Mind the Doors! Death Line (Gary Sherman, 1972)

• The following essay was published in the accompanying booklet to the 2018 Network on Air release of Death Line on Blu-ray. The film is streaming via Network on Air as part of Kim Newman's Nightmare Night In from 4pm on October 23 2020.

Death Line is a favourite among horror fans but is less well-known among the uninitiated. According to Marcelle Perks, this is testimony to the way that critics and distributors have historically ‘mishandled our [British] Gothic heritage’.[1] Robin Wood, one of the few British critics with something good to say about Death Line, noted that in general the critical response to the film upon its release was ‘insensitive in the extreme’.[2] Wood was perhaps referencing reviews like that by Cecil Watson of the Daily Mail, who wondered how 'such a sick and sick-making film came to be made’ (in his own review Wood had called Death Line ‘the most horrible horror film ever’, although this sentiment was expressed in tones of admiration rather than disgust).

For decades critics simply did not understand British horror, and the resulting ignominy has left many a brilliant film languishing near the base of the canonical pyramid of national cinema. In the case of Death Line this seems particularly unfair. Gary Sherman’s film is a harrowing, brilliantly shot and genuinely terrifying example of the genre but it’s also so much more than that; this is a richly detailed, highly engaging film which develops complex themes about class, corporate irresponsibility, modernity and alienation. And cannibalism.

When two students, Alex (David Ladd) and Patricia (Sharon Gurney) exit the last train to Russell Square they find a man (James Cossins) lying on the stairs of the station, apparently drunk. This is not an unusual occurrence, although the man is a very high-class drunk: he is well-dressed and his card reads ‘James Manfred, O.B.E.’ Patricia insists on informing a police officer despite Alex’s emphatic reluctance, but when the officer arrives at the scene Manfred is gone. Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence) is called to investigate and finds that Manfred is one of a handful of people who have recently gone missing from Russell Square station.

In a seemingly unrelated aside, during the investigation veteran Inspector Richardson (Clive Swift) tells Calhoun and his partner Detective Rogers about a cave-in that took place during the building of Russell Square station in the 1890s, in which a number of workers were trapped underground apparently left to rot. As Calhoun investigates further, he is warned away by the pompous intelligence office Stratton-Villiers (Christopher Lee), and this causes the fiercely working class inspector to double down in his efforts. Meanwhile, in the bowels of Russell Square station, a plague-infected man (here known only as ‘The Man’) grieves for his beloved partner who has died in childbirth. He is the last of several generations of the original cave-in victims, and the grief of losing his only companion threatens to drive him to despair…

Made in Britain, Born in the USA.

Peter Hutchings notes that ‘Death Line’s main achievement lies in its refusal to reject or be repulsed by the ‘monstrous’.[4] But as unapologetically gruesome as the film may be, it was inspired by some even more horrifying legends. In his depiction of ‘The Man’ and his deceased family of cannibals, Gary Sherman was inspired by the Scottish folklore myth of the Highwayman Sawney Bean, the head of the medieval cave-dwelling clan that supposedly captured, dismembered and ate passing travellers. Whether intentional or not, the story also recalls the fateful Donner expedition, led by a band of American pioneers who set out for California in 1846 and fell victim to a series of mishaps that left them no choice but to resort to cannibalism to survive.

Combined British and American cultural influences run through Death Line like the writing in a stick of Blackpool rock. On the production side the film is British (it was produced by British companies and shot in London) although it was directed by the Chicago-based Gary Sherman and stars an American actor, David Ladd. Death Line draws from British history and culture, but in tone it is closer to something like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) than it is to the British gothic tradition. In this, Death Line was part of a trend in 70s British horror: Hutchings argues that financial difficulties in the industry in this decade led to a slew of low budget horrors which drew on the ‘central metaphors’ of American cinema, films like Frightmare (Pete Walker, 1974) and Prey (Norman J. Warren, 1977).[5]

Gary Sherman was a relatively untried director, but he landed in London at a time when British horror was attracting young men with limited experience and excellent ideas, and with Death Line Sherman was following the example of directors like Michael Reeves (Witchfinder General, 1968), Peter Sykes (Demons of the Mind, 1972) and Peter Sasdy (Hands of the Ripper, 1971). Variety called the film a ‘sleeper hit’ on its first release in London, which seems kindly euphemistic. It was more aggressively marketed in the United States, where it was sold under the more evocative title Raw Meat and successively billed with James Kelley and Andrea Bianchi’s Night Hair Child (1971) and Ivan Reitman’s Cannibal Girls (1973). Though the exact box office figures are unavailable, it is likely that Death Line was slightly more successful in the US, a market which has always been, on the whole, far more receptive to low-budget genre product.[6]

‘I’ll be in this movie, if I don’t have to wear teeth.’

