre of horror films and ghost stories. It’s influenced in this respect by The Ghoul (1933) but also by The Cat and the Canary filmed as a silent by Paul Leni in 1927 and then remade with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard in 1939 – a film which had the same impact on me as the film, and I certainly didn’t spend long hours freeze-framing the saucy bits as Owen does for the scene between Kenneth Connor and Shirley Eaton to leer over the latter undressing.

Discretion is the better part of valour Kenneth my lad!

Owen is taken by his parents to see the film as a child and this moment leaves a lasting impression on his sexuality, a fondness not just for Shirley but also a very Ken Connor-like dithering over opportunities missed. Connor was very much an everyman in his comedy films and here plays a rather nervy proof-reader of horror books which set his teeth on edge but bring in a paltry salary all the same. His mate Sid, on the other hand, is an outgoing and go-getting bookie with a heart of gold. There’s a thesis to be written on the cinematic charm of Mr James but he’s a fine actor who manages to convey genuine emotions and likeability whether in serious drama – The Small Back Room (1948) here or Carry on… I saw him twice on stage in Blackpool playing a variation of Bless This House – Sid as long-suffering husband and father – he was exceptionally good and my Dad, also a pipe smoker – loved him!

Kenneth Connor I know less about, but he came up through the Central School of Speech and Drama and following his wartime service RADA, so he was very well trained and technically able. He joined the Old Vic company for whom notable performances were as Chaplain de Stogumber in Saint Joan and Dobchinsky in The Government Inspector, which starred Alec Guinness. He may have opted to specialise in comedy due to his diminutive stature but he always kept working on the stage even during the Carry on successes. I always rooted for him as a kid and still do now as does Coe’s Michael Owen as he wonders what stopped him from staying with the lovely Shirley in the middle of the night after the killings begin in the isolated darkness of Blackshaw Towers…

“It’s a 5/6 for each of the horror ones and 3/6 for the sexy ones… “

“Why’s it two Bob cheaper?” 

“Well, they reckon I get that much pleasure out of reading them…”

Beyond our Ken?

After some entertaining opening titles revealing the faces of the key players intercut by Donald Pleasence’s creepy lawyer Everett Sloane, making his way to Ken’s flat, we find the latter nervously proof-reading The Fiend of the Second Flat as he sits in his own second floor flat. The camera pulls away and we see Syd fall through the kitchen skylight having been unable to get his friend’s attention via the doorbell… Then two are then surprised by Mr Sloane who invites Ernest up to hear the will of his late-departed Uncle Gabriel who becomes dearer the more Ernest imagines the riches in store.

Quickly adopting the airs and graces of presumptive new wealth and position, Ernest remains conflicted with fear and asks Syd to accompany him up to Yorkshire. After a disturbing exchange between Ernest and a ghostly station manager they hitch a lift from a hearse driver whose driver echoes a line from the classic Brit-horror, “there’s room for one in t’ back…”. They end up having to make their way cross country to the old house as even the driver of the dead won’t risk the final stretch…

Mr Pleasence unsettles all before him...

One at the imposing hall, we meet the first of Ernest’s strange relatives: Dennis Price as the wearied dipsomaniac “one-time gentleman” Guy (Dennis Price), well-oiled and over-sharing with the suggestion that all of the family are more than a little mentally ill. Then there’s Michael Gough having a (James) whale of a time as Fisk the greying old retainer with secrets to hide who guide the men to their rooms, Ernest in the East Wing.

We cut to Guy arguing with his sister Janet (Valerie Taylor) and their father Edward (George Woodbridge) and then Ernest meets Cousin Malcolm (Michael Gwynn) playing the organ who decides that he must be “quite mad” as the rest of them. Then Emily Broughton (Esma Cannon) enters exhibiting further aspects of the family disease talking about knitting scarfs for the soldiers at the front… in the Great War…

Shirley Eaton

Queue Shirley as Nurse Linda Dixon a breath of reassuring beauty and normalcy amongst the weirdness of the situation and the family. Every sits around the table as Mr Sloane reads out the news that his client is bequeathing “nothing” … Guy laughs and Janet talks of challenging a will re-written the day before he died. 

