BRITANNIA HOSPITAL (1982)

A running gag on Spike Milligan’s sketch shows involved a patient visiting a doctor’s office. The doctor would ask, “Will this be on the National Health or private insurance?”

Patient: “Oh, private insurance.”

Doctor: “Right.” Then he’d flip down the flag on a taxi meter and let it run.

Now Americans, of course, don’t have this option. If we were to say “National Health”, a conservative clown car would drive up and heave us right out of there. In Great Britain (and the majority of Europe, Asia, Japan, China, Russia, Canada and far-flung Greenland) the state takes charge of its citizens’ medical needs. If you can’t afford fancy “private insurance”, well the hospitals will care for your tired carcass regardless. It’s a working system, not however without its flaws, as with any system. The main difference between, say Great Britain and America, is that ol’ Blighty won’t let you die of the plague just because you’re penniless. If you die, it’ll be due to something else. Probably unrelated.

By Lindsay Anderson’s own admission: “Britannia Hospital (as my picture is called) is the usual over-ambitious conception, satirical, ominous and absurd – designed to annoy practically everyone.” (LA/1/9/3/5/10, Lindsay Anderson writing to Pauline Melville, 31/07/1981, The Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling.) (Unless indicated, all quotes taken from Participations, Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, Walking the talk: reflections on Indigenous media audience research methods, by Kathryn Mackenzie and Karl Magee, Stirling University, UK Volume 6, Issue 2 (November 2009). If that designation was sincere, then in 1982 Anderson definitely succeeded. According to Brit critic David Robinson, “…no major British film can ever have suffered so calamitous a debut” (David Robinson, ‘Time to reconsider a masterly vision’, The Times, 15/10/1982.), and not because the movie was seen as an unsatisfactory wrap-up of the so-called “Mick Travis Trilogy” Anderson had begun when he cast Malcolm McDowell in …If and its ambitious follow-up (co-written by McDowell), O Lucky Man.

In the Autumn of 1982, the United Kingdom and its people were under considerable stress. Unempolyment was at a record high, unseen since the ‘30s, and to top that a large number of union worker strikes broke out throughout the island. Add to that the controversial war raging in the Falklands and increasing IRA-attributed terrorist strikes, the upper-lips of all England were wilting. Hardly the best timing for a movie satirizing the nation’s health system, the monarchy, unions, class warfare, rising media chicanery and even Hammer Horrors. As Mackenzie and Magee wrote in “Participations”, “In the light of this social context it is hard to overstate the effect that negative reviews, and articles in which the film was portrayed as being ‘unpatriotic’, would have on the cinema-going public.” If the movie-going population hadn’t already dropped to another all-time low since 1972, the number of outraged might have been even greater. Barely publicized by EMI, Britannia Hospital was met with spectacularly negative reviews. And (ironically, considering the film’s primary McGuffin) with his Holiness the Pope John Paul II arriving in London that very weekend, few were keen on checking out what was being advertised as a high brow entry of the Carry On series.

The film’s set-up requires the entirety of its first act, but its tone is set during the credits. An ambulance drives slowly through the wrought-iron gates of the hospital estate, winding up a driveway choked with striking workers (including Robbie Coltrane) and angry protestors. The outrage is almost evenly split along two grievances—one involving the admittance of African despotic President Ngami, guilty of war crimes against his own people who has turned his own separate suite at the hospital into a mini-village filled with bodyguards, multiple relatives and even farm animals; the second and no-less angry mob consists of Britain’s working class who demand that the hospital discharge the wealthier “private insurance” patients who receive special treatment for their generous pocketbooks.

Joining this latter protest are the hospital’s union workers and supporters. The short kitchen staff refuse to make the special breakfasts and other meals for the upper class sickies. There’s also a matter of workers who are meant to get the hallway painted in time for the arrival of a “very special visitor”, but the paints don’t match and they’re waiting on supplies, “You may not believe it, sir, but we take pride in our work!” one says over his latest cup of tea.

Fighting through the crowds, two disinterested ambulance workers haul a dying man out of the back on a gurney, bumping and jarring him through the emergency room doors. Only a handful of late-night staff are present and none of them acknowledge the new arrival. It’s time for the drivers’ tea break and the head nurse is officially off duty. As they edge their way between the admit desk and the gurney, the neglected patient takes a final breath and dies, his arm dangling limp over the side. Two orderlies return to their card game.