According to Gary Sherman, Christopher Lee was having dinner at producer Paul Maslansky’s flat when he read the script for Death Line and said ‘I’ll be in this movie, if I don’t have to wear teeth’. This was not the only reason, however; he was very keen to do a film with Donald Pleasence, and as such he was willing to accept a considerably smaller fee than he could command at that time as one of the most successful leading men in horror.

Sherman had always had Donald Pleasence in mind when he wrote the script, and for his part, Pleasence was taken by juxtaposition of the horror and the comedy of the Inspector role (he rarely got to do comedy) and enthusiastically accepted.[7] Marlon Brando agreed to play ‘The Man’ (he had just finished filming another British horror film, The Nightcomers, also produced by Alan Ladd Jr.) but after his son became ill prior to filming he dropped out and was replaced by Hugh Armstong (Prudence and the Pill [Fielder Cook, 1968], How to Get Ahead in Advertising [Bruce Robinson, 1989]).

Donald Pleasence’s performance is a delight to behold. As Calhoun he is sarcastic, acerbic and by turns lackadaisical and bursting with energy. He can go from deadpan gurn to manic grin in less than 0.5 seconds. This is unnerving, and this is absolutely his intention; he knows how to bait and manipulate in order to extract information. The pompous Villiers (played by Lee) is an interesting counterpoint to Calhoun’s tough, earthy, working-class persona and an effective goad to his motivations. David Ladd’s performance is slightly less polished, however, and this is a point on which critic Roger Ebert lingered in his review of the film, noting the contrast between Ladd’s ‘painfully inept’ performance and Donald’s Pleasence’s ‘fully formed, believable character’.[8]

Hugh Armstrong’s ‘The Man’ also deserves a special mention here. As the lonely grief-stricken monster, ‘The Man’ embodies the emotional (as opposed to visceral) horror of the film, and his grief is played with such realism that as the camera lingers on his pain we begin to feel uncomfortable, almost as though we are intruding in an intimate, sacred space. He also impresses on us his frustration and his desire to be understood rather than reviled, which makes his attempts to communicate with Patricia using what little language he has gleaned from tube announcements (‘Mind the doors!’) all more poignant. He may be no Boris Karloff, but Armstrong’s ability to inject a level of emotional depth into a mostly mute character who communicates mainly by grunting is nothing short of remarkable.

Myths and Monsters

Credit for this must also go to Sherman and cinematographer Alex Thompson. We are introduced to ‘The Man’ via a six-minute tracking shot which, in its almost painful slowness, takes in every tiny detail of the monster’s underground lair: furniture, debris, decorations, jewellery, severed limbs. As Robin Wood notes in his review for Monthly Film Bulletin, ‘The core of the film is contained in that shot… The circular movement of the camera in a constricted space … creates the claustrophobia of this appalling world, both prison-cell and womb.’[9]

The extended sequence of ‘The Man’ grieving and the sentimentality of his behaviour (he decorates the corpse of his wife with trinkets) has the effect of making the cannibals seem sympathetic. They do not eat their own, and they engage in ritualistic mourning when loved ones die. In essence, grief is what separates cannibal from monster in Death Line. ‘The Man’ may be physically repulsive and he may ooze corruption from every pore, but like Frankenstein’s monster, the pain and trauma he suffers ultimately holds up a mirror to an uncaring contemporary society. In Death Line, it is the numbness of feeling brought on by the disconnectedness of modern living which is monstrous.[10]

As a low budget cannibal horror film that draws on American sensibilities, Death Line seems a far cry from the Victorian gothic horrors of a few years before. In fact, the film is a slice of pure Victoriana, but it is more informed by 19th century society and culture than by sumptuous costumes and set design. Victorian fiction was obsessed with contradictions, such as man’s capability for good and evil (Jekyll and Hyde) and the physically monstrous as a representation of our basest fears (Frankenstein) and these are themes that Sherman attempts to explore in Death Line.

The juxtaposition between upper class and lower class in the film also recalls the downtrodden Morlocks and the pampered Eloi of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (see also the lesser known The Sleeper Awakes). In Victorian England such fiction played on general anxieties about the human cost of industrialisation and the logical consequences of unchecked capitalism. The danger was that the rich would get richer, while the workers would suffer and become so downtrodden that they would become subhuman, literally relegated to live underground.

Death Line's raw, visceral and unflinching take on the monstrous leads us on an exploration of grief, modernity and corporate irresponsibility. It is not difficult to see why the film has become an underground (excuse the pun) classic of British cinema.