Why did he bring us all this way just to tell us he’s left us Sweet Fanny Adams…

That’s simple, he was like the rest of us, quite mad… 

After the generator breaks Ernest, Syd and Fisk go to investigate and on their way back discover Edward dead in the garden. The news is relayed to the rest of the group with the realisation that the murderer could only have been one of those in the house. No way out and with Fisk predicting more murder to follow it’s going to be a very long night…

His nerves getting the better of him, Ernest wanders into Linda’s room for the scene featured in Jonathan Coe’s book, Ernest determined to be the gentlemen but really intimidated by Linda’s presence. He allows his chivalry gets the better of him and he escapes into the hall where he battles an empty suit of armer to a draw.

Ernest: I suppose you must be scared what with all the things going on here tonight?

Linda: Oh, not really.

Ernest [nervously): Oh, well I am!

Sid, Michael and Kenneth

There won’t be much sleep tonight though as Ernest isn’t the only restless spirit, persuading the more grounded Syd to share his bed and annoying the latter as first a cat and then noises off disturb their sleep. Soon there will be blood and organ music and deception as the Broughton’s start to meet their ends one by one, straight on till morning…

As with the earlier films, the two Cats and Canaries especially, the film, directed by Pat Jackson from a script by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton, manages to mix jump shocks with comic moments in ways that work in ways Scooby Doo and the Mystery Gang would appreciate. There’s actual horror and no one is safe, it’s hard to tell who’s good and who is bad and things are never quite as they seem.

Ultimately, whilst it resembles a Carry on film, it’s more cohesive and genre faithful than Carry on Screaming and feels more like a play on screen with more sophistication and cinematic intent than you’d find with the rest of the crew. The last remaining mystery is why this film is only available on old DVD, surely a restoration and Blu-ray release are deserved with more background on the storied cast and the genre of films that make you laugh and make you cry!

The book is freely available from all good bookshops and at Amazon... highly recommended to all fans of the genres involved, politics and Shirley!

Road rage… Hell Drivers (1957)

I haven’t seen this film since a black and white Saturday in the seventies and it deserves its reputation as one of the best dramas of the period. Yes, the film is sped up to make some of the truck driving look even more dangerous than it probably was but on the bigger modern screen this is still a white knuckle ride as your foot reflexively pushes down hard on the imaginary brake at the base of your living room chair with every manic swing round an impossible corner or reckless overtake into on-coming traffic. 

Cy Endfield’s cutting is masterful of course and the editing of John D. Guthridge, pulling back and forth from the road, the monstrous trucks and the sweated reactions of one of the finest ensembles of actors you’ll find. Indeed, it’s not so much the speed of vehicles that scare you but the display of desperation and mad determination on the brows of Stanley Baker, Patrick McGoohan and Herbert Lom. This is Britain’s answer to Clouzot’s Wages of Fear with the dynamite being in men’s hearts and minds, post-war austerity of the soul.

Stanley Baker

 

Baker is brilliant as Tom Yately, just out of prison for an unspecified crime but aiming to follow the straight and narrow if he can only get a chance. He has the right mix of quite shame in his past with a modest, yet fierce belief in his own worth; such a likeable actor and one of the icons of post-War British cinema. None of the characters in Hell Drivers is entirely innocent and it’s a tough film with a dark heart. Tom finds his way to Hawletts, a haulage contractor ruthlessly run by Mr Cartley (William Hartnell), which makes money by moving as much gravel across from quarry to building site as possible with the mathematics of the daily deliveries being unrelenting: each driver needs to make at least twelve ten-ton, twenty-mile round trips a day or lose his job. The trucks are parrot-nosed Dodge 100 "Kew" vehicles not designed for comfort or even safety at the speeds the top drivers take them. 

