PART 3: A TIGON IN THE TANK
[FOOTSTEPS, ECHO IN A BIG EMPTY BUILDING]
There’s something forlorn about an empty cinema. Tragic, about a closed one.
Cinemas closed across the UK in the 1970’s. The seats, torn and broken. The curtains, dusty and drawn. The reassuring green glow of an exit sign, now dark.
Cinemas closed, and were turned into Bingo Halls, or bulldozed completely. Buildings where once dreams had lived were silenced, replaced by car parking lots. Before the rise of the blockbuster, the era of the multiplex, this was the fate of British cinemas.
Tony Tenser’s fate was tied to these fanciful art deco era buildings, and the 1970’s would see career hit a brick wall. Hit film after hit film turn into flop after flop. He’d try to out-think the problem, to shake things up, but to no avail.
This is the story of that last gasp. The good films that miraculously came out of it, and the bad films that hastened the demise of Tigon. Welcome to part three of the Tony Tenser Story.
[FILM STARTING SOUNDS]
[TONY TENSER THEME]
By 1969, Tony Tenser’s company, Tigon British Films was riding high. Their film, “Witchfinder General”, directed by Michael Reeves was that rare thing – a commercially successful exploitation film that had also achieved a measure of critical success.
But just a few months later, Tony’s plans for more films with Reeves were in ruins. Reeves died tragically young, just months after the film was released.
But worse was to come. The major studios, reeling from falling box-office receipts and unsure how to recapture their audience, turned their eyes on Tony’s audience.
In the early 1960’s, the big studios wouldn’t go near the subjects that were the bread and butter of the exploitation film-makers. Sex, violence… horror. Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” was a case in point. It was a major studio release, from Universal. But they only took it because Hitchcock insisted. And Hitchcock’s contracted studio, Paramount, wouldn’t touch it at all.
It became a phenomenon. A world-wide smash.
And Hollywood took note.
All the same, the change didn’t happen overnight. The old-time studio bosses took a few years to adjust. They sniffed at projects like “Repulsion” and “Witchfinder General” and stuck with what they considered to be prestige projects. Costly historical epics like “Cleopatra” which almost sank 20th Century Fox, and big budget musicals like Julie Andrew’s “Star!” which failed to find an audience. But the studios learned from their mistakes. They moved on.
In 1969, Columbia pictures released “Easy Rider”, United Artists released “Midnight Cowboy” and Paramount released “Barbarella”. These films had budgets that Tony Tenser could only dream of.
But the subjects of all these films were pure exploitation. And they were both cultural and financial hits. The writing was on the wall for Tony Tenser and his friends.
[THE BODY STEALERS MUSIC]
Even if the end was in sight for Tigon pictures, Tony Tenser remained blissfully unaware. As the 1960’s drew to a close, it was business as usual at Tigon who were ready to release their next science fiction epic:
[THE BODY STEALERS TRAILER]
Crossing science fiction with James Bond, “The Body Stealers” is a truly dreadful film. But it’s hard to dislike. It certainly has verve, energy and campy humour to liven up the embarrassingly awful special effects and silly script.
The story, which concerns aliens stealing the British air force’s top men in mid-parachute, has a Ron Burgundy-esque hero, with chiselled features, running around in a blue cardigan, charming every woman he encounters. Including a fantasy glamour alien.
While “The Body Stealers” is relentlessly silly modern audiences will, I’m sure, get some laughs from it. Patrick Allen – who plays the hero of the piece – delivers all his lines with a smirk. Previous Tigon alumni, Hilary Dwyer and Robert Flemyng also have roles and no-one appears to be taking it seriously.
Certainly, aging Hollywood star George Sanders wasn’t. Sanders, who had excelled at playing a cynical cad in films such as “Rebecca” and “All About Eve”, felt free to deliver his onscreen performance while reading the script non-too-cunningly concealed in his lap, and his presence here adds more curiosity than class.
Another curio in this tale was the presence of Neil Connery – brother of Sean – who had a short-lived career as a leading man in Europe, appearing in low-budget James Bond rip-offs with titles like “Operation 007”. He may not have been a great actor, but his name looked great on a poster, for short-sighted or confused patrons. And anyway, Tony was a great believer in allowing fresh talent to feature in his films.
In fact, in his limited way, Tony Tenser did live up to his reputation as the British Roger Corman. Just as that producer excelled at spotting young talent, like Scorcese and Coppola, Tony Tenser had given Roman Polanski and Michael Reeves their opportunities. And he saw the potential in a young film-maker he met named Michael Armstrong.
According to Armstrong, Tony couldn’t have been more helpful. “I had this horror script, and no-one wanted to know. Then I went to see Tony and I told him about the project and that I wanted to direct it. I left the script with him on Saturday and on the Monday signed a contract. It was as simple as that!”
Armstrong’s script was called “The Dark” and it was the perfect candidate for another Tigon/AIP co-production. He thought of it as a “Psycho” type tale of murder in amongst the complicated relationships of a group of swinging 60’s teens. And it was a surprisingly progressive tale, including both gay and straight relationships, reflecting Armstrong’s own experiences as a young man of that era.
Looking at it from a modern viewpoint, it looks even more promising. This film had the potential to be a 1960’s equivalent of “Friday the 13th” with a mysterious killer, stalking and killing the teens one by one.
But the series of setbacks and compromises which served as lucky accidents for Tigon on “Witchfinder General” would not be repeated here. As with Witchfinder, the problems began with casting. Negotiations began months before Karloff’s death in February of 1969, and AIP were insistent that the ailing star must feature in the film – purely because he owed them 10 days of work from a previous contract.
Furthermore, they insisted Karloff be given a large number of scenes to get their 10 day’s worth of shooting. They helpfully wrote these scenes for Armstrong, and featured Karloff as a wheelchair-bound detective. It really didn’t fit with the rest of the story at all.
And then Boris passed away, to be replaced by British actor Dennis Price. Who poor Michael Armstrong still had to include. Still in a wheelchair. For no good reason.
Also, added AIP. To make room for these additional scenes, some of the existing script would have to go. There was really no need for all that stuff about relationships was there? Armstrong was handed a revised version of his script with several key scenes ripped out.
And by the way, they continued. Who even WERE these kids? Who WAS this Ian Ogilvy guy that Armstrong wanted to cast? No, he had to go. And – who the hell is DAVID BOWIE? What sort of a name even IS that?
Armstrong had met with the young singer in 1968, and was immediately fascinated by his presence and charisma. He knew if he got Bowie on camera, it would be something special. But AIP were not convinced.
Seriously, Mike. If you HAVE to cast a singer, how about someone new, someone fresh, someone that modern, with-it, groovy kids can REALLY identify with? Hey, how about this Frankie Avalon kid!? Now there’s a fresh young face that the teens just LOVE.
And if you don’t know Frankie Avalon, he was a particularly bland American teen star from the early 1960’s who starred in the popular drive-in movie, “Beach Blanket Bingo”. He is possibly the polar opposite of David Bowie. But AIP were insistent.
Which is why Michael Armstrong’s film features a very out-of-place American with a 1950’s haircut in a film about swinging London teens.
Armstrong was deeply upset by all this interference; but in a meeting with Tony Tenser was assured that he could film TWO versions of the film – one for Tigon, and one for AIP.
With only a four-week shoot to accommodate two versions of the same film, Armstrong did his best. But when the AIP executives saw a rough cut of their version of the film – with the ludicrous stuff featuring Frankie Avalon and the redundant sub-plot about the detective in a wheelchair – they were furious. The film made no sense, they said, and who even WAS this Michael Armstrong kid? They said.
The line producer, Gerry Levy took over. He filmed NEW new scenes, and introduced a new character – a stalker boyfriend, played by George Sewell. It still made very little sense. And the unmasking of the killer comes out of nowhere, but at least it was less incomprehensible than before.
Michael Armstrong praised Tony Tenser for being as supportive as possible, under the circumstances but when the poor man was invited to a screening of the finished cut, he could barely recognise his work. “By the time the lights came up, my head was in my hands,” he lamented.
However, AIP got what they wanted. A low budget film to draw in undemanding teenagers. Armstrong’s film was re-titled, “The Haunted House of Horror” and/or “Horror House”, and on the strength of those titles alone, the film made a decent profit.
But if horror proved disappointing, at least Tigon had another string to their bow – sex. They rushed out another naughty pseudo-documentary called “Love in Our Time”, and cashed in the brief vogue for films about lesbians, sparked by Robert Aldrich’s surprise hit, “The Killing of Sister George”. Tigon’s film showing women together, also happened to be the first British film to feature a menage a trois. It was called “Monique” and was surprisingly not as exploitative as it sounds – featuring a sensitive script and actual acting.
But possibly Tigon’s most bizarre use of sex was to pair it with British slapstick comedian, Norman Wisdom.
[WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE THEME]
For those of you who are too young – or not British enough to remember – Norman Wisdom was a hugely successful comedy star of the early 1960’s. He’s probably best described as the British Jerry Lewis. He typically plays a go-getting, non-too-bright, accident-prone underdog character, best known for getting into scrapes and for falling off things, while also being quite loud.
[CLIP]
But while slapstick is a surprisingly complex and international language of comedy, late 1960’s audiences fancied themselves as a little more sophisticated than that. Take Peter Sellers. He was a slapstick comedy hero, boasting international fame thanks to his accident-prone character, Inspector Clouseau of the “Pink Panther” films.
But by the late 1960’s, he had moved on to more sophisticated material, such as sex comedies “What’s New Pussycat” and the counter-culture satire “I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!” which saw Sellers’ square character falling in love with a flower child and joining the Age of Aquarius.
So why not try the same sort of thing with Norman Wisdom?
[CLIP]
Aside from the obvious reason, I mean.
[WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE THEME]
I do not wish to demean Norman Wisdom’s talents. His early comedies have stood the test of time remarkably well, and he remains a beloved figure in British comedy to this day. But his foray into the world of adult humour may have fared better if he had not been paired up with director Menachem Golan.
The name may be familiar to you. Menachem Golan would later team up with fellow Israeli Yoram Globus to form the mighty Cannon Group – the production company which would dominate 1980’s video rental shelves with Chuck Norris action pictures and ninja movies. But as a director, he was not known for his light touch.
One famous story about Golan, recounts a tale where his wife visited her husband while he was directing a film. He took a look at her, with their young baby.
“Perfect!” he said, and seized the baby, placing it on the back of a horse-drawn wagon. “End ECTION!” he yelled. The horse took off, the wagon took off, and the baby bounced around on the back.
His wife, seeing her baby thrown around in that way, went to catch her child before he bounced right out of the wagon. But Menachem held her back.
“Please! Darling!” he said. “Not in the middle of the shot!”
A larger-than-life character, prone to strong outbursts and with an impressive military background, he wasn’t EXACTLY the perfect choice to direct a comedy film starring an anarchic physical comedian. And he DIDN’T appreciate Wisdom’s preference for improvised comedy.
Locked into a script which Golan viewed as a strict blueprint, to be followed with military precision, Wisdom appears subdued and unhappy. Worse still, the British public just weren’t ready to accept their lovable clown as a middle-aged seducer of teenager Sally Geeson, chasing her around in his Y-fronts.