Notes:

[1] Marcelle Perks, ‘A Descent into the Underworld: Death Line’, in British Horror Cinema, ed. by Steve Chibnall and Julian Petley, (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 145. [2] Monthly Film Bulletin, Vol. 40 n. 46 (January 1973), p. 6. [3] Marcelle Perks in British Horror Cinema, pp. 145-146. [4] Peter Hutchings, ‘The British Horror Film: An Investigation of British Horror Production in its National Context’, (University of East Anglia: unpublished doctoral thesis, 1989), p. 393. [5] Hutchings, ‘The British Horror Film’, p. 313. [6] Death Line was marketed in the US with more emphasis on ‘guts and gore’ as a selling point. However, the suggestion for ‘exploitation’ in Raw Meat’s press book – that posters for the film be placed in the windows of Butcher’s shops – was possibly a step too far. [7] Read the full interview at http://www.comingsoon.net/horror/features/840773-how-marlon-brando-was-almost-the-monster-in-death-line#8pM3ElZmwLVjk74w.99 [8] See https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/raw-meat-1973 for Ebert’s full review. [9] Monthly Film Bulletin, Vol. 40 n. 46 (January 1973), p. 6. [10] Peter Hutchings argues along similar lines, further analysing how the ‘monster’ cast out from society functions in Death Line as a redemptive force. For more details see his brilliant Hammer and Beyond: the British Horror Film (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993).

Follow Mia for Carol Reed’s Last Film (Follow Me, 1972)

• This article originally appeared as a booklet essay for the Network Blu Ray release of Follow Me. You can buy the film here: https://networkonair.com/all-products/3004-follow-me-blu-ray-

Carol Reed’s last outing is a sensitive film which touches on themes of love, marriage, cultural alienation and British parochialism. Follow Me is a sentimental romance which makes no apologies for its meandering plotlessness, slightly vacant lead characters and curious eccentricities (most of these arrive in the form of Topol’s private-eye character Julian Christoferou). Charles (Michael Jayston) is a successful accountant who suspects his wife Belinda (Mia Farrow) of having an affair. Belinda and Charles come from very different cultural and social backgrounds – Belinda is a free-spirited hippie who would just as soon board a plane for India as she would go to the shop for a pint of milk, whereas Charles is an aristocratic gentleman who is bound by the trappings of respectability. It’s a wonder that the couple get along at all, but in the initial stages of courtship it is these differences that they appreciate about each other, and they share their respective knowledge and life experiences (although Belinda occupies the role of student rather than partner in the relationship). After the couple marry the rot sets in early, however: Belinda begins to find the demands of marriage limiting while Charles is exasperated by Belinda’s refusal to become a ‘good’ wife. Charles’s benevolent lecturing becomes strict and patronising, while Belinda’s unstructured approach to life becomes absent-minded and disrespectful. Where their courtship was once characterised by the communication of shared joys and interests, their marriage becomes defined by missed signals and misunderstandings.

Mystified by his wife’s late hours and her inability to keep appointments, Charles hires detective Julian Christoferou to report on her movements. Christoferou is somewhere between a street philosopher and an idiot savant: a disarming, energetic, macaroon-munching character who responds to serious topics with trivialities and who treats trivial topics with the gravest seriousness. Christoferou is charmed by Belinda who, it transpires, is not having an affair. She is simply bored by her husband and would rather spend her time taking long walks, eating ice-cream and watching trashy horror movies than attending Charles’s stuffy dinner parties. Belinda, unware that Christoferou is a detective, is inexplicably charmed by the bizarre mannerisms of this strange man who takes to following her around town. A series of montages show Belinda and Christoferou walking, eating, watching films and visiting galleries, and while they smile, stare and point at each other, they never exchanging a single word (an idea which seems like it would be romantic on paper but intensely awkward in practice). When Charles realises that Belinda’s ‘other man’ is the detective that he hired, his finally loses his carefully cultivated aristocratic composure.

Follow Me is based on Peter Schaffer’s 1962 play The Public Eye, which on its first run starred the young Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams as Belinda and Julian (renamed Christoferou for the film adaptation). Williams was initially in talks to reprise his role as the oddball detective in the film, which would have made for a very interesting take on the character. Indeed, Follow Me would have been a very different film but for a number of factors. Although the pre-production timeline is unclear, Ross Hunter, who bought the rights to the play, had entered into talks with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor to play the starring roles, but Burton and Taylor backed out because they could not agree on a suitable director. In 1965 Daily Variety noted that Julie Andrews was to star in the film and Mike Nichols was to direct. Paul Scofield and Dirk Bogarde were also considered for the role of Christoferou (Bogarde initially accepted but later opted out).[1] The director role eventually went to Carol Reed, a veteran whose career spans the history of British cinema. Reed’s early training had been the British quota quickies of the 1930s – cheaply-made pictures which were produced and distributed to satisfy the requirements of a government act which was designed to safeguard the industry against Hollywood monopoly. After the war he directed his most critically acclaimed films, Odd Man Out (1947), Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949). Reed’s career is generally considered to have gone into decline in the 1950s and 1960s, though his more high-profile credits in these decades include Our Man in Havana (1959) and Oliver! (1968).

