Rating of
3/4
Hot and cold war
Bribaba - wrote on 05/04/11
The action takes place Weymouth, a coastal resort in the south-west of England,, home to a biker gang who act tough by strutting around in black leather jackets and….whistling. The leader of the gang (Oliver Reed) has a thing for his sister played by Bolton girl Shirley Anne Field who, in turn, gets picked up by an American yachtsman. There’s also a parallel story involving an eccentric sculptress and a mysterious military base where a group of schoolchildren are held captive in underground bunker not that dissimilar to the one Stanley Kubrick used in Dr Strangelove one year later. The two narratives soon merge to form a totally incoherent whole.
Without giving too much away, the children are being prepared for the nuclear war that is ‘inevitable’. Huge computer tapes whirr away in the caves and the youngster’s every move is monitored, so quelle surprise when the quarrelling trio from the first scenario invade their hideout. But the kids harbour a terrible secret, one that involves a dead rabbit, the black death and their perennially freezing temperatures.
Joseph Losey does a decent job directing this nonsense and Hammer regular Arthur Grant makes everything look the business. The big let-down is the script, especially the incidental dialogue. Although superficially similar the story has nothing to with the John Wyndham 'Dammed' novels, but is based on Children of the Light by H L Lawrence. Rumour has it that Losey completely rewrote the script (unaccredited) in his determination to make a ’moral’ statement. If true that seems kind of superfluous for the concept as seen here is so plainly mad that it becomes weirdly compelling.
Less compelling is Shirley Anne Field, who is still treading the boards. She’ll look back in horror at her performance which is hard to distinguish from the wooden sculptures that adorn the set. As usual, Oliver Reed steals the show even though the character he’s playing is a clearly ridiculous figure. Curiously, this is the uncut version. The original US cut snipped out some of the social comment (Losey‘s contribution?) and in doing lent some of their own paranoia to the proceedings.
Posted by Bribaba at 14:47 1 comments
Labels: girly
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