And consequently, the film was a miserable failure in Norman’s home country.
But – as was often the case – Tony managed to pull a rabbit from the hat. A skilled negotiator, he sold the US rights to an American distribution sight-unseen. And so the film made a profit for Tony despite a lamentable performance in the US too.
The American distribution rights saved Tony’s next disastrous effort too, a particularly cheap-looking “Barbarella” rip off, which attempted that same mix of adventure, sex, mild sado-masochism and science fiction. The Americans distributed it in the USA under the title “Alien Women”; but in the UK – under the title “Zeta One” it barely got a release at all.
And no bloody surprise, it is a TERRIBLE film – an unsalvageable mess. It is something to do with alien women abducting beautiful earth ladies for… ah… reasons. But standing in the way of their plans are James Robertson Justice and Charles Hawtrey (of all people) heading up a secret government department.
The two men were established British comedy actors, well out of place in this tawdry tale of British space strippers. I can only assume they were desperate for the money.
Theoretically, this is a tale of female empowerment, in that the alien women run rings around the dastardly government men. But naturally, the women do this mostly naked. And occasionally, get captured by the nefarious males, for a spot of mildly rubbish S&M.
It is unsurprising the women are mostly naked. The budget for this film is so thin, the costume designer’s “futuristic” outfits for the female aliens are scanty at best. Most of the poor actresses look like they are wearing macrame plant-pot holders for the duration of the film. Meanwhile, the interiors of the alien women’s spaceship look like they were shot in a draughty warehouse. And the exteriors appear to have been shot on a overcast golf course. The jokes are bad, the story disconnected and the whole enterprise is embarrassingly amateurish.
Not only that, but the completed film was only 60 minutes long. Tony brought in his old reliable director Vernon Sewell to direct some additional “bookend” scenes, starring Yutte Stensgaard from Hammer’s “Lust for a Vampire” to add 20 minutes to the running time. And if these scenes – of Yutte playing strip poker in what appears to be a crappy little flat – look cheap it’s – well, because they were.
“Zeta One” is an embarrassment of a film, and a colossal waste of the talent involved. James Robertson Justice followed in the George Sanders tradition and refused to learn any of his lines. Instead he had them written onto his trousers. Charles Hawtrey struggles to lend his comedy talents to unfunny lines and Hammer’s Valerie Leon is similarly wasted.
Tony shelved the film in the UK, and counted his blessings that the Americans wanted it at all.
But Tony wouldn’t be able to rely on American money saving his productions for much longer. The major studios were taking a battering in the early 1960’s. Out of touch with their audiences, the Hollywood studios – and even lively exploitation studios like AIP – were stepping back from involvement in the British film industry. Overnight, it seemed, the dollars disappeared, the finance evaporated, and British film studios were left to look to themselves for financing.
It is readily apparent. For example – looking at Hammer’s early 1970’s output – compared to the heyday of its 1960’s collaborations with Warner Brothers, there is a steep decline in production quality. Redundancies were felt throughout the industry. Cinemas closed, and those which stayed open, fell into disrepair. It was a vicious circle. British audiences stayed away from cinemas with broken seats, threadbare curtains and worn carpet, and with no audience to sustain them, British film production plummeted.
To an extent, this played to the production strategy of Tony’s early Compton days. Instead of seeking co-production deals across a raft of films, Tony focussed on raising limited financing on a film-by-film basis. On the theory that, if a film were cheap enough, even modest success could still put Tigon in the black. And it was on this basis that Tony optioned a film called, “Young Man, I Think You’re Dying” an extremely unusual, character-driven horror film, starring Beryl Reid and Dame Flora Robson.
Even here, Tony managed to turn the decline of British cinema to his advantage. Dame Flora was apparently persuaded to take the role on the advice of none other than Sir Laurence Olivier. The esteemed actor advised Dame Flora that any role in the current climate was better than none.
The two actresses were probably helped by the fact that “Young Man, I Think You’re Dying” is more of a family drama of hidden secrets than a traditional horror film. The film feels more like a BBC play about repressed memories, punctuated by moments of violence in which the leading ladies play no part. As a result, the film – retitled “The Beast in the Cellar” – is a frustrating watch for the horror viewer looking for quick, gory fun. And Tony Tenser spotted right away that the film he’d got was not the film he’d commissioned, “If you want to make a woman’s film, you make a weepy, not a Western” was how he rather unpolitically put it.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad film, exactly. The two lead actresses are great together, and if it moves along more slowly than expected it is at least a well-acted film with a strong anti-war message.
At Tony’s insistence, additional scenes of horror were shot and inserted into the film. As a result they do feel rather out of place in this odd little drama. But at least it made for a good poster and a good trailer, to lure in the public.
[TRAILER]
However, perhaps because this film didn’t go in the direction that Tony wanted, he decided to split the risk with his next venture. He had been impressed by the compendium films of Amicus and wanted to try something similar. An anthology horror film which was essentially a series of short films patched together. After all, he reasoned, if he ended up with one dud story (like “The Beast in the Cellar”) at least something better would be along in twenty minutes.
He commissioned writer Robert Wynne-Simmons to write an anthology tale for Tigon. Wynne-Simmons initially disliked the idea, but he had enjoyed Tigon’s “Witchfinder General” a great deal. He’d liked the look of that film, how it had brought the past to vivid life in its unflinching depiction of rural life with its lived-in shacks and worn down peasants. So he decided his anthology would be set in that same world, exploring the mystery of British folklore from three different perspectives.
Wynne-Simmons began working on three connected stories about the insidious effect of an ancient, pagan artefact. Telling the story of innocent young lovers whose lives are destroyed by it, then of a naïve clergyman battling against it, and finally of a rural magistrate who comes face to face with it. His working title for the project was, “The Devil’s Flesh” and it started to take shape over the course of the next few months.
But while he was waiting for this project to come to life, Tony began to feel uneasy about horror. Not only were the big studios getting in on the act, but a new wave of horror had begun to land on British shores. On one hand, the young Americans, newly radicalised by Vietnam and Kent State with their wild, anti-establishment horror films like “Night of the Living Dead” and on the other hand, the Italians, pioneering their own brand of ultra-stylish, ultra-violent horror with “Bay of Blood” and “The Bird With The Crystal Plumage”.
Tony decided – once again – to shift ground. He commissioned a children’s film of all things with “Black Beauty” and Patrick Curtis returned with another interesting proposal for Tony.
Patrick Curtis was the man who had introduced Tony Tenser to Michael Curtis and the three men had made “The Sorcerers” together. Patrick’s then-girlfriend was Raquel Welch who had thrown herself into the production, helping out wherever she could, despite her nascent star status.
By the early 1970’s Curtis and Welch were now married, and Patrick was keen to find a star vehicle for his wife who was – at that time – still more famous for sporting a fur bra in “One Million Years BC” than for any serious acting. She wanted to establish herself and Patrick had two scripts for Tony to consider. The first was “The Devil’s Discord” – a haunted house film that Michael Reeves had been keen to make at one time. But Tony’s interest in horror had waned from those heady days.
But the second project…
“I always wanted to make a cowboy film,” Tenser confessed. “I’d been watching Westerns since I was a kid and I needed to get it out of my system. So when Patrick showed me the script for a film called, ‘Hannie Caulder’, I jumped at it.”
It was a rare moment of film-fan enthusiasm for Tony Tenser – the man who always looked at the marketing angles and the dollars and cents first. In that moment, the no-nonsense businessman was replaced by the ten year old who sneaked into his local Odeon to watch John Wayne movies.
And – it would nearly ruin him.
The fact that Patrick Curtis and Raquel Welch came as a package deal meant that, at a stroke, Tigon was suddenly making a major Hollywood film with a major star. This was both good and bad. Good, because it made financing easier to come by, with banks lining up to underwrite the project. Bad, because now Tony had to cast more stars to play alongside Raquel.
And it is quite a cast. Ernest Borgnine and Strother Martin were brought on to play the villains of the piece, who shoot down Hannie’s husband in cold blood, before raping her and burning down her homestead. Robert Culp is the cynical gunslinger who teaches Hannie how to handle a gun, in order to help her on her quest for revenge, and finally Christopher Lee gets an unlikely role as a British gunsmith.
Yes. Christopher Lee. Tony Tenser had promised the actor a non-horror role in one of his films. And Lee seems to be enjoying himself, free of fangs at last in a good-guy role.
All the same, costs were suppressed by shooting in Spain on an old spaghetti Western set and Raquel Welch deferred her upfront salary for a share in the film’s profits.
But right away, problems arose. Tony found that the cost-cutting and short-cutting that were part and parcel of British independent film-making were not tolerated by the American crew. Sharing accommodation and travel wouldn’t even be considered. Patrick Curtis slowed down the production by insisting on supervision of all scenes which featured Raquel Welch. And when a member of the crew passed comment on the producer’s wife, it escalated into a fight that saw Curtis thrown in a Spanish jail.
The atmosphere soured further when members of the crew went unpaid, due to the spiralling production costs.
As a result , the production slowed to a snail’s pace and Tony was informed that – unless costs were cut, or the production speed increased – the whole thing would have to be shut down with the film incomplete. Tony took the desperate step of assembling a rough cut of the film – with publicity photos used to cover for scenes which had not yet been shot. It was screened for investors and distributors alike and – much to Tony’s relief – Paramount came through with a distribution offer that saved the film.
Strangely enough, on watching the film, all this behind the scenes drama doesn’t show up on screen. It’s a straightforward enough revenge-western. Possibly too straightforward – the only complexity or interest being added by the fact that, for once, the woman in a Western avenges herself. But it’s exciting – sometimes funny – and when Hannie gets her revenge it is satisfying and thrilling.
[CLIP]
Despite this, it wasn’t a huge success for Tigon – and marked the beginning and end of their attempt to make Hollywood movies. Sadly, it also marked the beginning of the end of Raquel’s marriage to Patrick Curtis too, and by the end of the shoot the couple were separated.
As for the critical response, it was mixed. Reviewers enjoyed sections of the film, but were confused by the jarring changes in tone. These are apparent, even watching the film now. There are a number of humorous scenes, in watching Hannie learn how to become a gunslinger. There are, of course, glamorous scenes of Hannie buying cowboy clothes and shrinking her trousers in the bath. But these are against a backdrop of a vicious murder and a cruel rape. The rape scene in particular is unpleasant and unnecessary – and while the audience sees nothing, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth. So when Ernest Borgnine and his gang are later revealed as comically incompetent… it’s just not funny.
A rape scene in another Tigon movie was also causing problems for Tony. Robert Wynne-Simmons script for the anthology movie, “The Devil’s Flesh” had now been condensed back into one story at the insistence of the director Tony had hired, a fellow named Piers Haggard. And it had been re-titled, “Satan’s Skin”.
Haggard was a good choice for the project. He’d done a number of television episodes for the BBC and he immediately saw what Wynne-Simmons was driving at. “The thing that appealed to me,” he said, “was the rural setting. The nooks and crannies of woodland – the edges of fields. The ploughing, the labour – the sense of soil was something I tried to bring to the film.”