Come the morning shift and things are no better. Mr. Biles (Brian Pettifer), Assistant to the Administrator, and Mr. Potter (Leonard Rossiter), Administrator, have to constantly negotiate to get anything done. Like the corpse on the gurney, for instance, blocking traffic. He gets back nothing but cheek. “Don’t you call us men. We’re staff.” To keep from running to the union, they’ll settle for double time, eggs, toast and sausage. Meanwhile, there’s the usual rigamarole in the kitchens. Union rep Ben Keating (Robin Askwith) insists on the rights of the staff and of the public patients. “It’s the same for everyone, or nothing at all!” This, of course, angers the Private patients who are outraged at the treatment. “For the amount you charge, matron, we expect more than a British rails box lunch.” And cite their years of service. “I drove a bus for 15 years to pay for this operation!”

To add to everyone’s pressures, “Her Royal Majesty (aka “HRM”) will be visiting in celebration of ^th Anniversary of the establishment of Britannia Hospital since its opening under Elizabeth I. Queen will be touring the facilitiesand the archways are still a shambles. Potter protests and a worker responds, “An insult to me is an insult to every unskilled worker in this hospital. Think upon that.” Within the hour, Potter is dogged by the ministers of etiquette, Sir Antony Mount (little person actor Marcus Powell) and  the Lady Felicity (John Bett in drag). Scotland Yard will have snipers on the grounds. Patients have been selected for presentation. “Nothing too gruesome, I hope,” twitters Lady Felicity.

the hospital’s 500

This very day also marks the grand opening of the Millar Centre for Advanced Surgical Science, named for its founder, a master of “experimental surgical Darwinism”, the sinister Dr. Millar (Graham Crowden, whom fans will recognize as the same sinister doctor who gave patients sheep legs in O Lucky Man). He eludes to his newest, greatest experiment, “Genesis”, and after greeting Dr. MacMillan (Jill Bennett) with a passionate but quite British kiss, they exchange a bit of dialogue regarding a new patient:

Millar: “How’s McReady doing?”

MacMillan: “Splendid, we’re expecting death within the hour.”

Millar: “I have high hopes for McReady.”

Unfortunately, McReady (a non-speaking cameo by Alan Bates) continues to linger. Taking advantage of the elsewhere chaos, Millar chooses to gently remove the patient from life support and sever his head with a laser saw. Also unfortunately, this act has been witnessed by TV journalist Mick Travis (McDowell), who has bribed a union window-washer to sneak him down the side of the building so he can spy with his state-of-the-art mini-camera. “Citizen of the world, that’s me. I started in coffee.” Mick’s inside man, such as she is, is Nurse Amanda Purcil (Marsha Hunt), who helps smuggle Mick into the Centre, has a go at him in a supply closet, then preps him for disguise as a doctor. Before long, they come to Dr. Millar’s personal storage room, containing banks of window freezers containing harvested body parts. Mick manages to move a torso from one freezer and hide there just in time to hear MacMillan report to Millar: “There’s a small problem with the left buttock. It will need to be replaced.”

Down on the street in the midst of a growing riot, Travis’ cameramen Red (Mark Hamill) and Sam (Frank Grimes), are far more interested in the medicinal offerings of the various countries they’ve visited and decide to try them all out at once, their backs to Mick’s camera feed.

Having already insulted the ministers of etiquette and embarrassed administration—sez Sir Geoffrey: “You’re not a doctor, you’re a vampire. To you Patients aren’t suffering beings to cure, but raw material for your egomania.”—Millar has little interest in the Important Visit save for how it will affect his own presentation of “Man Remade”. His own documentary film crew is documenting his opening. To the cameras, Millar purees a brain to demonstrate the possibility of harnessing the full potential of 10 billion neurons. And then invites the director to take a swig.

Quickly—or, maybe, quicklier—negotiations, manipulations, protests and preparations have all whipped up quite a head of steam, with Potter and Biles bribing union heads with seats at the Royal Luncheon if they’ll co-operate outside of their own best interests, which turns out to be a rather simple solution to a complex problem. They also have to contend with the increasingly radical Anti-Ngami factions who threaten the safety of HRM and the Luncheon. Meanwhile, Travis is found out by Millar and his staff, but happens to possess a number of…items that Millar can utilize in his experiment. After much skullduggery, HRM arrives but so, at that very moment, to the riot police lose control of the protestors. For Dr. Millar, this all means a much larger—and captive—audience to witness his perfection, his “Genesis”.

