PUBLICATIONS: 2020–2021

Recent books, chapters and essays on film and television

Hammer Volume Six: Night Shadows — Limited Edition Blu-ray Box Set

Published by Powerhouse / Indicator, 28 June 2021. #PHILTD230

This box set “revives four consummate Hammer classics from the early sixties, exemplifying some of Hammer’s best work in the horror and thriller genres. Edgar Allan Poe looms large in The Shadow of the Cat, a macabre ‘old dark house’ tale of feline revenge, starring André Morell and Barbara Shelley; Peter Cushing and Oliver Reed star in Captain Clegg, which sees Hammer fuse horror and adventure in an eighteenth-century-set tale of smugglers and marsh phantoms; Herbert Lom stars as The Phantom of the Opera in Hammer’s acclaimed production of Gaston Leroux’s Gothic classic, whilst Freddie Francis directs Nightmare, a spooky psychological thriller in the Les Diaboliques vein, which benefits from full-blooded central performances by Moira Redmond and Jennie Linden.”

Strictly limited to 6,000 numbered units.

I was commissioned to write the essay ‘Creatures of the Night’ for the booklet accompanying the Blu-ray edition of Hammer’s Captain Clegg for this release. It was a great opportunity to write about a Hammer film I had such a soft spot for. Again, the research was confined because of Covid-19 but I happily spent some time researching the life and times of Russell Thorndike, the author of the original books that Hammer’s Captain Clegg was inspired by and to understand where the character of Clegg originated. The work then covered previous film versions, the production of Hammer’s film, including Hammer’s tussle with Disney to use the rights to the characters, and Cushing’s approach to the role.

CAPTAIN CLEGG

• High Definition remaster
• Two presentations of the film: Captain Clegg, with the original UK title sequence, and Night Creatures, with the alternative US titles
• Original mono audio
• Audio commentary with film historian and filmmaker Constantine Nasr (2021)
• The BEHP Interview with Peter Graham Scott (2004, 201 mins): career-spanning filmed interview, made as part of the British Entertainment History Project, featuring Graham Scott in conversation with Darrol Blake and John Sealey
• Hammer’s Women: Molly Arbuthnot and Rosemary Burrows (2021, 14 mins): overview of the prolific Hammer wardrobe mistresses by film historian Josephine Botting
• Kim Newman Introduces ‘Captain Clegg’ (2021, 14 mins): appreciation by the critic and author
• Peter Cushing: Perspectives (2021, 29 mins): documentary looking at the life and work of Peter Cushing, featuring contributions from actors Derek Fowlds, Judy Matheson and Madeline Smith
• Smugglers’ Gothic (2021, 22 mins): David Huckvale, author of Hammer Film Scores and the Musical Avant-Garde, on Don Banks’ score and the influence of the head of Hammer Films’ music department, Philip Martell
• Making of ‘Captain Clegg’ (2014, 32 mins): documentary narrated by actor John Carson, with insights from film historian Wayne Kinsey
• The Mossman Legacy (2014, 7 mins): Kinsey discusses the contributions of transport historian and collector George Mossman to Hammer productions
• Original theatrical trailer
• Image galleries: promotional and publicity material
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited edition exclusive 36-page booklet with new essays by Frank Collins and Kieran Foster, extracts from original press materials, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits

Fatherland — Limited Edition Blu-ray

Published by Powerhouse / Indicator, 19 April 2021. #PHILTD136.

Commissioned by Jeff Billington at Powerhouse/Indicator, this limited edition of Ken Loach’s Fatherland(1986) features my new essay ‘Third Man’ on the film in the booklet accompanying the first pressing.

Loach’s film, which was released after a period in the late 1970s and early 1980s where he found it difficult to get work commissioned and financed, is all the more intriguing in that it was his only collaboration, to date, with the much admired writer Trevor Griffiths. Griffiths a successful theatre playwright had, like Loach, moved from television and into cinema. Both had a formidable creative and political sensibility running throughout their work and ‘Third Man’ chronicles their interweaving, parallel careers through to the development and writing of Fatherland.

My own interest in Loach’s and Griffiths’ work has grown since I first watched Fatherland on Channel 4 (who had co-funded the film) in the late 1980s. I was happy to revisit their careers to fulfill the essay brief to contextualise their work and its political drive. With a particular focus on Griffiths, the essay discusses each of Fatherland’s collaborators, their shared politics of the left, their work for theatre, television and cinema and the way each has developed their own voice through their respective techniques in directing and writing. It also underlines their differences, coming into sharp relief in the many compromises that both had to make during the making of Fatherland. Each had something to say in the film, often from different perspectives, about media, culture and history, Europe and political struggle in a decade where the left was in retreat, particularly in Britain.

As this essay was researched and written last summer, during the lockdown of May and June 2020, it was a challenge to complete it while voluntarily shielding and on furlough. This also prevented me from looking through Loach’s and Griffiths’ papers held at the British Film Institute’s national archive. This was a set back as it would have been very rewarding to look more closely at the development of Fatherland’s script and the correspondence between Loach and Griffiths. Fortunately, David Archibald’s article on Loach’s approach to acting, written for The Drouth in 2018, offered some of those insights from the archive.

I also had some familiarity with Griffiths’ television work when I had first researched and reviewed his superb political drama Bill Brand, made for Thames in 1976 and released on DVD in 2011. The material gathered for that review was then extended through a deep read of several texts on Griffiths and Loach as well as newspaper and magazine research (thanks to the access provided by Manchester Central Library’s online newspaper archives and to Film Comment’s invaluable online archive during the first lockdown) to uncover contemporary interviews with Loach and Griffiths when Fatherland was released in 1986.

I am particularly indebted to the work, published since the 1980s, of Graham Fuller, Stanton B. Garner, John Hill, Stephen Lacey, Jacob Leigh and John Tulloch whose chapters and books on the work of Loach, Griffiths and producer Tony Garnett were extremely helpful in the writing of the essay.

It was a pleasure writing this essay for the politically prescient Fatherland. Unfortunately, the final draft lost an extended section on Barry Hines’ two-part television play The Price of Coal (1977) but the published version does serve as an appropriate introduction to much of Griffiths’ work in theatre, television and film prior to his collaboration with Loach.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

• High Definition remaster.
• Original mono audio.
• Language Barriers (2021): new interview with editor Jonathan Morris.
• Talk About Work (1971): Ken Loach’s documentary for the Central Office of Information, photographed by Chris Menges, interviewing young people about their work.
• Right to Work March (1972): documentary film of a five-week protest march from Glasgow to London that saw the participation of a number of cultural figures, including Loach and other filmmakers.
• Image gallery: publicity and promotional material.
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Frank Collins, an archival interview with Ken Loach, an extract from Loach on Loach, an overview of contemporary critical responses, new writing on the short films, and film credits.
• UK premiere on Blu-ray. Limited edition of 3,000 copies.