Haggard was fascinated by the idea of ancient, pagan evil emerging from the very soil itself. Almost as if ancient fertility gods, Dionysian agents of chaos, were infecting the minds of the villagers. Consequently, he sets the camera low for much of the film, to make the audience feel as if some ancient evil is coming up from out of the earth. Haggard was also very clear he didn’t want to make a film grounded in Christianity – his satan, his devil didn’t spring from the Book of Revelations, but from the old religions of ancient Britain. Not good, not evil… just a force of nature, indifferent to human suffering.
“I was determined not to make a camp Hammer style horror film. I wasn’t interested in Dracula,” Haggard explained. “But I was interested in the dark things that people feel - and the dark things that happen.”
It is likely that Haggard took some of those “dark things” too seriously and pushed things a little too far. What Wynne-Simmons only hinted at, Haggard decided to show. Which is why the film includes a cruel rape and murder scene. Even Haggard expresses some regret for it now.
“If I look at the rape scene now, I think it’s very probably too strong,” he said. “And it’s interesting that I wasn’t bothered at the time. I think that if you get your teeth into a scene which is going to be very strong, many directors get seduced – and I was seduced by the sheer dramatic power.”
Writer Robert Wynne-Simmons reiterates that the rape was not in his screenplay, “It was implied but not shown,” he said. “It was Piers who insisted in doing it that way. I found it all very disturbing.”
Haggard explains that he was influenced by the culture of the time. “We were all a bit interested in witchcraft, we were all a bit interested in free love. The rules of the cinema were changing, and nudity became possible. And indeed possibly over-prevalent. Because the lid had been slightly taken off,” he explained.
However, the most problematic part of the scene is that it involves young people. And it was this aspect which also bothered the censor. Cuts were ordered, away from the rape and to reaction shots. But as Robert Wynne-Simmons said, “The way it was re-cut makes it even more unpleasant.”
The scene itself, of a group of children and teenagers, taking part in a bizarre ceremony that culminates in murder, is led by a character named Angel Blake. In a film which features a large cast of characters (due to the original anthology format being compressed) it is Angel who really stands out, due to a powerful performance from Linda Hayden.
She was only 17 when she was cast in this part, but had already starred in a drama called “Baby Love” for Tony Tenser’s old partner, Michael Klinger. It was another unsavoury “Lolita” type tale – this sort of thing was very much in vogue at the time. Although taken from a modern perspective, it makes for deeply uncomfortable viewing.
Nevertheless, Linda’s talent shone through and she was subsequently cast in “Taste The Blood of Dracula” for Hammer, as the daughter of one of the hypocritical Victorian gentlemen, and again she really stands out from the rest of the non-vampire cast.
Piers Haggard thought she would be perfect for Angel, juxtaposing her youthful and, well “angelic” appearance with a soul possessed by something rotten and ancient. In some ways, you could see her as the English Linda Blair.
[LINDA INTERVIEW CLIP]
[LINDA IT WAS VERY DIFFERENT]
[LINDA GETS A TETANUS JAB]
[GIMME DAT DING]
Linda also recalled the chap who played Satan. “He was a funny little guy. I never saw him out of his Satan costume,” she said. Unusually for the embodiment of absolute evil, he was obsessed with a song in the charts at that time, ‘Gimme Dat Ding’ which he would sing all the time, somewhat undermining his status as Lord of Darkness.
Patrick Wymark is the other stand out in a very strong cast. He plays the magistrate, determined to defeat Satan, but there is a touch of the Witchfinder General about him. It seems like Wynne-Simmons and Piers Haggard were having fun with the idea of a cruel witchfinder, finding himself at odds with actual evil.
Aside from Piers Haggard’s over-enthusiasm for brutality and violence there were no major issues with this film. It came in only slightly above budget, and is an impressive film. In fact, the marriage of ideas between writer and director resulted in one of the most singular British horror films of the 1970’s.
It feels like a genuine attempt to do something very different, which kicks the stone away from Britain’s pagan past, to unearth something hideous under the veneer of Christianity. Like “The Wicker Man”, which would be released two years later, this is a film that attempts to explore the influence of the ancient Britons, the Celtic people on modern Britons, even after numerous invasions and the adoption of Christianity.
You might like to think English history starts in 1066, says this film… but in actuality the English identity goes back much further… and is much, much darker, than you’d think…
The critical reaction to the film “Satan’s Skin” was also largely positive. But early screenings indicated that audiences were completely apathetic. It was most likely the period setting, which made the film feel like a throwback to the previous decade, as opposed to modern horror movies like “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist”.
All the same, Tony Tenser still believed in the film, and felt that if it could be re-packaged it would do better. It would eventually be released under the title “The Blood on Satan’s Claw”, on a double-bill with “The Beast in the Cellar” – and still proved a box-office disappointment. The only solace Tony could take from this is that – in the 50 years following its release, the film would gain a huge reputation and a passionate following as a British “folk-horror” film. It seems that Tony’s instincts for the film were correct. The problem being that the film was way ahead of its time and now has a reputation that continues to grow.
But that was of little benefit to Tigon at the time. Additionally galling that – at the same time – Hammer made one of their most popular films – and the biggest hit at the British box-office in 1971.
It is not what you think.
[ON THE BUSES THEME]
Hammer had rediscovered the knack for making hit films from tv shows. And they’d adapted the saucy laughs and cheeky humour of British sitcom “On The Buses” for the cinema. If you have never seen the show, it’s about a cheeky bus driver and his cheeky bus conductor chasing what they call “crumpet” – or in other words, women at least 20 years younger than them.
To be fair, this was the plot of nearly ALL British sitcoms at that time.
Tigon attempted to leap onto the same bandwagon with an adaptation of another sitcom, “For the Love of Ada” – but as this was about old age pensioners in love, it didn’t have quite the same saucy appeal as “On The Buses” and it provided Tigon with yet another flop. Tigon tried again, with a film called, “The Magnificent 7 Deadly Sins” – a comic anthology film which attempted to channel the appeal of a host of British comedy stars:
[CLIP TRAILER]
Yet again, audiences stayed away. British tv viewers liked these actors for the characters they played on tv. They weren’t interested in seeing them being someone else in a short movie segment.
Spike Milligan complained that the film wasn’t marketed correctly but I think he’s unfair. The sad truth is that most of the segments aren’t very funny – the one exception being Milligan’s section on ‘Sloth’ – which I’d recommend you skip to and then ditch the rest of the film.
[DOOMWATCH TV THEME]
Of more interest was Tigon’s attempt to make a film from another TV series. “Doomwatch” was a popular science-fiction thriller about a team of ecological investigators, looking into the effects of pollution on the land. And if it sounds a bit dry, try to think of it more as a ecological version of The X-Files, with the Doomwatch team facing off against science-fiction monsters, like new viruses super-intelligent computers and rats with a newly-acquired taste for human flesh.
In Tigon’s “Doomwatch” the film, a new character played by Ian Bannen investigates a remote island where a strange disease appears to be mutating the islanders into super-strong, neanderthal versions of themselves.
It seems an odd choice – to sideline the regular characters of the tv series to supporting roles, but Ian Bannen makes for a great hero, aided on the island by Sally Geeson as he delves into the mystery. And, perhaps feeling a need for greater control, or perhaps just wanting to get away from the business end of films and back into the fun of production, Tony decided to line produce this one himself.
And actually, the film looks great. The eerie island setting, nicely evoked by veteran Hammer director Peter Sasdy is complimented by good performances from Bannen and Geeson. The biggest problem with the film is that the popularity of the tv series was on the wane when it was released. The tv show would actually end that same year. It was yet another Tigon film which received disappointing reviews, and bad box-office receipts.
And yet… Tigon as a company was doing rather well, despite the flops. They were still managing to make money from foreign imports, their old bread-and-butter. In the early 1970’s they released films with names like “Au Pair Girls” and “Kama Sutra” and with names like those I’m sure you don’t need me to explain the plots. In 1971, the company announced profits of nearly half a million pounds… and yet – the perception in the city of London was that film production companies were a bad investment, due to the dire financial situation right across the movie industry at that time. It was time for a quick bit of re-branding…
And so, Tigon was no more. The half-lion, half-tiger that represented Tony was retired, and Tigon British Films became the innocuous-sounding LMG. And given the poor reception to Tigon productions, as opposed to the decent profits from films made elsewhere that Tigon distributed, there were questions raised about whether LMG should focus purely on distribution – and ditch movie-making for good…
But production didn’t stop all at once at LMG. A number of erstwhile Tigon projects were already underway. These included a couple of high-profile, highbrow projects intended to improve Tigon’s reputation for low-rent exploitation. These included a filmed version of the stage play “Miss Julie” starring Helen Mirren and historical romance named “Neither Sea Nor Sand”, written by British tv newsreader Gordon Honeycombe.
Of course, neither of these two projects were commercial enough to save LMG from their downward spiral.
“Miss Julie” wasn’t the only stage adaptation LMG were working on. They also attempted a somewhat less cultured adaptation of a West End farce, named “Not Now Darling”.
[MUSIC]
The film stars British comedy regular Joan Sims, Leslie Philips, Barbara Windsor and a host of other familiar faces, and Tony had hopes that “Not Now” films could be the next “Carry On”, and in fact a sequel titled, “Not Now Comrade” would eventually be released. The British comedy contingent was enhanced still further by bringing David Croft of “Dad’s Army” fame to direct.
[CLIP]
Bringing in a director of tv shows made sense. The truly pioneering thing about “Not Now Darling” was that it was shot in what was called MultiVision – a new technology bought and owned by LMG. It utilised not one, but four cameras all running at once – just as in studio tv productions. The basically meant the director could make the movie in much the same way as a traditional tv sitcom, cutting between the four cameras afterward to create a sense of pace and excitement. The unique thing about MultiVision was that, after the film had been assembled, it could be transferred to celluloid.
LMG first used this new technology on “Miss Julie” and they were excited that this would reduce film production time and therefore cost. But it was a new technique and there was a certain amount of chaos. “It was a shambles,” said Barbara Windsor.
This comes across in the film itself, which is a strangely flat, lifeless production, with actors who seem constrained and awkward – performing as if they are in a theatre with no audience. Therefore, the frenetic build up and release of comic tension required by a farce just isn’t there and the increasingly ridiculous behaviour of the characters is just annoying.
Not only that, but the humour has aged badly. And watching this film feels like you’re watching an X-rated version of “Are You Being Served”?
[CLIP]
All the same, LMG now felt their future lay with MultiVista, and purchased the rights to yet another British sitcom, “Father Dear Father” with a view to filming a feature version of the show. Beyond that, they had no plans to make any other sort of film. And Tony Tenser – the founder of Tigon British films, felt his time at the company was coming to an end.
He had just one last film with LMG. But one that had begun life when Tigon was still Tigon. It seemed a fitting end to Tony’s time with the company. And in some ways, it serves as something of elegy to 1960’s British horror in general. It was called, “The Creeping Flesh”.
[MUSIC]
Not only was it shot at studios traditionally used by Amicus – in fact on the same set as “The House That Dripped Blood” but it starred two Hammer-made stars in Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee – and was directed by Hammer director Freddie Fisher. The film even features a short appearance by Hammer fan favourite, Michael Ripper.
