Stone Me!

Marianne Stone plays Secretary to the similarly ubiquitous Charles Lloyd-Pack in Quatermass 2.

Festival Time

I don't really like summer festivals much. All that premeditated fun, mud and bad music. It's a young man's game. I prefer to stay home where I can be sure of a comfortable bed, a well-filled pipe and safety in the knowledge that there will be uncontaminated toilet paper when nature calls.

The Festival of Britain was different. Temporary structures didn't mean pop-up shops and the Pyramid Stage. No mud, just plenty of concrete. Clean lines, Modernist sculpture and lemonade. Here comes the summer.



Brian Peake's Science Exhibition Hall




The Idris talking lemon. Stay away from the brown acid.




John Piper mural, Homes and Garden Pavilion




Dome of Discovery, Ralph Tubbs / DRU





Henry Moore sculpture and Country Pavilion windmill




The mighty Skylon, Powell & Moya



Holiday Camp

The very title of Holiday Camp gives you a good idea of why it's prime Mounds and Circles material. Directed by Ken Annakin, it 's a production of Gainsborough Studios - in terms of its cultural pretensions essentially ITV to Ealing's BBC, which made it well-placed to make a film about post-war working class entertainment.

Holiday Camp depicts the stay of a diverse group of holidaymakers Boddy's Holiday Camp in Farleigh, Yorkshire (in reality Butlin's Holiday Camp in Filey, Yorkshire).  The individual storylines are disorientatingly different in tone, with comedy, soppy romance, poignant drama and brutal sex murders rubbing shoulders as uneasily as the camp's guests.

At the heart of the film are working class Londoners the Huggetts: hearty dad Joe (Jack Warner), nervous mum Ethel (Kathleen Harrison) and their grown-up kids Joan (Hazel Court) and Harry (Peter Hammond).  As well as her brassy friend Angie (Yvonne Owen), Joan's brought her baby son with her on holiday.  It's an interesting twist that she's a single mum (although obviously it's due to being widowed in the war rather than anything more scandalous).  The young Hazel Court (probably my favourite actress whose name sounds like a block of flats) looks astonishingly beautiful, and is a worthy winner of the camp's Bathing Beauty contest, the award presented by special guest star (and Gainsborough contract player) Patricia Roc.

Significant headline 

The Huggetts' adventures are genial light comedy stuff, with Joe called on to beat a pair of professional gamblers who've taken Harry to the cleaners at their own game, and Joan striking up a typically tempestuous romcom relationship with lovelorn sailor Jimmy Hanley.

Optimistically competing against Joan in the Bathing Beauty contest is Elsie Dawson (Carry On regular Esma Cannon), a chirpy but ultimately pathetic middle-aged barmaid whose attempts to appear youthful have led to an extremely ill-advised blonde perm.  Elsie holidays at the Farleigh camp every year, each time convinced she'll meet the man she's going to marry.  "Do you think man is still the hunter?" she asks her chalet-mate, Esther Harman (Flora Robson).  "I'm afraid I don't know much about that sort of thing," Esther shyly replies.

The quiet, genteel Esther's also a spinster, but she couldn't be more different to Elsie.  She's come to the camp for the first time since her mother's death, to make a change from their traditional trips to Devon, and she immediately feels out of place against the raucous, enforced jollity of Boddy's.  Initially intimidated by the endless announcements issuing from the camp's control tower ("Control tower - it sounds like a prison camp," she says to Elsie, half-joking, half genuinely disturbed.  The cheerful reply "That's right - only we're the prisoners!" doesn't help matters), she becomes increasingly obsessed with them, convinced she recognises the voice as that of the only man she ever loved, who disappeared during World War One.

Esther's heart-breaking story is the best-executed part of the film, largely thanks to Robson's near-unbearably poignant performance.  Eventually Esther ascends to the top of the tower and discovers that the camp announceris indeed the love of her life... but he lost both his sight and his memory in the war (he's played by Esmond Knight, who was blind in real life).  Not only is he unable to either see or remember Esther, but as a further kick in the teeth, despite his problems he's happily married with children and has led a much richer and more fulfilling life than Esther has.  Her last remaining dreams in tatters, Esther leaves the control tower comprehensively destroyed.

If that wasn't depressing enough, there's an even worse fate in store for Elsie.  The man she's got her eye on is Binkie Hardwick, a suave but clearly caddish RAF officer.

But Binkie's far more than just a cad, as we discover when he unpacks, revealing a mysteriously bloodstained garment in his suitcase...

Initially Binkie's dismissive of Elsie's less-than-subtle attentions, being far more interested in Angie - until Elsie reveals she knew him before under a different name, when he used to drink in a pub where she worked.  Binkie concocts a story about being a Scotland Yard detective on the trail of the brutal Mannequin Murderer, which the credulous Elsie happily swallows - though the glamour of being with a detective means she's even less inclined to leave him alone.

Binkie, of course, is the Mannequin Murderer (the reason for the name's never explained, making it all the more sinister) and has Angie lined up as his next victim.  When this plan falls through at the last minute due to Joan unexpectedly turning up, he picks the nearest alternative at hand - poor old Elsie.

Elsie's terrible fate is kept discreetly off screen, but the way Binkie roughly grabs and kisses her as the image fades out gives us some grim idea of what's in store.

The next day, as Binkie prepares to leave the camp, the police catch up with him.  "I said I'd have a week, and by George I've had it," he chuckles.  "You've had it all right!" says the inspector, cheerfully.  I'm not entirely sure it's appropriate for the apprehension of a murderer and rapist to be such jovial, and it shows how Holiday Camp struggles to reconcile its darker elements with its pervading carefree atmosphere.