There’s a lot of running around in Britannia Hospital and it is a bit of a satire smoothy—heavier-handed social commentary than If… and more slapstick than O Lucky Man, yet, somehow more accessible than either of Anderson’s previous entries. It doesn’t have a patience-trying running time, nor the cultural disparity of boarding school life to keep the audience at arm’s length. Many viewers have expressed disappointment that Travis is not the central character this time around and it is true that he tends to get lost in the chaos (until the wonderful set piece which I insist was inspired by Gordon Hessler’s Scream and Scream Again). There’s a lot to take in, a lot of characters to keep track of and a lot of rules to be acknowledged before they’re discarded. This isn’t the anarchy of Monty Python, but rather something akin to the daily cruelty of The Ruling Class. And despite the incomprehensibility of some of the Northern accents, Britannia Hospital manages to speak to cultures outside of Great Britain—really anywhere that contains a broken system of bureaucracy, government and public welfare.

“When it came to promoting Britannia Hospital outside the UK, Anderson was keen to stress that it was not a parochial work. In interviews and correspondence he repeatedly stresses that the themes of Britannia Hospital are universal and have relevance to all societies, not just Britain. This point was picked up by Alexander Walker (one of the few British critics who supported the film) in an article about its screening at the Cannes Film Festival in the Evening Standard in May 1982: ‘Its British setting in a London hospital, Anderson’s metaphor for a sick Britain suffering a nervous breakdown, hasn’t stopped practically every nationality present at Cannes from recognising and applying the truth of its savage comedy to the conditions of their own ailing countries’.”

With all the hooraw surrounding the derogatorily-named “Obamacare” and constant hysteria in the US, perhaps Britannia Hospital was ahead of its time and would be more warmly-welecomed now. In 1982, however, United Artists had less idea how to promote it than EMI in the UK. It had been ten years since the US release of O Lucky Man, and while it was met favorably by critics, it didn’t do tremendously well with American audiences. A superstar in Britain, Lindsay Anderson was far from a household name in the Colonies. UA’s trailers for the film were cut to make it appear a “zany” Python-esque romp, focusing on familiar faces like McDowell and Star Wars’ Hamill, who actually had a much smaller presence in the film than Malcolm. Anderson was “ashamed” of the strategies in his native land and was appalled by the obscene attempts at “blockbusterizing” Britannia Hospital abroad.

“I am quite ashamed to find that the general English-speaking hostility towards BH and the film’s dismissal by prejudice and resentment masquerading as criticism have disturbed me more deeply than is healthy. Not caused me to doubt the work, exactly, but made me aware of the near impossibility of getting across a point of view, values of reason and morality so alien to the spirit of our times. It is not so much the strength of the opposition that has discouraged me, as the lack of support, the indifference of the ‘uncommitted’ majority, and their willingness to be led by the enemy behind the typewriter … I have very little confidence that the film will do well. I don’t know whether it could have, given the benefit of a brilliantly intelligent campaign. But that is pure fantasy anyway.”

Britannia Hospital basically came and went. The US critics reviews were kinder to Anderson, perhaps due to Anglophilia towards the director, but it never found the correct audience. While it’s returned to the spotlight in recent years, thanks to McDowell’s praise of it in interviews and, particularly, on his one-man show about Anderson titled Never Apologize, Britannia Hospital remains, as Mackenzi and Magee observe, “perhaps the most unfairly neglected of his films.” Its lack of acceptance led to Anderson temporarily retiring from film, returning only to direct The Whales of August in 1987.

It is absolutely true that, in terms of it being a “Mick Travis” film, Britannia Hospital does not measure up to what came before. On its own, however, the movie is solid and often extremely funny. It also manages to be shocking even in this modern age of torture porn and endless war. Not only in terms of the Hammer-esque grand guignol climax of Millar’s “Man Remade” operation, but also in terms of corporate neglect, worker apathy, and the appaling conditions both staff and paitents face in modern hospitals (take, for example, the hospital’s Rudyard Kipling Wing, the most expensive, up-to-date, state-of-the-art, CCTV-covered ward, capable of housing 75 patients in complete comfort, but lays unused at the moment due to lack of cleaning staff). It’s also an example of how class warfare is alive and well in the 21^st Century, even in the so-called “all men created equal” realm of the United States. As one placard in the crowd reads, “Priviledge is a crime!” Answering that, as the riot breaks free of the barracades and literally chases the Royal Family into Millar’s wing, Chief Inspector Johns declares that there’s only one thing left to do.

To which, Potter replies: Potter: “Cut the Luncheon!”