This package of talent had been put together by producer Michael Redbourn, so Tony had relatively little to do in terms of working on the script or bringing actors onboard. Really, all he had to do was sign the cheques and let the team get to it. All the same, ever the movie fan, he couldn’t resist visiting the set and catching up with Peter Cushing, who he had not seen since “The Blood Beast Terror”. But a lot had changed for the actor in that time.
“He’d changed quite a lot,” said Tony. “He’d nursed his wife through a long illness and when she died it had quite an impact on him. He was much quieter, much more withdrawn.” Throwing himself into his work, The Creeping Flesh was just one of a dozen films that Cushing would make in the two years following his wife’s death.
In this film, Cushing and Lee play brothers and rival scientists – in competition with each other over the coveted Richter prize! The two men are both investigating the cause of evil and insanity – both believing it is all in the blood…
[CLIP]
However, it is Cushing who makes the breakthrough when he retrieves an ancient skeleton from New Guinea. It is – he tells us – the remains of Shish Kang, the “Evil One” of local legend who corrupted man with his nature, bringing war and hatred to humanity.
Cushing becomes increasingly excited when water is spilled on the skeletal hand – and in a nifty bit of stop-motion animation – the creeping flesh of the title – regenerates on the area. Cushing removes the enlarged finger – I shan’t tell you what it looks like – and takes a blood sample.
[CLIP]
It really does say something about Cushing’s gifts as an actor that he makes any of this sound remotely plausible. Of course, with his distracted air, and crazed manner, he brings to mind a more distracted version of Dr. Frankenstein and soon enough he is experimenting on his own daughter – with disastrous results.
Lee is not given nearly as much to do in this film, but he’s as intimidating as ever, in charge of a hideous psychiatric institution. And it is always a pleasure to see these two old friends together again.
[CLIP]
Nevertheless, there is something of an air of disappointment in this last period horror from Tigon. Given the amount of talent involved, it is a shame the film lacks the passion and verve of the classic Hammer movies. And the lack of budget didn’t help. We are well into the final act of the film by the time Shish Kang is resurrected and goes off to seek revenge on Peter Cushing – so the trailer of the film, which promises wall-to-wall Creeping Flesh is a more than a little disappointing.
[TRAILER]
But the films weaknesses – and it’s strengths – were almost irrelevant by the time it was released. For another horror movie came out in 1973. The Exorcist didn’t just change the game, it swept all of the pieces off the board and threw them at the audience.
In this context, “The Creeping Flesh” seems hopelessly dated by comparison and it is only in more recent years – as this context faded, that the film has started to receive a little more recognition for the beautiful, stately horror that it is.
And with that, Tony stepped away from LMG… or Tigon… or whatever it was. After six years he was out on his own again. And he toyed with the idea of rolling the dice one last time, producing one last exploitation movie. And what a movie it was to be…
[FRIGHTMARE TRAILER]
Pete Walker was a director after Tony’s heart. A man who churned out movies with a watchful eye on what would grab the attention of a jaded public. A man who openly admitted to finding sex scenes boring, but was happy to include them if it meant increased box office receipts.
He'd cut his teeth making adverts in the 1960’s, before getting bored with it, buying his own equipment, and making softcore porn and violent action movies. His early films are not great – something which he himself would readily admit – but they were cheap. And they had GREAT posters.
But by the time he met with Tony Tenser, Pete Walker’s films were becoming a lot more interesting. This is in large part due to his discovery of a cheeky young writer named David McGillivray who shared Walker’s somewhat “interesting” sense of humour. They had just made a film certain to upset the Moral Majority, called “House of Whipcord” in which those same moral guardians kidnapped young women, abusing and murdering them if they fail to meet their demanding standards.
They were looking for their next subject with which to deprave and corrupt the British public when Walker had a brainwave. “I’ve got it!” he said, on a late-night call to McGillivray. “CANNIBALISM!”
McGillivray met up with Pete Walker that weekend to flesh out the story – if you’ll pardon the expression. McGillivray added an amusing diary entry later that day, “The story concerns an apparently innocent and charming girl who is in fact killing men for her mother to eat. It’s outrageous enough to be a winner.”
It is at this point that Tony Tenser steps back into the story. Out on his own, he decided he would form a new company that would put together a film package – script, director, stars – and leave the distribution to someone else. And the first script he looked at was a McGillivray script called, “Covered in Blood”.
Well. You can’t accuse McGillivray and Walker of subtlety. They suggested another title, “Nightmare Farm” before eventually settling on, “Frightmare”.
In the film, Sheila Keith plays the cannibal mother, who lures unsuspecting victims to her house by giving tarot card readings, serving them nice cups of tea before butchering them with knives, red-hot pokers and drills.
[CLIP]
The reason Frightmare is such a wonderful film is mainly due to Sheila’s performance, filled with humour… pathos… and menace…
Sheila Keith appeared in most of Pete Walker’s films, and she was a quite wonderful actress, who The Times described as a British horror icon. And if you see out Pete Walker’s films, seek them out for Sheila.
Tony didn’t interfere with filming. He knew that Pete Walker was by now a consummate professional at this sort of thing, and apart from offering advice on what Walker was and was not likely to get past the censor, he left the diabolical duo to creating their vicious masterpiece.
It all went so smoothly. Pete Walker finished his shooting bang on schedule, after just 25 days of shooting, and the film was ready for release six months after the contracts had initially been signed.
It all seemed to be going so well.
But then the film was released right in the middle of an IRA bombing campaign.
And then the reviews came in – reactionary, hysterical reviews. In one notable case from a journalist who hadn’t even bothered to see the film.
But he knew someone who had (he claimed). And this was a fellow of stout constitution who had been just sickened by it. And this made the journalist, who hadn’t seen the film, an expert.
The condemnation was almost universal:
“Disgusting, repulsive, nauseating rubbish”.
“A thoroughly nasty film.”
“A peculiarly repellent little shocker.”
“Contrives to be both ridiculous and nasty.”
“It’s gory, brutal and very nasty.”
“It is a moral obscenity and I loathed it.”
“I could not stomach this drivel.”
The critics missed the point of the film altogether. Laced with black humour, this is undoubtedly Pete Walker’s best film. The gore, which the critics railed against, is actually quite mild, given that this film was released in the wake of “Night of the Living Dead” and “Deep Red”.
Even the disturbing nature of the film’s subject is undercut by the puckish humour in McGillivray’s script. And this is aided by Sheila Keith’s wonderfully over-the-top performance as the mad cannibal mother. Sheila Keith was wonderful in all of her collaborations with Pete Walker, nearly always playing a sweet old lady who also happens to be a deranged menace. She was Walker’s personification of the British moral majority – hypocritical, immoral and dangerous…
And perhaps that’s why the pernicious British press turned against this film so violently. They knew mockery when they saw it. Of course, none of this bothered Walker and McGillivray very much; they were used to it. Despite lower box-office for this film than for their previous movie, “House of Whipcord” they were content to have made a splash big enough to finance their next film, in which Walker would take his revenge on the Catholic church (having been abused by a priest as a young orphan).
But for Tony Tenser, this last box-office disappointment was also the last straw. “I thought we could make it work,” he said, “but Frightmare finished that off.”
1976 and 77 saw the release of two of the biggest exploitation films of all time. Jaws and Star Wars. Both the types of film Hollywood wouldn’t have gone near in decades past. But now they were out-exploiting the independents. And the home video market was doing what he used to do; re-packaging foreign films – and extreme films. Only they were doing it faster, cheaper, on a bigger scale than he could ever have dreamed the decade before.
The only way to stay in the game would be to relentlessly down-market. The sex more savage instead of saucy; the violence more explicit where it had once been suggested. “The films were so expensive to produce and had to compete with video tapes. And it had all gone a bit too far, a bit too extreme. And every film had to have sex and horror scenes, and it had to be real guts and goodness knows what. I wasn’t into that. I’d had enough.”
Tony Tenser stepped away from film production, the man David McGillivray dubbed, “The Irving Thalberg of Exploitation” was gone – and with him, the British film industry. Outfits like Rank and EMI would struggle on for a few more years, but for all intents and purposes, the thriving, exciting world of British independent cinema was gone. For a while…
A funny little post script to Tony’s career came with “Eskimo Nell”, a sex comedy released in 1974. It tells the story of independent film producer Benny U. Murdoch of BUM Productions, who wants to make a film called “Eskimo Nell”.
[CLIP]
In the film, Benny has trouble raising the financing and has to go to three partners for funding – each of whom want a different film. The poor writer and director end up making three completely different versions of the same film. And if this story is sounding familiar… guess who one of the stars of the movie was?
It was written by our old friend Michael Armstrong, clearly drawing on his own painful experiences, making “The Haunted House of Horror”. He also stars in the film, which is actually quite kind to Tony… errrr… Benny. It’s a good humoured, funny film which looks back on those times with more affection than bitterness.
And if you’ve enjoyed this podcast series, I recommend you watch “Eskimo Nell” – it’s a lovely little time capsule of low-budget film-making in this era. Just the opening scenes of an optimistic young director in Wardour Street, capture something of the faded glamour and sleazy sensationalism of the era.
[CLIP]
In 1978, Tony moved to Southport, Lancashire; he’d completely given up the movie business and moved into property development and even furniture sales. And if it seemed like a strange move for the wheeler-dealer of Wardour Street, the man who could turn a profit from failure and sell a film from a poster alone, it was actually in keeping with his reliable business savvy.
He was living the quiet life of a retiree, when in 2007, Tony Tenser died. Quietly, and with no great fanfare, other than some gentle obituaries in the national newspapers, reliving some notorious moments from his career, from the Bridget Bardot stripper protest, to his triumphs with Michael Reeves.
But he wasn’t altogether forgotten in all that time. In 2005 he was invited to the Festival of Fantastic movies in Manchester for a retrospective of his movies.
“I’d never been asked for my autograph before,” he said, “and suddenly all these fans. Most of them not even born when I was making films, were all over me. They knew far more about the films than I did and they had stills and press books that I hadn’t seen for thirty years. It was a wonderful experience to know that so many people had an interest in my films – but to be honest I was more than a little surprised.”
Tony was touched. He’d never thought of himself as the talent. He was just the man who worked for the talent.
And for a couple of days, he was that man again. The swinging gent of Soho. The Wardour street maverick who built a mini-empire. He watched those old movies, starring so many of his old friends. Michael Klinger, Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy, Patrick Curtis and Raquel Welch, Michael Reeves…
The lights dimmed, the curtains opened, and as the silver light danced above his head, Tony smiled…
Thank you for joining us for the concluding part of the Tony Tenser story. Join us next time when we’ll be looking at the life of a woman whose Hollywood career spanned five decades. The larger than life and smarter than a whip tale of actress Shelley Winters.
Until then.
Goodbye.
This episode of The Big Screen Biograph was recorded in Paraparaumu, New Zealand. It was written and presented by Val Thomas.
I would also like to acknowledge the fantastic book, “Beasts in the Cellar” by John Hamilton, which informed much of this episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, reach out to us on Twitter or Instagram at Big Biograph, or you can email us as Big Screen Biograph at gmail dot com.
And once again, thank you for your company tonight. I’ll be back with more stories, next time.