Of course, Holiday Camp's greatest point of interest is as a historical document.  To eyes accustomed to families having far more individualistic holidays, the collective entertainment of the holiday camp looks weird and - with bowler-hatted men popping up from nowhere to jolly along anyone who looks like they're not having the time of their life - almost sinister.  The mass hokey-cokey that occurs halfway through the film looks almost like a surreal religious ceremony (the words "that's what it's all about" take on a new resonance when considered like this).

At the film's climax, as our various holidaymakers' stay comes to an end, all the occupants of the camp march through it in a giant parade.  It's a truly bizarre spectacle.

Holiday Camp was an enormous success, and led to three spin-off films featuring the Huggetts - well, two of them: Joan and Harry are mysteriously replaced by three daughters, including a teenage Petula Clark (confusingly, Peter Hammond returned, now playing the boyfriend of one of the new Huggetts).  They're fun in a featherbrained sort of way, but none of them returns to the murky waters that Holiday Camp takes a dip in.

I'll leave you to ponder on special guest star Cheerful Charlie Chester:

Cecil Collins

The Quest (1938)

Surrealist Landscape (1945)

The Promise (1936)

Music of Dawn (1988)

There's something rather frightening about the art of Cecil Collins, perhaps its because much of his work looks like that of an over zealous adherent of some bizarro denominational Christian cult. Mind you, I like that in an artist: passion, madness, genius, an interest in the supernatural...

'Music of Dawn' is my favourite of this selection. Look how many tones of gold he managed to include. This is the sort of picture that people look at and say 'well, I could probably do that'. Believe me, they couldn't, not even if they had a thousand years and a magic pencil.

Cecil died in 1989.

Cheerio Chips

Queens of Camp

Would-be beauty queens of all shapes, sizes and hairdos line up in Holiday Camp (1947).

More about this quintessentially Mounds and Circles Britflick very soon.

A Prize Of Arms

'A Prize Of Arms' is a 1962 crime thriller directed by Cliff Owen, starring Stanley Baker. A taut, taciturn heist film, there's no big build up, no villains pushing toy cars around a map. Instead, three men, who we will learn virtually nothing about, will rob the Army of £100,000 of pay, using a well thought out plan which we do not know in advance. It's an interesting and intriguing take on a familiar set up.

Baker, left profile.

The magnificent Stanley Baker plays Turpin, the leader of the men. He used to be a soldier, until he was caught operating a black market Coffee scam in Hamburg with Con (Helmut Schmid), a Pole, and the second member of the group. Turpin was given an immediate dishonourable discharge - no pay off, no pension, no nothing - 'just three holes on each shoulder where the pips used to be'. 'Did you used to be an officer?' says a surprised Fenner (Tom Bell), the third man in the gang, 'I bet you were a right bastard'. 

Bell.

Con is a long time associate and friend of Turpin. Fenner is new to the gang and we find out very little about him other than he carries a hip flask and loses self control very easily under pressure, something of a disadvantage for a career criminal.

The job is to rob the payroll for an Expeditionary Force about to be shipped overseas to deal with one of those international incidents that Britain seems to constantly find itself embroiled in. The gang have the uniforms and the ordnance to slip into the camp where the money is held, and then try not to make themselves conspicuous until the right moment. The Army mentality, which Turpin clearly knows inside out, helps them along - squaddies mind their own business, and are forever being messed about by things they had no prior knowledge of. Paperwork is always wrong, unneccessary work is always being carried out, you're always being interrupted by some bloke you don't know, so the gang are able to make their preparations avoiding suspicion, although not avoiding vaccinations and washing up duty.  

Two determined men, one moaner.

The camp itself is a fantastic place to spot emerging British talent. Well, let's amend that to emerging British actors, as not all of them are much cop. As well as the splendidly indecipherable Patrick Magee (actually Irish, but we'll claim him), there's also Rodney Bewes, Fulton MacKay, Jack May, Dave out of 'Minder', Haskins out of 'The Sweeney', Geoffrey Palmer, Stanley Meadows, Hammer favourite Michael Ripper and Arthur AND Inspector Blakey out of 'On The Buses'. Marvellous. 

Magee shouts something, not sure what.

'I'll get you, Baker!'

The plan works well. Dressed as MP's, the three men burst into the Payroll office as it is closing and say a fire has been reported. Evacuating the building, they start a fire with a flame thrower (operated for real by Baker who looks like he's having the time of his life) before blowing the safe and making off with the cash in the confusion. Saying too much more would spoil the story, but lets just say that Baker knows what he's doing, even if it does lead to a lot of tension and nail biting on his colleagues behalf, especially when the top brass eventually work out what's going on.

'Yes, bit of a flap, I'm afraid, some bounders gone orf with all the wages'

As the film speeds towards a nihilistic finale, Baker gets to torch a couple of jeeps with his flamethrower, and Bell finally cracks and starts screeching. I won't tell you what happens in the end but, needless to say, in 1962 getting away with a load of public money simply didn't happen. Except in real life.

Fiery Getaway.

He's enjoying that.

Love Is In The Air? No, Death.

A more than decent attempt at something different, the original idea came partly from director in waiting Nicolas Roeg. The way the details of the robbery unfold is extremely well done, and keeps the viewer interested at all times. Good cast, great spare, spooky jazz music from Robert Sharples (mainly just trumpet and electric guitar) and Stanley Baker is his usual strong, sardonic, driven self. His characters philosophy is straightforward, borne out of disgrace and dishonour and disappointment:

'if you want something in this world, you just have to go and take it'.

As he finds out, taking it is one thing; keeping it entirely another.