Without giving away the surprise (or, perhaps, lack-thereof) of what Millar’s “Genesis” is revealed to be, I’ll leave you with his final speech. What might have seemed heavy-handed in the ‘80s seems much more relevant today:

“Friends! Fellow Members of the Human Race! We are gathered here for a purpose. Let us look together at Mankind. What do we see? We see Mastery. What wonders Mankind can perform. He can cross the oceans and continents today, as easily as our grandfathers crossed the street. Tomorrow he will as easily cross the vast territories of space. He can make deserts fertile and plant cabbages on the Moon. And what does man choose? Alone among the creatures of this world, the Human Race chooses to annihilate itself. Since the last world conflict ended, there has not been one day in which Human Beings have not been slaughtering or wounding one another, in two-hundred and thirty different wars. And man breeds as recklessly as he lays waste. By the end of the century, the population of the world will have tripled. Two-thirds of our plant species will have been destroyed. 55% of the Animal Kingdom. And 70% of our mineral resources. Out of every hundred Human Beings now living, 80 will die without ever knowing what it feels like to be fully nourished... While a tiny minority indulge themselves in absurd and extravagant luxuries. A motion picture entertainer of North America will receive as much money in a month as would feed a starving South American tribe for a hundred years! We waste! We destroy! And, we cling like savages to our superstitions. We give power to leaders of State and Church as prejudiced and small-minded as ourselves, who squander our resources on instruments of destruction... While millions continue to suffer and go hungry, condemned forever to lives of ignorance and deprivation. And why is this? It is because mankind has denied Intelligence, the unique glory of our species - the Human Brain. Man is entering an era of infinite possibility, still imprisoned in a feeble, inefficient body... Still manacled by primitive notions of morality, which have no place in an Age of Science... Still powered by a brain that has hardly developed since the species emerged from the caves. Only a new intelligence can save Mankind! Only a new Human Being of pure brain can lead man forward into the new era. I do not speak of dreams. Such a being exists already. I have created it! It is here. Now. Prepare yourselves to meet the Human of the Future. Neither Man nor Woman. Greater than either. I have given it a name. Genesis. Birth. A New Birth. A New Beginning for Mankind. People of Today, Behold Your Future!”

Fill in the blank.

I BOUGHT A VAMPIRE MOTORCYCLE (1990)

Image stolen from UK Movie Posters

No film addict can survive on a steady diet of the same. You can watch Turner Classic Movies all day long but after such a marathon, you start to hunger for something different. Dare I say even something “worse”. “Worse”, of course, is subjective, so let’s say instead “ridiculous”. After a week of viewing heady and/or heavy movies, movies that made me think and feel, I was in dire need of the ridiculous. You can’t ask for more ridiculous than what is offered by the gory horror-spoof I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle. 

Director Dirk Campbell, very soon a maestro of children’s television programming, got hold of a script by Mycal Miller and John Wolskel (the latter a frequent writer of English-version anime like Appleseed), rang up half the cast (and sets and even the composer) of the BBC series Boon (including title character Michael Elphick, Neil Morrissey (future voice of Bob the Builder), Amanda Noar (aka Mrs. Morrissey, at the time, anyway), and C:3PO himself, Anthony Daniels. They gathered together and said, to borrow a quote from Daniels’ Priest character, “Right. Let's go kick some bottom!”

I would say that the film’s beginning—taking place in an old churchyard while a biker in a red hood that just screams “Satanist!” is obviously up to no good—with a turf war between two bike clubs, the unnamed Satanists and the vicious rabble “The Road Toads”, occurs for no good reason, but really, reason went out the window with the title. (In fact little happens in this film for any reason, so let’s just suspend that expectation altogether, shall we?) What happens is that The Road Toads lay brutal waste to the rival gang using crossbows and jump cuts. The hooded Satanist most near the center of the frame is cut down in the prime of his incantation, and the little animated Pokemon demon summoned has to quickly find a host. Its new home is the biker’s own abused Norton 850 Commando—as good as any in a pinch and, we’re told, a “quite reliable” vehicle. In a lovely scene, the dying biker-Satanist-guy slashes his throat and bleeds into the tank.

We then meet lovable slacker rascal Nick Oddy (Morrissey)—aka “Noddy”—who purchases the bike for £1100, tells his girlfriend Kim (Noar) he only spent £600, then calls his buddy Buzzer (Daniel Peacock) to take a butcher’s at it to see what it’ll need to make it go. As a gag, Buzzer steals the bike’s gas cap. The next day, he’s found strewn about his apartment (“That’s Buzzy. I’d know his head anywhere.”) but at least the bike runs perfectly now, so long as you don’t try to take it into the sunlight. Inspector Cleaver comes ‘round to make inquiries about who would have it in enough for Buzzer to dismantle him in such a way, but Noddy honestly can’t say. Partly because he doesn’t know and partly because Cleaver’s garlic breath has him momentarily stupified.