[FOOTSTEPS, ECHO IN A BIG EMPTY BUILDING]
There’s something forlorn about an empty cinema. Tragic, about a closed one.
Cinemas closed across the UK in the 1970’s. The seats, torn and broken. The curtains, dusty and drawn. The reassuring green glow of an exit sign, now dark.
Cinemas closed, and were turned into Bingo Halls, or bulldozed completely. Buildings where once dreams had lived were silenced, replaced by car parking lots. Before the rise of the blockbuster, the era of the multiplex, this was the fate of British cinemas.
Tony Tenser’s fate was tied to these fanciful art deco era buildings, and the 1970’s would see career hit a brick wall. Hit film after hit film turn into flop after flop. He’d try to out-think the problem, to shake things up, but to no avail.
This is the story of that last gasp. The good films that miraculously came out of it, and the bad films that hastened the demise of Tigon. Welcome to part three of the Tony Tenser Story.
[FILM STARTING SOUNDS]
[TONY TENSER THEME]
By 1969, Tony Tenser’s company, Tigon British Films was riding high. Their film, “Witchfinder General”, directed by Michael Reeves was that rare thing – a commercially successful exploitation film that had also achieved a measure of critical success.
But just a few months later, Tony’s plans for more films with Reeves were in ruins. Reeves died tragically young, just months after the film was released.
But worse was to come. The major studios, reeling from falling box-office receipts and unsure how to recapture their audience, turned their eyes on Tony’s audience.
In the early 1960’s, the big studios wouldn’t go near the subjects that were the bread and butter of the exploitation film-makers. Sex, violence… horror. Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” was a case in point. It was a major studio release, from Universal. But they only took it because Hitchcock insisted. And Hitchcock’s contracted studio, Paramount, wouldn’t touch it at all.
It became a phenomenon. A world-wide smash.
And Hollywood took note.
All the same, the change didn’t happen overnight. The old-time studio bosses took a few years to adjust. They sniffed at projects like “Repulsion” and “Witchfinder General” and stuck with what they considered to be prestige projects. Costly historical epics like “Cleopatra” which almost sank 20th Century Fox, and big budget musicals like Julie Andrew’s “Star!” which failed to find an audience. But the studios learned from their mistakes. They moved on.
In 1969, Columbia pictures released “Easy Rider”, United Artists released “Midnight Cowboy” and Paramount released “Barbarella”. These films had budgets that Tony Tenser could only dream of.
But the subjects of all these films were pure exploitation. And they were both cultural and financial hits. The writing was on the wall for Tony Tenser and his friends.
[THE BODY STEALERS MUSIC]
Even if the end was in sight for Tigon pictures, Tony Tenser remained blissfully unaware. As the 1960’s drew to a close, it was business as usual at Tigon who were ready to release their next science fiction epic:
[THE BODY STEALERS TRAILER]
Crossing science fiction with James Bond, “The Body Stealers” is a truly dreadful film. But it’s hard to dislike. It certainly has verve, energy and campy humour to liven up the embarrassingly awful special effects and silly script.
The story, which concerns aliens stealing the British air force’s top men in mid-parachute, has a Ron Burgundy-esque hero, with chiselled features, running around in a blue cardigan, charming every woman he encounters. Including a fantasy glamour alien.
While “The Body Stealers” is relentlessly silly modern audiences will, I’m sure, get some laughs from it. Patrick Allen – who plays the hero of the piece – delivers all his lines with a smirk. Previous Tigon alumni, Hilary Dwyer and Robert Flemyng also have roles and no-one appears to be taking it seriously.
Certainly, aging Hollywood star George Sanders wasn’t. Sanders, who had excelled at playing a cynical cad in films such as “Rebecca” and “All About Eve”, felt free to deliver his onscreen performance while reading the script non-too-cunningly concealed in his lap, and his presence here adds more curiosity than class.
Another curio in this tale was the presence of Neil Connery – brother of Sean – who had a short-lived career as a leading man in Europe, appearing in low-budget James Bond rip-offs with titles like “Operation 007”. He may not have been a great actor, but his name looked great on a poster, for short-sighted or confused patrons. And anyway, Tony was a great believer in allowing fresh talent to feature in his films.
In fact, in his limited way, Tony Tenser did live up to his reputation as the British Roger Corman. Just as that producer excelled at spotting young talent, like Scorcese and Coppola, Tony Tenser had given Roman Polanski and Michael Reeves their opportunities. And he saw the potential in a young film-maker he met named Michael Armstrong.
According to Armstrong, Tony couldn’t have been more helpful. “I had this horror script, and no-one wanted to know. Then I went to see Tony and I told him about the project and that I wanted to direct it. I left the script with him on Saturday and on the Monday signed a contract. It was as simple as that!”
Armstrong’s script was called “The Dark” and it was the perfect candidate for another Tigon/AIP co-production. He thought of it as a “Psycho” type tale of murder in amongst the complicated relationships of a group of swinging 60’s teens. And it was a surprisingly progressive tale, including both gay and straight relationships, reflecting Armstrong’s own experiences as a young man of that era.
Looking at it from a modern viewpoint, it looks even more promising. This film had the potential to be a 1960’s equivalent of “Friday the 13th” with a mysterious killer, stalking and killing the teens one by one.
But the series of setbacks and compromises which served as lucky accidents for Tigon on “Witchfinder General” would not be repeated here. As with Witchfinder, the problems began with casting. Negotiations began months before Karloff’s death in February of 1969, and AIP were insistent that the ailing star must feature in the film – purely because he owed them 10 days of work from a previous contract.
Furthermore, they insisted Karloff be given a large number of scenes to get their 10 day’s worth of shooting. They helpfully wrote these scenes for Armstrong, and featured Karloff as a wheelchair-bound detective. It really didn’t fit with the rest of the story at all.
And then Boris passed away, to be replaced by British actor Dennis Price. Who poor Michael Armstrong still had to include. Still in a wheelchair. For no good reason.
Also, added AIP. To make room for these additional scenes, some of the existing script would have to go. There was really no need for all that stuff about relationships was there? Armstrong was handed a revised version of his script with several key scenes ripped out.
And by the way, they continued. Who even WERE these kids? Who WAS this Ian Ogilvy guy that Armstrong wanted to cast? No, he had to go. And – who the hell is DAVID BOWIE? What sort of a name even IS that?
Armstrong had met with the young singer in 1968, and was immediately fascinated by his presence and charisma. He knew if he got Bowie on camera, it would be something special. But AIP were not convinced.
Seriously, Mike. If you HAVE to cast a singer, how about someone new, someone fresh, someone that modern, with-it, groovy kids can REALLY identify with? Hey, how about this Frankie Avalon kid!? Now there’s a fresh young face that the teens just LOVE.
And if you don’t know Frankie Avalon, he was a particularly bland American teen star from the early 1960’s who starred in the popular drive-in movie, “Beach Blanket Bingo”. He is possibly the polar opposite of David Bowie. But AIP were insistent.
Which is why Michael Armstrong’s film features a very out-of-place American with a 1950’s haircut in a film about swinging London teens.
Armstrong was deeply upset by all this interference; but in a meeting with Tony Tenser was assured that he could film TWO versions of the film – one for Tigon, and one for AIP.
With only a four-week shoot to accommodate two versions of the same film, Armstrong did his best. But when the AIP executives saw a rough cut of their version of the film – with the ludicrous stuff featuring Frankie Avalon and the redundant sub-plot about the detective in a wheelchair – they were furious. The film made no sense, they said, and who even WAS this Michael Armstrong kid? They said.
The line producer, Gerry Levy took over. He filmed NEW new scenes, and introduced a new character – a stalker boyfriend, played by George Sewell. It still made very little sense. And the unmasking of the killer comes out of nowhere, but at least it was less incomprehensible than before.
Michael Armstrong praised Tony Tenser for being as supportive as possible, under the circumstances but when the poor man was invited to a screening of the finished cut, he could barely recognise his work. “By the time the lights came up, my head was in my hands,” he lamented.
However, AIP got what they wanted. A low budget film to draw in undemanding teenagers. Armstrong’s film was re-titled, “The Haunted House of Horror” and/or “Horror House”, and on the strength of those titles alone, the film made a decent profit.
But if horror proved disappointing, at least Tigon had another string to their bow – sex. They rushed out another naughty pseudo-documentary called “Love in Our Time”, and cashed in the brief vogue for films about lesbians, sparked by Robert Aldrich’s surprise hit, “The Killing of Sister George”. Tigon’s film showing women together, also happened to be the first British film to feature a menage a trois. It was called “Monique” and was surprisingly not as exploitative as it sounds – featuring a sensitive script and actual acting.
But possibly Tigon’s most bizarre use of sex was to pair it with British slapstick comedian, Norman Wisdom.
[WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE THEME]
For those of you who are too young – or not British enough to remember – Norman Wisdom was a hugely successful comedy star of the early 1960’s. He’s probably best described as the British Jerry Lewis. He typically plays a go-getting, non-too-bright, accident-prone underdog character, best known for getting into scrapes and for falling off things, while also being quite loud.
[CLIP]
But while slapstick is a surprisingly complex and international language of comedy, late 1960’s audiences fancied themselves as a little more sophisticated than that. Take Peter Sellers. He was a slapstick comedy hero, boasting international fame thanks to his accident-prone character, Inspector Clouseau of the “Pink Panther” films.
But by the late 1960’s, he had moved on to more sophisticated material, such as sex comedies “What’s New Pussycat” and the counter-culture satire “I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!” which saw Sellers’ square character falling in love with a flower child and joining the Age of Aquarius.
So why not try the same sort of thing with Norman Wisdom?
[CLIP]
Aside from the obvious reason, I mean.
[WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE THEME]
I do not wish to demean Norman Wisdom’s talents. His early comedies have stood the test of time remarkably well, and he remains a beloved figure in British comedy to this day. But his foray into the world of adult humour may have fared better if he had not been paired up with director Menachem Golan.
The name may be familiar to you. Menachem Golan would later team up with fellow Israeli Yoram Globus to form the mighty Cannon Group – the production company which would dominate 1980’s video rental shelves with Chuck Norris action pictures and ninja movies. But as a director, he was not known for his light touch.
One famous story about Golan, recounts a tale where his wife visited her husband while he was directing a film. He took a look at her, with their young baby.
“Perfect!” he said, and seized the baby, placing it on the back of a horse-drawn wagon. “End ECTION!” he yelled. The horse took off, the wagon took off, and the baby bounced around on the back.
His wife, seeing her baby thrown around in that way, went to catch her child before he bounced right out of the wagon. But Menachem held her back.
“Please! Darling!” he said. “Not in the middle of the shot!”
A larger-than-life character, prone to strong outbursts and with an impressive military background, he wasn’t EXACTLY the perfect choice to direct a comedy film starring an anarchic physical comedian. And he DIDN’T appreciate Wisdom’s preference for improvised comedy.
Locked into a script which Golan viewed as a strict blueprint, to be followed with military precision, Wisdom appears subdued and unhappy. Worse still, the British public just weren’t ready to accept their lovable clown as a middle-aged seducer of teenager Sally Geeson, chasing her around in his Y-fronts.