Cartley's secretary Lucy (Prestatyn’s finest Peggy Cummins in jeans!) has an instant spark with Joe who’s heard from a pal about a vacancy – caused, as we learn, by the death of a driver – and he soon learns the ropes after a near miss on his first trip out in truck no. 13, with head mechanic Ed (the excellent Wilfrid Lawson). It doesn’t get any easier as Joe soon comes up against the driver’s top dog, "Red" Redman (Patrick McGoohan), the fastest and most reckless who has truck no. 1. McGoohan has screen presence to match Baker’s and is at his most febrile here, as out of control as the Dodge’s with a performance that veers towards the barrier of believability but stays just inside the double yellow line of sincerity.

Peggy Cummins

Herbert Lom’s Gino, driver of truck no. 3, provides a counterbalance, an Italian who remained after the war and who is both religious and honest. Gino loves Lucy, and sweetly calls her his “girl” even though we suspect she is only marking time with him as she soon proves with her advances to Tom; see, no-one is innocent.

The rest of the team is a roll-call of character-acting excellence, everyone of whom would have long careers; Dusty, no. 22 (Sid James), Tinker, truck 11 (Alfie Bass), Scottie, no. 7 (Gordon Jackson) and, sorry mate but the Scottie nickname was already taken, Johnny, no. 19 (someone called Sean Connery). We also have the stunningly stunning Jill Ireland as a waitress in the Pull Inn café where the boys congregate for breakfast and after a hard day’s truck. 

Tom soon gets with the flow and sets himself the target of beating Red’s record and winning the gold cigarette case for anyone who can better his 18 runs in a day. But the game is rigged as Red cheats by cutting across country and does everything he can to hamper the competition by fair means or foul. This is a tough film and you know not everyone will make it through…

What a carry on Mr Bond?

Tom goes to see his mother (Beatrice Varley) and brother Jimmy (David McCallum) to give them some of his hard-earned cash, but he’s still in disgrace with her not just for his crime but the fact he involved Jimmy who is now permanently on crutches as a result. It leaves you thinking what would have made the otherwise decent Tom so desperate for money that he’d risk both her sons in the crime. There’s something in this film that touches on working class choices and also exploitation as Hawletts turns out to be a crooked enterprise, with Cartley and Red colluding to cream off the pay for more drivers than they actually employ. They’re driving the men into the ground to make up for the missing headcount. 

The mood changes after a scrap at the local dance when Tom, wary of breaking his parole, makes a getaway before ethe police arrive to settle matters. The other drivers now start to call him coward and to undermine him at every turn, encouraged by Red. Gino swaps trucks with Tom to give him a chance at the record and pays the price… things are getting personal and Tom determines to risk everything to prove himself and to expose the con.

Parrot-nosed Dodge 100 "Kew" trucks

Dusty verdict: Hell Drivers is a classic late-period Brit Noir that manages to entertain whilst making you feel uneasy throughout. Even the lead character has been driven to such extremes that his brother is crippled and his mother won’t forgive him, whilst the rest, even those such as Sid and Alfie, are happy to join in with Tom’s victimisation, following Red’s miss directions.  

All of which gives the film the winning edge of a reality that remains, survival of the fittest against all the odds of a rigged system.  

It’s available on BFI Blu-ray with ten ton of extras and frankly, I wouldn’t hesitate to snap it up!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snappy families… What a Carve Up! (1961)

John Peel once introduced Pink Floyd’s post-psych, proto-rave “One of These Days (I’m Going to Cut You into Little Pieces”, as being described by Roger Waters as “a poignant appraisal of the contemporary social situation…” before adding, acerbically, “make of that what you will…”

Could the same be said of this upwardly-mobile whodunnit in which familial betrayal is seemingly at the service of monetary gain? Jonathan Coe obviously thought so when he used the title for his book critiquing 1980’s Thatcherite “greedism” but, whilst its view of human nature is broadly cynical, the Ray Cooney source material is more slapstick farce than satire. It is in truth, hilariously, no more than the standard British disregard for upper class human frailty and if anyone’s going to make it out of this one alive you know it’s more likely to be the down-to-Earth Kenneth Connor and his mate Sid… oh and Shirley Eaton, of course: have you seen those pins?!