While out for a jag, Noddy informally meets The Road Toads and the bike bucks beneath him, running several of them, including their leader, Roach (Andrew Powell, Joshua Then and Now [review coming soon]), the crossbow-wielding mad lad-cum-teddy boy what done in the Satanist biker in the first place.

Later, they have a proper funeral for Buzzer, his coffin stuffed upright in some geezer’s sidecar. No hearse for Buzzer, “He wouldn’t be caught dead in one’a them things.” Noddy and Kim stop off for a pint and in walk Roach and his Road Toads. After a protracted brawl involving the entire pub, most of the crockery and several of the mock battle weapons decorating the walls, Noddy and Kim manage to escape on the bike. Still peckish, they swing by Fu King (ordering from none-other than Inspector Clousseu’s Cato (Burt Kwouk) for some Chinese, but the minute Kim suggests “garlic prawns” the bike takes off with her still on it. Around a corner, it tosses her off and seems about to front wheel her head off when the cross around her neck gleams and makes it back off.

Noddy finds Kim but the bike has gone out into the night to exact revenge on the rest of the Road Toads. First spikes grow out of its tank in punk porcupine fashion, used as both methods of impalation and projectile, then its cracked headlamp develops a chomping action rarely seen in motorcycles of that model. That’s not even to mention its Ben-Hur-styled arrowhead wheel protrusions. Only Roach escapes, albeit with a tie-rod lodged deep in his… er, tailpipe, as it were. Its bloodlust unsated, the motorcycle has a go at a woman Jack the Ripper-style in an alley. Then, just for fun, it eats a parking maid. This bit of greed gives it away. Unable to eat the whole woman, it returns to Noddy’s dark shed and that’s where its owner finds it, sleeping and with a support-hosed leg in its headlamp.

Understanding little of anything is a natural state for Noddy, so he goes off in search of a Vicar. Unfortunately, he has to make do with a Priest. 

 Image stolen from Flat Pack Film Festival

Noddy: “I don’t want to confess. It’s about my motorcycle.”

Priest: “Are you sure it isn’t a garage you want?”

Noddy: “My motorcycle has turned into a vampire!”

Priest: “Pull the other one.”

Soon the Priest understands what he’s up against when, whist attempting to haul the beast out into the sunlight, the clutch handle snaps his hand and severs his fingers. Now the problem arises: unless the Priest knows what demon he’s dealing with, any exorcism performed could just make things infinitely worse. And infinitely worse is what happens. The vampire motorcycle goes on an unprescendented maraude of slaughter and vehicular homicide, eventually trapping Noddy, Kim, the Priest and garlic-breathed Cleaver inside a gym for the chronically steroidal. And dawn is a long way off. Will Birmingham ever again be safe for the god-fearing members of the C. of E.? Or, okay, fine, the Catholics as well?

“And anyone involved in this project should be proud. The script is knowing and self deprecating, plus it doesn’t mind making Morrissey, the movie’s hero, out to be a lazy male-chauvinist pig. The British predilection with toilet humour is here in full force (the ‘talking turd’ sequence [a nightmare scene in which Buzzy embodies Noddy’s bowel movement] being a particularly disgusting highlight, especially when it jumps into Noddy’s mouth) as is our obsession with having nice cups of tea to solve everything. The music is also suitably ridiculous, ranging an incidental score that sounds like it was lifted from a Carry On movie (yes, they borrowed the composer from Boon, would you believe) to pumping rock tracks, one of which is called “She Runs On Blood... She Don't Run On Gasoline” (which is included in it’s separate entirety as a special feature on the DVD). But the biggest gem in this pot of treasure is seeing Anthony Daniels – Mr C-3PO himself – as a camp gung-ho biker exorcist, complete with razor-sharp throwing-crosses.” (Eatmybrains.com)

So, well… does this not summon to mind the word aforementioned: “ridiculous”? I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle is a gleefully gory horror-spoof-slash-homage. Never once does it take itself seriously because, well and again, it’s bloody title is “I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle”. If it were “Tea and Chips with the Missus”, that’d make it something else entirely. Everyone is on board here too, ‘all in’ as ‘they say’.