And consequently, the film was a miserable failure in Norman’s home country.
But – as was often the case – Tony managed to pull a rabbit from the hat. A skilled negotiator, he sold the US rights to an American distribution sight-unseen. And so the film made a profit for Tony despite a lamentable performance in the US too.
The American distribution rights saved Tony’s next disastrous effort too, a particularly cheap-looking “Barbarella” rip off, which attempted that same mix of adventure, sex, mild sado-masochism and science fiction. The Americans distributed it in the USA under the title “Alien Women”; but in the UK – under the title “Zeta One” it barely got a release at all.
And no bloody surprise, it is a TERRIBLE film – an unsalvageable mess. It is something to do with alien women abducting beautiful earth ladies for… ah… reasons. But standing in the way of their plans are James Robertson Justice and Charles Hawtrey (of all people) heading up a secret government department.
The two men were established British comedy actors, well out of place in this tawdry tale of British space strippers. I can only assume they were desperate for the money.
Theoretically, this is a tale of female empowerment, in that the alien women run rings around the dastardly government men. But naturally, the women do this mostly naked. And occasionally, get captured by the nefarious males, for a spot of mildly rubbish S&M.
It is unsurprising the women are mostly naked. The budget for this film is so thin, the costume designer’s “futuristic” outfits for the female aliens are scanty at best. Most of the poor actresses look like they are wearing macrame plant-pot holders for the duration of the film. Meanwhile, the interiors of the alien women’s spaceship look like they were shot in a draughty warehouse. And the exteriors appear to have been shot on a overcast golf course. The jokes are bad, the story disconnected and the whole enterprise is embarrassingly amateurish.
Not only that, but the completed film was only 60 minutes long. Tony brought in his old reliable director Vernon Sewell to direct some additional “bookend” scenes, starring Yutte Stensgaard from Hammer’s “Lust for a Vampire” to add 20 minutes to the running time. And if these scenes – of Yutte playing strip poker in what appears to be a crappy little flat – look cheap it’s – well, because they were.
“Zeta One” is an embarrassment of a film, and a colossal waste of the talent involved. James Robertson Justice followed in the George Sanders tradition and refused to learn any of his lines. Instead he had them written onto his trousers. Charles Hawtrey struggles to lend his comedy talents to unfunny lines and Hammer’s Valerie Leon is similarly wasted.
Tony shelved the film in the UK, and counted his blessings that the Americans wanted it at all.
But Tony wouldn’t be able to rely on American money saving his productions for much longer. The major studios were taking a battering in the early 1960’s. Out of touch with their audiences, the Hollywood studios – and even lively exploitation studios like AIP – were stepping back from involvement in the British film industry. Overnight, it seemed, the dollars disappeared, the finance evaporated, and British film studios were left to look to themselves for financing.
It is readily apparent. For example – looking at Hammer’s early 1970’s output – compared to the heyday of its 1960’s collaborations with Warner Brothers, there is a steep decline in production quality. Redundancies were felt throughout the industry. Cinemas closed, and those which stayed open, fell into disrepair. It was a vicious circle. British audiences stayed away from cinemas with broken seats, threadbare curtains and worn carpet, and with no audience to sustain them, British film production plummeted.
To an extent, this played to the production strategy of Tony’s early Compton days. Instead of seeking co-production deals across a raft of films, Tony focussed on raising limited financing on a film-by-film basis. On the theory that, if a film were cheap enough, even modest success could still put Tigon in the black. And it was on this basis that Tony optioned a film called, “Young Man, I Think You’re Dying” an extremely unusual, character-driven horror film, starring Beryl Reid and Dame Flora Robson.
Even here, Tony managed to turn the decline of British cinema to his advantage. Dame Flora was apparently persuaded to take the role on the advice of none other than Sir Laurence Olivier. The esteemed actor advised Dame Flora that any role in the current climate was better than none.
The two actresses were probably helped by the fact that “Young Man, I Think You’re Dying” is more of a family drama of hidden secrets than a traditional horror film. The film feels more like a BBC play about repressed memories, punctuated by moments of violence in which the leading ladies play no part. As a result, the film – retitled “The Beast in the Cellar” – is a frustrating watch for the horror viewer looking for quick, gory fun. And Tony Tenser spotted right away that the film he’d got was not the film he’d commissioned, “If you want to make a woman’s film, you make a weepy, not a Western” was how he rather unpolitically put it.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad film, exactly. The two lead actresses are great together, and if it moves along more slowly than expected it is at least a well-acted film with a strong anti-war message.
At Tony’s insistence, additional scenes of horror were shot and inserted into the film. As a result they do feel rather out of place in this odd little drama. But at least it made for a good poster and a good trailer, to lure in the public.
[TRAILER]
However, perhaps because this film didn’t go in the direction that Tony wanted, he decided to split the risk with his next venture. He had been impressed by the compendium films of Amicus and wanted to try something similar. An anthology horror film which was essentially a series of short films patched together. After all, he reasoned, if he ended up with one dud story (like “The Beast in the Cellar”) at least something better would be along in twenty minutes.
He commissioned writer Robert Wynne-Simmons to write an anthology tale for Tigon. Wynne-Simmons initially disliked the idea, but he had enjoyed Tigon’s “Witchfinder General” a great deal. He’d liked the look of that film, how it had brought the past to vivid life in its unflinching depiction of rural life with its lived-in shacks and worn down peasants. So he decided his anthology would be set in that same world, exploring the mystery of British folklore from three different perspectives.
Wynne-Simmons began working on three connected stories about the insidious effect of an ancient, pagan artefact. Telling the story of innocent young lovers whose lives are destroyed by it, then of a naïve clergyman battling against it, and finally of a rural magistrate who comes face to face with it. His working title for the project was, “The Devil’s Flesh” and it started to take shape over the course of the next few months.
But while he was waiting for this project to come to life, Tony began to feel uneasy about horror. Not only were the big studios getting in on the act, but a new wave of horror had begun to land on British shores. On one hand, the young Americans, newly radicalised by Vietnam and Kent State with their wild, anti-establishment horror films like “Night of the Living Dead” and on the other hand, the Italians, pioneering their own brand of ultra-stylish, ultra-violent horror with “Bay of Blood” and “The Bird With The Crystal Plumage”.
Tony decided – once again – to shift ground. He commissioned a children’s film of all things with “Black Beauty” and Patrick Curtis returned with another interesting proposal for Tony.
Patrick Curtis was the man who had introduced Tony Tenser to Michael Curtis and the three men had made “The Sorcerers” together. Patrick’s then-girlfriend was Raquel Welch who had thrown herself into the production, helping out wherever she could, despite her nascent star status.
By the early 1970’s Curtis and Welch were now married, and Patrick was keen to find a star vehicle for his wife who was – at that time – still more famous for sporting a fur bra in “One Million Years BC” than for any serious acting. She wanted to establish herself and Patrick had two scripts for Tony to consider. The first was “The Devil’s Discord” – a haunted house film that Michael Reeves had been keen to make at one time. But Tony’s interest in horror had waned from those heady days.
But the second project…
“I always wanted to make a cowboy film,” Tenser confessed. “I’d been watching Westerns since I was a kid and I needed to get it out of my system. So when Patrick showed me the script for a film called, ‘Hannie Caulder’, I jumped at it.”
It was a rare moment of film-fan enthusiasm for Tony Tenser – the man who always looked at the marketing angles and the dollars and cents first. In that moment, the no-nonsense businessman was replaced by the ten year old who sneaked into his local Odeon to watch John Wayne movies.
And – it would nearly ruin him.
The fact that Patrick Curtis and Raquel Welch came as a package deal meant that, at a stroke, Tigon was suddenly making a major Hollywood film with a major star. This was both good and bad. Good, because it made financing easier to come by, with banks lining up to underwrite the project. Bad, because now Tony had to cast more stars to play alongside Raquel.
And it is quite a cast. Ernest Borgnine and Strother Martin were brought on to play the villains of the piece, who shoot down Hannie’s husband in cold blood, before raping her and burning down her homestead. Robert Culp is the cynical gunslinger who teaches Hannie how to handle a gun, in order to help her on her quest for revenge, and finally Christopher Lee gets an unlikely role as a British gunsmith.
Yes. Christopher Lee. Tony Tenser had promised the actor a non-horror role in one of his films. And Lee seems to be enjoying himself, free of fangs at last in a good-guy role.
All the same, costs were suppressed by shooting in Spain on an old spaghetti Western set and Raquel Welch deferred her upfront salary for a share in the film’s profits.
But right away, problems arose. Tony found that the cost-cutting and short-cutting that were part and parcel of British independent film-making were not tolerated by the American crew. Sharing accommodation and travel wouldn’t even be considered. Patrick Curtis slowed down the production by insisting on supervision of all scenes which featured Raquel Welch. And when a member of the crew passed comment on the producer’s wife, it escalated into a fight that saw Curtis thrown in a Spanish jail.
The atmosphere soured further when members of the crew went unpaid, due to the spiralling production costs.
As a result , the production slowed to a snail’s pace and Tony was informed that – unless costs were cut, or the production speed increased – the whole thing would have to be shut down with the film incomplete. Tony took the desperate step of assembling a rough cut of the film – with publicity photos used to cover for scenes which had not yet been shot. It was screened for investors and distributors alike and – much to Tony’s relief – Paramount came through with a distribution offer that saved the film.
Strangely enough, on watching the film, all this behind the scenes drama doesn’t show up on screen. It’s a straightforward enough revenge-western. Possibly too straightforward – the only complexity or interest being added by the fact that, for once, the woman in a Western avenges herself. But it’s exciting – sometimes funny – and when Hannie gets her revenge it is satisfying and thrilling.
[CLIP]
Despite this, it wasn’t a huge success for Tigon – and marked the beginning and end of their attempt to make Hollywood movies. Sadly, it also marked the beginning of the end of Raquel’s marriage to Patrick Curtis too, and by the end of the shoot the couple were separated.
As for the critical response, it was mixed. Reviewers enjoyed sections of the film, but were confused by the jarring changes in tone. These are apparent, even watching the film now. There are a number of humorous scenes, in watching Hannie learn how to become a gunslinger. There are, of course, glamorous scenes of Hannie buying cowboy clothes and shrinking her trousers in the bath. But these are against a backdrop of a vicious murder and a cruel rape. The rape scene in particular is unpleasant and unnecessary – and while the audience sees nothing, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth. So when Ernest Borgnine and his gang are later revealed as comically incompetent… it’s just not funny.
A rape scene in another Tigon movie was also causing problems for Tony. Robert Wynne-Simmons script for the anthology movie, “The Devil’s Flesh” had now been condensed back into one story at the insistence of the director Tony had hired, a fellow named Piers Haggard. And it had been re-titled, “Satan’s Skin”.
Haggard was a good choice for the project. He’d done a number of television episodes for the BBC and he immediately saw what Wynne-Simmons was driving at. “The thing that appealed to me,” he said, “was the rural setting. The nooks and crannies of woodland – the edges of fields. The ploughing, the labour – the sense of soil was something I tried to bring to the film.”