Shirley and Ken

As Adam Faith, who makes a late appearance in this film, once sang: “what do you want if you don’t want money?” Laughs, I suppose?? As it turns out there’s quite a few of those in What a Carve Up! Which features some of the finest comedy-performers of their generation in an age-old yarn about a shadowy house of mystery…

Sid and Ken play miss-matched best mates, sharing a flat and just about managing as Syd Butler a salesman and Ernest Broughton a horror novel proof-reader with an over-active imagination. News comes of the death of a distant relative Gabriel Broughton, the owner of Blackshaw Towers, and that Ernie must attend the reading of the will.

This bolt from the blue has Ernie dreaming of an inheritance but after a long trip on a smokey train he and his newly-appointed “legal advisor”, Syd, make their way through forbidding fog to the family pile: Blackshaw? Sure it’s black… and very, very dark.

The clan is gathered

They are greeted by Fisk (Michael Gough), the ghoulish family butler and ushered into the huge sitting room to meet Ernie’s family tree… There’s Guy (Dennis Price), Earnest’s cousin, a heavy drinker whose sardonic wit is utilised in permanent battle with his grimly-grasping sister Janet (Valerie Taylor). It’s hard to believe that they’re the off-spring of the bumblingly-avuncular Dr Edward Broughton (George Woodbridge).

But the Broughton’s seem an odd bunch for whom private education has not necessarily produced a balanced outlook: Great Aunt Emily Broughton (the genius Esma Cannon!) is a little confused and is convinced that the Great War is still on (did it ever really end?) whilst cousin Malcolm (a wonderful, wide-eyed turn from Michael Gwynn) is an unbalanced musician whose clearly had one too many Mozarts… he’s convinced it’s not him though but everybody else and to some extent he’s not wrong!

Fisk catches up on his reading

The boys arrive just in time for the start of proceedings with this grim clan all gathered around the dinning table waiting to hear if they’ve been left anything by Old Man Broughton as Everett Sloane (dead-deadpan Donald Pleasence) looks out with cold neutrality from over his spectacles… They are a most peculiar lot and generally none-too-keen on the mathematical impications of additional relatives.

But there’s one more to join them, the stunning Nurse Linda Dixon (the peerless Shirley Eaton, the sexual superpower of British comedy) who had looked after the old man – is there anything in the will for her and, as far as Ernie’s concerned, is there any of her in it for him?

James, Price, Connor and Eaton

Pretty soon there’s a lot more to concern Ernie’s over-active imagination as his relatives start being killed off one by one… the murdered is surely amongst them but who? Will Sid and Ernie find out in time, will Ernie recover from seeing Nurse Dixon getting changed, is the War really still on and what’s all this got to do with Adam Faith anyway…

You’ll have to watch it to find out.

Dusty verdict: If the plot sound familiar that’s because it bears resemblance to both The Old Dark House and The Ghoul both thirties classics ripe for the Cooney treatment and updating with extra – intended – laughs for the Carry On generation. It works too even though the humour was distinctly parochial, the New York Times reviewer being especially scathing of this “vulgar”, “inept” “ostensible British farce…”

A classic Connors cor!

Pat Jackson directs with swift efficiency making the most of every creaking door, hidden passageway and shadowy figure combing their effect on nervy-Ernie with a hit on the audience. What the New York Times failed to recognise is the film’s knowing heart: a post-modern awareness that is both comforting and satirically funny. Syd and Ken are everymen – thrust into this madness so we can have a laugh on our behalf, all sat together with post-war austerity barely giving way to a decade just about to swing.

Well worth a watch and readily available from Amazon and the rest.