Truth be told, this was was a blind rental from our late-lamented local store, Incredibly Strange Video, sold by both the title and the prospect of watching His Lord and Lady Anthony Daniels perform sans gold outerwear. While not quite as hysterical as Braindead / Dead*Alive’s Father Jon McGruder (Stuart Devenie) (“I kick arse for the Lord!”), Daniels is highly entertaining and even kicks the film’s absurdity up another notch.

Speaking of the just-mentioned Peter Jackson cult favorite, there are numerous “touches” both movies share. Aside from the Priests and the anarchy, both possess comic relief bikers and a breakneck pace. Since they were released within a few years of each other (1990 for Motorcycle and 1993 for pre-LOTR Jackson), though from different areas of the English-speaking world, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that both Jackson and Campbell hit on the same horror-spoof zeitgeist that drives both films. The biggest difference would be zombies vs. vampiric vehicles and a budget of $3 million versus whatever change was found inside the cushions in the Boon communal couch.

When you’re in need of ridiculous look no further. If ‘ridiculous is as ridiculous does’, then I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle does nicely. 

GHOST IN THE NOONDAY SUN (1973)

One of the first pre-Python British comedians to achieve commercial and critical success in America, Peter Sellers was considered to be both a genius and a madman, as most geniuses/madmen are wont to be. Notoriously difficult to work with, Sellers was prone to fits of rage, sulking and simply incomprehensible behavior that often culminated in self-banishment from sets for varying periods of time. He private life was just as tumultuous and it often spilled onto his professional one. An often-related story was his insistence that his then-wife, Swedish bombshell Britt Ekland, be cast as his character’s Italian lover in Vittorio De Sica’s After the Fox. Though Ekland was completely wrong for the part, De Sica acquiesced. Sellers then spent the majority of the filming either ignoring Ekland in favor of flirting with other actresses or banishing her to her trailer to care for their children, practically forbidding her from interacting with the rest of the cast and crew.


As acclaim for him grew, thanks to magical performances in popular films like Dr. Strangelove and The Pink Panther, Sellers seemed even more intent on self-destruction, choosing either out-and-out terrible projects (The Prisoner of Zenda (1979), Where Does it Hurt? (1972)) or getting involved in projects that deteriorated around him, often due to his own petty jealousies and neuroses (Casino Royale (1967), Soft Beds, Hard Battles (1974)). One of his lesser-known but largest disasters was a pirate adventure shot in 1973 but unreleased until the home video boom of the mid-80s. A little thing that no one likes to call
Ghost in the Noonday Sun.

In Ghost, Sellers plays a reprehensible crewman named “Dick Scratcher”. Now that we’re off with that awful introduction, the movie begins as an homage to silent movies, including interstitials, depicting ship captain Ras Mohammed (a heavily-made up Peter Boyle, top billed but appearing only in this sequence) and his crew burying a great treasure. Scratcher seizes the opportunity to murder the captain and the crew, claiming the treasure for himself. Back on the ship, he vows to return for the treasure at some later date. As some vague “later date” arrives, Scratcher’s memory is failing and he can’t recall the exact location of the treasure or the island. His only chance is that in the hopes that the ghost of Ras Mohammed still haunts the buried chest. So he first sets out to find someone who can see ghosts, even during the day (there; that’s the title for you). He settles on the young cabin boy Jeremiah (Richard Willis) for this task, for no real apparent reason. Meanwhile, the dashing and heroic first mate Pierre Rodriguez (Anthony Franciosa) wants to see the villainous Scratcher hanged for his crimes. And so begins the battle of wit (singular)!

Midway through, a rival buccaneer named Bill Bombay arrives. He’s played by the film’s co-screenwriter and eventual co-director, Spike Milligan, but things do not noticeably improve. He’s has his own stash of treasure melted down and disguised as cannon balls. Guess what gets used for ammunition during a broadsides battle?

If there’s a good movie to be found in Ghost in the Noonday Sun you’ll need a kid of your own who can see the ghosts that might lead you to it. Very canny and talented director Peter Medak undertook the task of filming Evan (Funeral in Berlin) Jones’ uninspired script. Sellers, at a very low point in his career at the time, having difficulty finding work due to his contentious nature and alcohol abuse, took the role of Scratcher eagerly but quickly lost interest in the project. His ego suffered a blow with the casting of pretty boy Franciosa and Sellers reportedly threw a number of overblown temper tantrums at his co-star’s expense. He also had a habit of calling off “ill”, but was later discovered water-skiing or doing something else recreational. At the end of his rope, Medak and the producers called in Seller’s old friend and collaborator Milligan to exert some control over the persnickety star. And, oh, while he was there, would he mind funnying up the script a bit more? By the end of the film, Milligan was in the director’s chair and Sellers was just as bizarre as ever.