Haggard was fascinated by the idea of ancient, pagan evil emerging from the very soil itself. Almost as if ancient fertility gods, Dionysian agents of chaos, were infecting the minds of the villagers. Consequently, he sets the camera low for much of the film, to make the audience feel as if some ancient evil is coming up from out of the earth. Haggard was also very clear he didn’t want to make a film grounded in Christianity – his satan, his devil didn’t spring from the Book of Revelations, but from the old religions of ancient Britain. Not good, not evil… just a force of nature, indifferent to human suffering.
“I was determined not to make a camp Hammer style horror film. I wasn’t interested in Dracula,” Haggard explained. “But I was interested in the dark things that people feel - and the dark things that happen.”
It is likely that Haggard took some of those “dark things” too seriously and pushed things a little too far. What Wynne-Simmons only hinted at, Haggard decided to show. Which is why the film includes a cruel rape and murder scene. Even Haggard expresses some regret for it now.
“If I look at the rape scene now, I think it’s very probably too strong,” he said. “And it’s interesting that I wasn’t bothered at the time. I think that if you get your teeth into a scene which is going to be very strong, many directors get seduced – and I was seduced by the sheer dramatic power.”
Writer Robert Wynne-Simmons reiterates that the rape was not in his screenplay, “It was implied but not shown,” he said. “It was Piers who insisted in doing it that way. I found it all very disturbing.”
Haggard explains that he was influenced by the culture of the time. “We were all a bit interested in witchcraft, we were all a bit interested in free love. The rules of the cinema were changing, and nudity became possible. And indeed possibly over-prevalent. Because the lid had been slightly taken off,” he explained.
However, the most problematic part of the scene is that it involves young people. And it was this aspect which also bothered the censor. Cuts were ordered, away from the rape and to reaction shots. But as Robert Wynne-Simmons said, “The way it was re-cut makes it even more unpleasant.”
The scene itself, of a group of children and teenagers, taking part in a bizarre ceremony that culminates in murder, is led by a character named Angel Blake. In a film which features a large cast of characters (due to the original anthology format being compressed) it is Angel who really stands out, due to a powerful performance from Linda Hayden.
She was only 17 when she was cast in this part, but had already starred in a drama called “Baby Love” for Tony Tenser’s old partner, Michael Klinger. It was another unsavoury “Lolita” type tale – this sort of thing was very much in vogue at the time. Although taken from a modern perspective, it makes for deeply uncomfortable viewing.
Nevertheless, Linda’s talent shone through and she was subsequently cast in “Taste The Blood of Dracula” for Hammer, as the daughter of one of the hypocritical Victorian gentlemen, and again she really stands out from the rest of the non-vampire cast.
Piers Haggard thought she would be perfect for Angel, juxtaposing her youthful and, well “angelic” appearance with a soul possessed by something rotten and ancient. In some ways, you could see her as the English Linda Blair.
[LINDA INTERVIEW CLIP]
[LINDA IT WAS VERY DIFFERENT]
[LINDA GETS A TETANUS JAB]
[GIMME DAT DING]
Linda also recalled the chap who played Satan. “He was a funny little guy. I never saw him out of his Satan costume,” she said. Unusually for the embodiment of absolute evil, he was obsessed with a song in the charts at that time, ‘Gimme Dat Ding’ which he would sing all the time, somewhat undermining his status as Lord of Darkness.
Patrick Wymark is the other stand out in a very strong cast. He plays the magistrate, determined to defeat Satan, but there is a touch of the Witchfinder General about him. It seems like Wynne-Simmons and Piers Haggard were having fun with the idea of a cruel witchfinder, finding himself at odds with actual evil.
Aside from Piers Haggard’s over-enthusiasm for brutality and violence there were no major issues with this film. It came in only slightly above budget, and is an impressive film. In fact, the marriage of ideas between writer and director resulted in one of the most singular British horror films of the 1970’s.
It feels like a genuine attempt to do something very different, which kicks the stone away from Britain’s pagan past, to unearth something hideous under the veneer of Christianity. Like “The Wicker Man”, which would be released two years later, this is a film that attempts to explore the influence of the ancient Britons, the Celtic people on modern Britons, even after numerous invasions and the adoption of Christianity.
You might like to think English history starts in 1066, says this film… but in actuality the English identity goes back much further… and is much, much darker, than you’d think…
The critical reaction to the film “Satan’s Skin” was also largely positive. But early screenings indicated that audiences were completely apathetic. It was most likely the period setting, which made the film feel like a throwback to the previous decade, as opposed to modern horror movies like “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist”.
All the same, Tony Tenser still believed in the film, and felt that if it could be re-packaged it would do better. It would eventually be released under the title “The Blood on Satan’s Claw”, on a double-bill with “The Beast in the Cellar” – and still proved a box-office disappointment. The only solace Tony could take from this is that – in the 50 years following its release, the film would gain a huge reputation and a passionate following as a British “folk-horror” film. It seems that Tony’s instincts for the film were correct. The problem being that the film was way ahead of its time and now has a reputation that continues to grow.
But that was of little benefit to Tigon at the time. Additionally galling that – at the same time – Hammer made one of their most popular films – and the biggest hit at the British box-office in 1971.
It is not what you think.
[ON THE BUSES THEME]
Hammer had rediscovered the knack for making hit films from tv shows. And they’d adapted the saucy laughs and cheeky humour of British sitcom “On The Buses” for the cinema. If you have never seen the show, it’s about a cheeky bus driver and his cheeky bus conductor chasing what they call “crumpet” – or in other words, women at least 20 years younger than them.
To be fair, this was the plot of nearly ALL British sitcoms at that time.
Tigon attempted to leap onto the same bandwagon with an adaptation of another sitcom, “For the Love of Ada” – but as this was about old age pensioners in love, it didn’t have quite the same saucy appeal as “On The Buses” and it provided Tigon with yet another flop. Tigon tried again, with a film called, “The Magnificent 7 Deadly Sins” – a comic anthology film which attempted to channel the appeal of a host of British comedy stars:
[CLIP TRAILER]
Yet again, audiences stayed away. British tv viewers liked these actors for the characters they played on tv. They weren’t interested in seeing them being someone else in a short movie segment.
Spike Milligan complained that the film wasn’t marketed correctly but I think he’s unfair. The sad truth is that most of the segments aren’t very funny – the one exception being Milligan’s section on ‘Sloth’ – which I’d recommend you skip to and then ditch the rest of the film.
[DOOMWATCH TV THEME]
Of more interest was Tigon’s attempt to make a film from another TV series. “Doomwatch” was a popular science-fiction thriller about a team of ecological investigators, looking into the effects of pollution on the land. And if it sounds a bit dry, try to think of it more as a ecological version of The X-Files, with the Doomwatch team facing off against science-fiction monsters, like new viruses super-intelligent computers and rats with a newly-acquired taste for human flesh.
In Tigon’s “Doomwatch” the film, a new character played by Ian Bannen investigates a remote island where a strange disease appears to be mutating the islanders into super-strong, neanderthal versions of themselves.
It seems an odd choice – to sideline the regular characters of the tv series to supporting roles, but Ian Bannen makes for a great hero, aided on the island by Sally Geeson as he delves into the mystery. And, perhaps feeling a need for greater control, or perhaps just wanting to get away from the business end of films and back into the fun of production, Tony decided to line produce this one himself.
And actually, the film looks great. The eerie island setting, nicely evoked by veteran Hammer director Peter Sasdy is complimented by good performances from Bannen and Geeson. The biggest problem with the film is that the popularity of the tv series was on the wane when it was released. The tv show would actually end that same year. It was yet another Tigon film which received disappointing reviews, and bad box-office receipts.
And yet… Tigon as a company was doing rather well, despite the flops. They were still managing to make money from foreign imports, their old bread-and-butter. In the early 1970’s they released films with names like “Au Pair Girls” and “Kama Sutra” and with names like those I’m sure you don’t need me to explain the plots. In 1971, the company announced profits of nearly half a million pounds… and yet – the perception in the city of London was that film production companies were a bad investment, due to the dire financial situation right across the movie industry at that time. It was time for a quick bit of re-branding…
And so, Tigon was no more. The half-lion, half-tiger that represented Tony was retired, and Tigon British Films became the innocuous-sounding LMG. And given the poor reception to Tigon productions, as opposed to the decent profits from films made elsewhere that Tigon distributed, there were questions raised about whether LMG should focus purely on distribution – and ditch movie-making for good…
But production didn’t stop all at once at LMG. A number of erstwhile Tigon projects were already underway. These included a couple of high-profile, highbrow projects intended to improve Tigon’s reputation for low-rent exploitation. These included a filmed version of the stage play “Miss Julie” starring Helen Mirren and historical romance named “Neither Sea Nor Sand”, written by British tv newsreader Gordon Honeycombe.
Of course, neither of these two projects were commercial enough to save LMG from their downward spiral.
“Miss Julie” wasn’t the only stage adaptation LMG were working on. They also attempted a somewhat less cultured adaptation of a West End farce, named “Not Now Darling”.
[MUSIC]
The film stars British comedy regular Joan Sims, Leslie Philips, Barbara Windsor and a host of other familiar faces, and Tony had hopes that “Not Now” films could be the next “Carry On”, and in fact a sequel titled, “Not Now Comrade” would eventually be released. The British comedy contingent was enhanced still further by bringing David Croft of “Dad’s Army” fame to direct.
[CLIP]
Bringing in a director of tv shows made sense. The truly pioneering thing about “Not Now Darling” was that it was shot in what was called MultiVision – a new technology bought and owned by LMG. It utilised not one, but four cameras all running at once – just as in studio tv productions. The basically meant the director could make the movie in much the same way as a traditional tv sitcom, cutting between the four cameras afterward to create a sense of pace and excitement. The unique thing about MultiVision was that, after the film had been assembled, it could be transferred to celluloid.
LMG first used this new technology on “Miss Julie” and they were excited that this would reduce film production time and therefore cost. But it was a new technique and there was a certain amount of chaos. “It was a shambles,” said Barbara Windsor.
This comes across in the film itself, which is a strangely flat, lifeless production, with actors who seem constrained and awkward – performing as if they are in a theatre with no audience. Therefore, the frenetic build up and release of comic tension required by a farce just isn’t there and the increasingly ridiculous behaviour of the characters is just annoying.
Not only that, but the humour has aged badly. And watching this film feels like you’re watching an X-rated version of “Are You Being Served”?
[CLIP]
All the same, LMG now felt their future lay with MultiVista, and purchased the rights to yet another British sitcom, “Father Dear Father” with a view to filming a feature version of the show. Beyond that, they had no plans to make any other sort of film. And Tony Tenser – the founder of Tigon British films, felt his time at the company was coming to an end.
He had just one last film with LMG. But one that had begun life when Tigon was still Tigon. It seemed a fitting end to Tony’s time with the company. And in some ways, it serves as something of elegy to 1960’s British horror in general. It was called, “The Creeping Flesh”.
[MUSIC]
Not only was it shot at studios traditionally used by Amicus – in fact on the same set as “The House That Dripped Blood” but it starred two Hammer-made stars in Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee – and was directed by Hammer director Freddie Fisher. The film even features a short appearance by Hammer fan favourite, Michael Ripper.
