Smokescreen
Flaming car onto
Dover Beach or thereabouts the long way down from Brighton, owner lately
covered by the Australian Life Assurance.
The rose-growing
assessor “on a much smaller scale” has a fiddle of his own, scrimping
on everything yet billing it all the same to the firm. He walks to the Grand
from the station and thinks it “only fair” he be recompensed for
the taxi ride he might have taken, what you might call London Assurance.
The station
master near the scene of the crime evokes Varnel’s Oh, Mr. Porter! and no mistake.
There’s a
reason for the assessor’s meanness, he has an invalid to care for at
home, a moribund.
Nothing
to do with insurance really, per the title. It takes a trip to the seaside to discover where
one’s buried in the way of business, still and all, you like to get away
a bit, don’t you.
Andrew Roberts of
the BFI speaks of “the morass of British B-films” and finds here “fascinating
period detail.”
Berserk
The Great Rivers
Circus provides entertainment in several shows from Liverpool to London. A
murderer strikes, Scotland Yard send Detective Superintendent Brooks, and
it’s rather like the papal procession interrupted by a shout of “fuck
the Pope!” “My son,” says the Pope, “I am-a the servant of-a the servants of-a God, hundreds and-a
hundreds of-a cardinals and-a bishops, tens of-a thousands of-a priests and-a
nuns, and all the faithful everywhere in-a the world. Fuck-a
me? Fuck-a you!”
The title is
invoked at once in a high-wire act. A tightrope walker is a poet on his line, Blondin set up a cookstove over Niagara Falls and ate lunch. Here the wire
frays and breaks (it has been cut), the funambulist is caught in a tangle and
hanged (“give me three lines of a man’s handwriting,” says
the Baron in Russell’s The Devils, “and I will hang
him”).
The owner and ringmistress, Monica Rivers, sees this as good publicity,
her partner wants out. The Magnificent Hawkins debuts his act (he has no agent,
socks one who tries to blackmail him with a case of justifiable homicide in
Toronto), “sixty feet above steel bayonets” barehanded with no balancing
pole, and wearing a black hood over his head. The partner jealously watches his
affair with the ringmistress, and is killed with a
spike through his head.
Elephants ridden
by girls form a gigantic horseshoe and star and tableau, Joseph the Wonder Elephant
steps gingerly between six girls supine under the big top, and Monica tells
Hawkins, “what we have is no more important than a greeting card, and
sometimes less friendly.” The night of the second murder, she burns the
partnership agreement. The frightened circus folk (even the Strong Man, he
admits) suspect each other and Monica.
Commissioner Dalby is allergic to pollen and hence to Supt.
Brooks’ boutonniere. The Saville Row suits and
handmade shoes (he doesn’t drink or gamble) will have to go, Brooks is for Liverpool and an investigation. He steps
out of his car, boutonniere and all, and into elephant dung. Bruno Fontana, a
dwarf, offers a bit of lore, “supposed to be lucky.” Brooks takes
over the partner’s caravan, has them all queue up outside for questioning
(Bruno wears a clown’s bobby costume and smokes a cigar during his
interview). Matilda, sawn each day in half by her husband Laszlo, makes a play
for Hawkins and is repulsed the night before Brooks’ arrival.
Black ponies and
gleaming horses wearing plumes cavort in the ring. Poodles
race and leap, one takes the slack rope on hind feet. Monica and Hawkins doubt
each other, she has told Brooks her partner was a business manager with no
financial interest, he that his arrival was too late to witness the first
accident. He wants to be her partner, she agrees. Her daughter Angela enters,
expelled from a school for young ladies as “undisciplined” (smoking
cigarettes, mocking teachers, hiding herself to cause
a search). Matilda loudly suspects Monica of the crimes, sneers that Angela at
least will be safe.
An
aerial act with an outer-space motif, a woman upside-down on a vertical rope, a
man dangling another from a bit in his teeth as she spins. Ingemar the Fearless in a cage with a lion and lionesses. Monica
confronts Matilda, Supt. Brooks must question all, he says.
In solid red
lighting, Laszlo saws Matilda in half with a large rotary blade. Commissioner Dalby himself inspects the crime scene, the trap beneath
her midsection failed to open, two screws were removed. The circus travels to
London in two days, there Monica will sign the
contract with Hawkins, though she worries now the circus is jinxed. Angela
fills in for the knife-thrower’s drunken wife.
London opens with
a party for the artists thrown by Monica. Four of them perform a song, the
Skeleton Man (whose wife left him to avoid bruises), the Bearded Lady, Bruno
and the Strong Man, “It Might Be Me”.
|
... Fall in love with your
partner And it might be me Bumps in the night Give you a fright And it might be me We’re plain folk Ain’t no joke Just look at your wife,
boy It might as well be me Take a blind date Go and gamble with fate And it might be me Walk in the park Hear a voice in the dark And it might be me Take a chance Find romance ... It might as well be me Beauty’s a
fleeting and wispy thing It fades like a moon in
the sky Make up your mind
beauty’s only the rind But it’s bacon
that you want to buy Walk up the aisle Give me a smile And it might be you Angels will sing As I slip on the ring And it might be you Keep your seat Don’t retreat I want me a partner And it might as well be
you I want me a partner And it might as well
be—you? |
Hawkins is to
have “25% of the circus, and 100% of me.” Angela rues her
mother’s inattention (her father died in a trapeze act). Scotland Yard have the first night covered.
The whole circus
parades into the big top. In solid green lighting, Angela is spun on a vertical
disk and every knife misses her. Hawkins takes the wire as before, then drops
the hood and crosses with a balancing pole on a bicycle. Finally he stands upon
a chair and is knifed in the back, sending him onto the bayonets. Angela glides
down a rope to attack Monica. She had to destroy the circus,
it killed her father and took away her mother. Supt. Brooks prevents this last
murder, but she slips away and out of the big top into a lightning storm that
kills her.
And so, where you
might least expect it (and where Halliwell’s Film Guide finds
“the script is beyond redemption”), you find “The Circus
Animals’ Desertion” with reference to Sylvia Plath.
The Valley of Gwangi
A Ray Harryhausen
show is an exercise in symbolic logic. His Dynamation can be measured against
the lifeless models used in a few live-action shots, with one exception:
O’Connolly shoots over a full-size head of Gwangi as James Franciscus
ropes its muzzle, and you get a very satisfying frisson. Harryhausen
does a variety of prehistoric creatures (eohippus, pterodactyl, triceratops,
tyrannosaurus rex), and a modern elephant, with
fascinating art.
Naturally, the
director’s contribution is secondary, but O’Connolly opens with a
coup. Franciscus appears in his tailored Western ensemble as visibly The Saint
out West. South of the border at the turn of the century, he is inveigled to
take a small boy into his service, and supervises Gila Golan’s act in the
Wild West Show he travels with (she rides a horse off a tower into a water tank
with a flaming rim).
The show has come
into possession of a prehistoric horse (the eohippus), and sets off for more.
The boy is seized from his horse like Ganymede by a pterodactyl, which is
killed (and eaten by the tyrannosaurus rex). After
various encounters, the tyrannosaurus is knocked unconscious (Richard Carlson
as the head trouper heralds the capture, then notices one of his ropers is
missing), then it’s brought back alive and displayed in a cage as Gwangi
the Great. It escapes, sends the multitudes flying, and is trapped
apocalyptically in a burning cathedral.
It all begins with
an old bruja‘s imprecation. The thematic
elements are a variant of King Kong evidently geared to Mexico.
Crooks and Coronets
How like a
picture of Her Majesty’s Government this is, one might fancy. Came to
rob, stayed to shoot craps.