The resulting movie is an overlong and incoherent mess. Lots of slapstick and running around, which is to be expected, peppered with bizarrely funny one-liners and non-sequiturs courtesy of Sellers and Milligan, the bulk of these latter bits, however, are delivered in a non-stop mumbling fashion ala Popeye, making them hard to discern without cranking up the volume.

Scratcher: “We’ll all be murdered in our graves.”

Pierre: “Scratcher, you’ll pay for this!”
Scratcher: “No I won’t. I’m doin’ it for free!”

Scratcher: “Don’t kill me! I’m too young to die!”
Bombay: “Ah, you’re just the right age!”

Scratcher: “By this time tomorrow, we’ll all be rich as… somebody.”

When Sellers and Milligan are together, the movie’s energy picks up. When it’s just Franciosa and Willis, you’ll pray for death… okay, it’s not that bad, but it’s not all that good, either. Shelved for over a decade after completion, it did nothing for the film’s star. Medak emerged unscathed and returned to his brilliant career. Milligan returned to British television and comedian saint-hood but never did break through in the U.S. And Sellers floundered for a few years more before reaching the pinnacle of his career with Being There, shortly before his death in 1980.

Between Sellers’ muttering, the desperately-jumpy edits clawing for cohesion and the overall weak story, Ghost in the Noonday Sun more than justifies its obscure-to-unknown status. If it weren’t for the ravenous VHS market of the mid-80s prompting a limited-release from Virgin Video, Ghost may have never seen the light of Noonday (great… now they have me doing it). This Virgin VHS is, to date, the only release Ghost has ever seen. So if you’re still intrigued, or perhaps, recovering from some sort of taste-removal surgery, or a die-hard Sellers/Milligan fan, don't say you weren't warned.

WITHNAIL & I (1987)

By obvious definition, “cult movies” are not for everyone. Usually “little” movies, they’re polarizing slices of entertainment that appeal to a select audience who sees something wonderful revealed to them within the context of the movie. The “cult” that grows around a particular film will defend it to the death and decry anyone who “doesn’t get it” to be woefully unhip or, at the very least, pitiable because their lives are so very lacking without embracing the truths contained within this particular movie. I’m not discussing bit “cultural phenomenon” movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or even something larger like the Star Wars series—each has its easily-recognizable fanbase that has, in the case of the former, elevated it to a rite of passage and a way of life and, in the case of the latter, transformed it into a veritable religion. Small, under-the-radar movies like El Topo, Eraserhead even Monty Python and the Holy Grail, movies whose midnight screenings were attended by devotees before the ubiquity of home video—movies filled with in-jokes and obscure imagery that only a select few will “get”. Often, the cults themselves are aided by a particular film’s initial box office failure because it allows the viewer to “discover” the movie, either by word-of-mouth or accidentally. Finding others who love the film as dearly is part of the sense of belonging this movie brings with it. It also provides the much-needed elitism to allow the viewer to feel part of an exclusive club, removed from the masses.

Bruce Robinson’s debut film Withnail and I is one such movie. Heralded as “one of Britain's biggest cult films” by many reviewers (particularly Jamie Russell in his 2003 BBC article), Withnail and I, ostensibly a comedy, came and went from theaters without much fanfare in the mid-80s and was rediscovered a few years later by what has become a rabid fanbase, whose affection for the film leaves many scratching their heads (just visit the Amazon and Netflix reviews which provide the best cross-section of human culture ever, where cineastes rub elbows with those who only recently discovered tools).

Based on Robinson’s own experiences as a down-and-out actor living in a communal dwelling, Withnail and I is a series of episodic adventures of the title characters, a pair of disheveled and aimless actors who while their time waiting for audition callback by drinking heavily and railing at the injustices of the world. The gaunt, half-mad Withnail (Richard E. Grant playing “proto-manic”) comes from money and cannot comprehend that the world will not bend to his entitlement, forcing him to live in squalor and refusing to acknowledge him as a great artist. Paul McGann’s “and I” (never given a name but referred to as “Marwood” in the script), is in the same boat but is only slightly more rational about it, in between his own panic attacks and over-reactions. With shot nerves and empty pockets, they pool their unemployment checks and head to a country cottage owned by Withnail’s flamboyant “Uncle Monty” (Harry Potter's Richard Griffith). 