This package of talent had been put together by producer Michael Redbourn, so Tony had relatively little to do in terms of working on the script or bringing actors onboard. Really, all he had to do was sign the cheques and let the team get to it. All the same, ever the movie fan, he couldn’t resist visiting the set and catching up with Peter Cushing, who he had not seen since “The Blood Beast Terror”. But a lot had changed for the actor in that time.
“He’d changed quite a lot,” said Tony. “He’d nursed his wife through a long illness and when she died it had quite an impact on him. He was much quieter, much more withdrawn.” Throwing himself into his work, The Creeping Flesh was just one of a dozen films that Cushing would make in the two years following his wife’s death.
In this film, Cushing and Lee play brothers and rival scientists – in competition with each other over the coveted Richter prize! The two men are both investigating the cause of evil and insanity – both believing it is all in the blood…
[CLIP]
However, it is Cushing who makes the breakthrough when he retrieves an ancient skeleton from New Guinea. It is – he tells us – the remains of Shish Kang, the “Evil One” of local legend who corrupted man with his nature, bringing war and hatred to humanity.
Cushing becomes increasingly excited when water is spilled on the skeletal hand – and in a nifty bit of stop-motion animation – the creeping flesh of the title – regenerates on the area. Cushing removes the enlarged finger – I shan’t tell you what it looks like – and takes a blood sample.
[CLIP]
It really does say something about Cushing’s gifts as an actor that he makes any of this sound remotely plausible. Of course, with his distracted air, and crazed manner, he brings to mind a more distracted version of Dr. Frankenstein and soon enough he is experimenting on his own daughter – with disastrous results.
Lee is not given nearly as much to do in this film, but he’s as intimidating as ever, in charge of a hideous psychiatric institution. And it is always a pleasure to see these two old friends together again.
[CLIP]
Nevertheless, there is something of an air of disappointment in this last period horror from Tigon. Given the amount of talent involved, it is a shame the film lacks the passion and verve of the classic Hammer movies. And the lack of budget didn’t help. We are well into the final act of the film by the time Shish Kang is resurrected and goes off to seek revenge on Peter Cushing – so the trailer of the film, which promises wall-to-wall Creeping Flesh is a more than a little disappointing.
[TRAILER]
But the films weaknesses – and it’s strengths – were almost irrelevant by the time it was released. For another horror movie came out in 1973. The Exorcist didn’t just change the game, it swept all of the pieces off the board and threw them at the audience.
In this context, “The Creeping Flesh” seems hopelessly dated by comparison and it is only in more recent years – as this context faded, that the film has started to receive a little more recognition for the beautiful, stately horror that it is.
And with that, Tony stepped away from LMG… or Tigon… or whatever it was. After six years he was out on his own again. And he toyed with the idea of rolling the dice one last time, producing one last exploitation movie. And what a movie it was to be…
[FRIGHTMARE TRAILER]
Pete Walker was a director after Tony’s heart. A man who churned out movies with a watchful eye on what would grab the attention of a jaded public. A man who openly admitted to finding sex scenes boring, but was happy to include them if it meant increased box office receipts.
He'd cut his teeth making adverts in the 1960’s, before getting bored with it, buying his own equipment, and making softcore porn and violent action movies. His early films are not great – something which he himself would readily admit – but they were cheap. And they had GREAT posters.
But by the time he met with Tony Tenser, Pete Walker’s films were becoming a lot more interesting. This is in large part due to his discovery of a cheeky young writer named David McGillivray who shared Walker’s somewhat “interesting” sense of humour. They had just made a film certain to upset the Moral Majority, called “House of Whipcord” in which those same moral guardians kidnapped young women, abusing and murdering them if they fail to meet their demanding standards.
They were looking for their next subject with which to deprave and corrupt the British public when Walker had a brainwave. “I’ve got it!” he said, on a late-night call to McGillivray. “CANNIBALISM!”
McGillivray met up with Pete Walker that weekend to flesh out the story – if you’ll pardon the expression. McGillivray added an amusing diary entry later that day, “The story concerns an apparently innocent and charming girl who is in fact killing men for her mother to eat. It’s outrageous enough to be a winner.”
It is at this point that Tony Tenser steps back into the story. Out on his own, he decided he would form a new company that would put together a film package – script, director, stars – and leave the distribution to someone else. And the first script he looked at was a McGillivray script called, “Covered in Blood”.
Well. You can’t accuse McGillivray and Walker of subtlety. They suggested another title, “Nightmare Farm” before eventually settling on, “Frightmare”.
In the film, Sheila Keith plays the cannibal mother, who lures unsuspecting victims to her house by giving tarot card readings, serving them nice cups of tea before butchering them with knives, red-hot pokers and drills.
[CLIP]
The reason Frightmare is such a wonderful film is mainly due to Sheila’s performance, filled with humour… pathos… and menace…
Sheila Keith appeared in most of Pete Walker’s films, and she was a quite wonderful actress, who The Times described as a British horror icon. And if you see out Pete Walker’s films, seek them out for Sheila.
Tony didn’t interfere with filming. He knew that Pete Walker was by now a consummate professional at this sort of thing, and apart from offering advice on what Walker was and was not likely to get past the censor, he left the diabolical duo to creating their vicious masterpiece.
It all went so smoothly. Pete Walker finished his shooting bang on schedule, after just 25 days of shooting, and the film was ready for release six months after the contracts had initially been signed.
It all seemed to be going so well.
But then the film was released right in the middle of an IRA bombing campaign.
And then the reviews came in – reactionary, hysterical reviews. In one notable case from a journalist who hadn’t even bothered to see the film.
But he knew someone who had (he claimed). And this was a fellow of stout constitution who had been just sickened by it. And this made the journalist, who hadn’t seen the film, an expert.
The condemnation was almost universal:
“Disgusting, repulsive, nauseating rubbish”.
“A thoroughly nasty film.”
“A peculiarly repellent little shocker.”
“Contrives to be both ridiculous and nasty.”
“It’s gory, brutal and very nasty.”
“It is a moral obscenity and I loathed it.”
“I could not stomach this drivel.”
The critics missed the point of the film altogether. Laced with black humour, this is undoubtedly Pete Walker’s best film. The gore, which the critics railed against, is actually quite mild, given that this film was released in the wake of “Night of the Living Dead” and “Deep Red”.
Even the disturbing nature of the film’s subject is undercut by the puckish humour in McGillivray’s script. And this is aided by Sheila Keith’s wonderfully over-the-top performance as the mad cannibal mother. Sheila Keith was wonderful in all of her collaborations with Pete Walker, nearly always playing a sweet old lady who also happens to be a deranged menace. She was Walker’s personification of the British moral majority – hypocritical, immoral and dangerous…
And perhaps that’s why the pernicious British press turned against this film so violently. They knew mockery when they saw it. Of course, none of this bothered Walker and McGillivray very much; they were used to it. Despite lower box-office for this film than for their previous movie, “House of Whipcord” they were content to have made a splash big enough to finance their next film, in which Walker would take his revenge on the Catholic church (having been abused by a priest as a young orphan).
But for Tony Tenser, this last box-office disappointment was also the last straw. “I thought we could make it work,” he said, “but Frightmare finished that off.”
1976 and 77 saw the release of two of the biggest exploitation films of all time. Jaws and Star Wars. Both the types of film Hollywood wouldn’t have gone near in decades past. But now they were out-exploiting the independents. And the home video market was doing what he used to do; re-packaging foreign films – and extreme films. Only they were doing it faster, cheaper, on a bigger scale than he could ever have dreamed the decade before.
The only way to stay in the game would be to relentlessly down-market. The sex more savage instead of saucy; the violence more explicit where it had once been suggested. “The films were so expensive to produce and had to compete with video tapes. And it had all gone a bit too far, a bit too extreme. And every film had to have sex and horror scenes, and it had to be real guts and goodness knows what. I wasn’t into that. I’d had enough.”
Tony Tenser stepped away from film production, the man David McGillivray dubbed, “The Irving Thalberg of Exploitation” was gone – and with him, the British film industry. Outfits like Rank and EMI would struggle on for a few more years, but for all intents and purposes, the thriving, exciting world of British independent cinema was gone. For a while…
A funny little post script to Tony’s career came with “Eskimo Nell”, a sex comedy released in 1974. It tells the story of independent film producer Benny U. Murdoch of BUM Productions, who wants to make a film called “Eskimo Nell”.
[CLIP]
In the film, Benny has trouble raising the financing and has to go to three partners for funding – each of whom want a different film. The poor writer and director end up making three completely different versions of the same film. And if this story is sounding familiar… guess who one of the stars of the movie was?
It was written by our old friend Michael Armstrong, clearly drawing on his own painful experiences, making “The Haunted House of Horror”. He also stars in the film, which is actually quite kind to Tony… errrr… Benny. It’s a good humoured, funny film which looks back on those times with more affection than bitterness.
And if you’ve enjoyed this podcast series, I recommend you watch “Eskimo Nell” – it’s a lovely little time capsule of low-budget film-making in this era. Just the opening scenes of an optimistic young director in Wardour Street, capture something of the faded glamour and sleazy sensationalism of the era.
[CLIP]
In 1978, Tony moved to Southport, Lancashire; he’d completely given up the movie business and moved into property development and even furniture sales. And if it seemed like a strange move for the wheeler-dealer of Wardour Street, the man who could turn a profit from failure and sell a film from a poster alone, it was actually in keeping with his reliable business savvy.
He was living the quiet life of a retiree, when in 2007, Tony Tenser died. Quietly, and with no great fanfare, other than some gentle obituaries in the national newspapers, reliving some notorious moments from his career, from the Bridget Bardot stripper protest, to his triumphs with Michael Reeves.
But he wasn’t altogether forgotten in all that time. In 2005 he was invited to the Festival of Fantastic movies in Manchester for a retrospective of his movies.
“I’d never been asked for my autograph before,” he said, “and suddenly all these fans. Most of them not even born when I was making films, were all over me. They knew far more about the films than I did and they had stills and press books that I hadn’t seen for thirty years. It was a wonderful experience to know that so many people had an interest in my films – but to be honest I was more than a little surprised.”
Tony was touched. He’d never thought of himself as the talent. He was just the man who worked for the talent.
And for a couple of days, he was that man again. The swinging gent of Soho. The Wardour street maverick who built a mini-empire. He watched those old movies, starring so many of his old friends. Michael Klinger, Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy, Patrick Curtis and Raquel Welch, Michael Reeves…
The lights dimmed, the curtains opened, and as the silver light danced above his head, Tony smiled…
Thank you for joining us for the concluding part of the Tony Tenser story. Join us next time when we’ll be looking at the life of a woman whose Hollywood career spanned five decades. The larger than life and smarter than a whip tale of actress Shelley Winters.
Until then.
Goodbye.
This episode of The Big Screen Biograph was recorded in Paraparaumu, New Zealand. It was written and presented by Val Thomas.
I would also like to acknowledge the fantastic book, “Beasts in the Cellar” by John Hamilton, which informed much of this episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, reach out to us on Twitter or Instagram at Big Biograph, or you can email us as Big Screen Biograph at gmail dot com.
And once again, thank you for your company tonight. I’ll be back with more stories, next time.