[Here's an example of cult fun to be had: watching Mr. Dursley try to mount Dr. Who.]

The cottage proves to be little better than their filthy flat, bereft of fuel or food. Its nearest neighbor is owned by a belligerent farmer and the nearest town is difficult to get to in their disaster of a car. They spend a good deal of their time foraging for food, screaming at the world, and, in Marwood’s case, dodging the advances of Uncle Monty—who believes that Marwood is also gay, thanks to Withnail’s cruel sense of humor. In the end, one receives notice that a job has come to him and he must leave the other behind, to wallow in his own misery and injustice.

Nearly plotless and filled with insufferable characters—the worst of which are the title characters—Withnail and I can be viewed as an interesting study of wasted youth and British class warfare during the “greatest decade in history” (i.e. the ‘60s, as it is dubbed by Danny, their melancholy drug dealer friend, who mourns as the decade comes to an end). As unpleasant as Withnail and Marwood can get—they’re both cowardly, self-centered bastards, and are the masters of their own demise—they both come off as real people. Everyone knows someone like these two—with some introspection, many of us will even cop to having been one of these two (although I doubt any of us would admit to still being like them—some truths are just too difficult to face). The movie is fascinatingly prescient for later slacker movies like Reality Bites, not to mention the recent deluge of plotless “mumblecore” movies that spill out of film festivals every year. Character studies of aimless, despicable people are nothing new under the sun, of course, but Withnail and I has it’s own energy to set it apart.

Which brings us to the “cult” part of the movie. While amusing at times, for those who don’t “get it”, Withnail and I can be an excruciating experience. While one can identify with the main characters at times, it’s nigh-impossible to sympathize with them. The more farcial aspects of the film often come off as clumsy or offensive —Uncle Monty forcing himself on Marwood, for instance, meant to be hysterical seems mean and more than a bit sad after twenty-plus years of forced politically-correct sensitivity training. Marwood’s desperation in diverting the man’s unwanted attention just borders on gentle but it’s so fear-based—insulting Uncle Monty may mean being evicted from the house—that it rings realistically true and thematically hollow at the same time. There are, indeed, some terrific lines—“We’ve gone on holiday by accident!” and “We want the finest wines humanly available and we want them now!”—and they’re delivered not as “lines” but as dialogue, which is also nice, but the pace is deadly, particularly after you realize that the movie is as bereft of hope as its main characters. The whole movie is one long dark tea-time of the soul, from the dour set dressing to the endless English rainfall,

And the movie has legions of followers for just these reasons. There’s even an ill-advised drinking game built around it where a viewer attempts to keep up with Withnail’s alcoholic appetite—which, of course, could be fatal to the inexperienced drinker (particularly the scene in which a crazed Withnail downs a can of lighter fluid). Those outside the cult, however, find the movie baffling and appalling. Many viewers have wondered if it appeals only to the British but there are plenty of Brits who abhor the movie. As far as I go, it took me several tries over the course of years to actually get through the movie and even my final successful attempt was a struggle. One could make the argument that the movie’s autobiographical nature—Uncle Monty, for instance, is reportedly based on director Franco Zeffirelli who made advances on Robinson during his work as “Benvolio” on Romeo and Juliet; Withnail is based on a friend and actor Vivian MacKerrell who did die from throat cancer likely brought on from drinking lighter fluid—keeps the casual viewer at arm’s length but, really, it’s simply a matter of either liking it or not. If it makes you feel any better, producer Denis O’Brien, who had a renowned instinct for comedy, felt the movie had “no discernable jokes” and tried to shut the movie down several times. In interviews, Robinson reveals himself to be a bit of a “Withnail” himself (i.e. a “terrible cunt”) and is notoriously a difficult person to work or even deal with. But if he were more like Marwood, who is supposedly a fictional Robinson, how much better would that really be?

[In a bit of “Six Degrees”, Robinson and Grant would reteam for the much wackier How To Get Ahead in Advertising; Withnail and I has been compared to Terry Gilliam’s film version of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Robinson has been signed to direct the upcoming film adaptation of Thompson’s The Rum Diaries. Ain’t the universe neat?]

Well-photographed and edited, very well-acted, appreciated enough to receive a DVD release from The Criterion Collection, Withnail and I deserves all of its accolades and all of its detractions. The nice thing about movies like this, if you don’t like them, you never have to watch them again.