Mia Farrow was not yet in the prime of her career when she starred in Follow Me but she was still a recognisable name. Farrow had worked as a fashion model in the early 60s before starring in the American soap opera Peyton Place, but during the mid-1960s she was perhaps better known for her relationship with Frank Sinatra, whom she married at the age of 21. In 1968 she landed her first role as a leading lady in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, which remains a widely acclaimed classic of the horror genre. Farrow took roles across stage and screen and in 1971 she became the first American actress to join the Royal Shakespeare Company. Chaim Topol (known as Topol) is probably best known today for playing Milos Columbo in For Your Eyes Only (1981), and for his long-running part as Teyve the Dairyman in the play Fiddler on the Roof (a role he has reportedly played 3,500 times). Topol was used to playing a much older character (Teyve is in his 50s) and Follow Me offered him the rare opportunity to play a young, charismatic romantic lead.

The critical reception for Follow Me was overwhelmingly negative, and this is curious because the film is so pleasantly innocuous. A reviewer for the New York Times dubbed it ‘a comedy that pretends to be in favor of all of life's good things—more or less in the order of love, horror films, sunsets, dolphins, ice cream and Franco Zeffirelli's “Romeo and Juliet”—and succeeds in making them seem more unbearably boring than need be.’ [2] Roger Ebert felt the film was so dull that it did not even deserve the benefit of his (usually) droll prose style. He called it ‘dumb, dumb, dumb. Worse than that, it’s boring…one of those sickening movie romances in which adults play child’s games in soft focus while the sound track stages a forced march through congealed honey. [3] These disappointingly superficial readings seem to have missed out on the deeper messages contained within the film. Yes, there are some dialogue-heavy scenes which suggest that Follow Me was adapted a little too directly from the stage, and yes, Carol Reed’s location shots of London occasionally have the air of a Pathé travel newsreel, but this is much more than a bland romance.

Ebert notes that Michael Jayston acts as if he is in a film about investment banking, an odd criticism given that Charles is supposed to embody the characteristics of an uptight Englishman.[4] As the film opens we are introduced to Michael Jayston’s character walking down the street in the classic businessman’s uniform of bowler hat and umbrella, and in this scene he gives such a good impression of a middle class bourgeois gentleman that he would be quite at home in a Rene Magritte painting. If that seems like a slightly obscure cultural reference, Follow Me is full of obscure references to art and culture which would only be understood by someone with a classical education. This is intentional; the film is as much about the relationship between high and low culture as it is about the breakdown of a young marriage. Charles and Belinda’s marriage represents a clash between young and old, British and foreign, cosmopolitan and provincial. It is no accident that Belinda, ‘an armor‐plated anti‐intellectual of scary determination’, is an American. [5] It is also worth noting that Christoferou, the idiosyncratic oddball who lives outside of polite society, is Greek and therefore positioned as something of a foreign other. In the film much is made of the fact that Belinda simply does not belong in Charles’s social circle, where a knowledge of implicit social rules is a pre-requisite to polite conversation.

Belinda believes that people are the sum total of their education and cultural experiences, but Charles is limited by his cultural experiences. They are a way of negotiating his social world but they prevent him from experiencing it. Belinda is very much the Eliza Doolittle in this dynamic which seems to be ripped from the pages of Pygmalion, but unlike Charles she is enriched by art, music and books. She also recognises that, where culture is concerned, there are no hierarchies but the ones we impose, and she will happily watch Franco Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet and then settle down for a double-bill of ‘Werewolves From Mars, Bloodsuckers from Venus’ and ‘I Was A Teenage Werewolf’.[6] The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argues that in a society organised along class lines, an individual’s education, style of dress, taste in music, knowledge of culture and manner of speech all form part of their ‘cultural capital’, and this in turn determines their social status. Charles has the cultural capital of an upper middle-class businessman and Belinda, as a classless and uncultured American, has none. But unlike Eliza, she is unwilling to change herself in order to join the club. She makes it clear to Charles that he must change if he wants to win back her affections.

Follow Me feels like a distant great-aunt of films like The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and (500) Days of Summer (2009), and Belinda does seem to typify the classic ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’, a female character comprised of charming quirks who essentially functions as a blank screen for the projection of the fantasies and anxieties of a male protagonist. But Farrow brings some charm and substance to this character who wears funny hats and ponchos and makes jokes about the male genitalia over aperitifs. Follow Me has the air of a lost classic which was under-appreciated on its original release. It is no darkly comic Harold and Maude (1971) and it is more restrained than a challenging melodrama like The Way We Were (1973) but it does offer a quietly intelligent take on modern relationships.

Reference list:

[1] American Film Institute, ‘Follow Me’, https://catalog.afi.com/Film/54618-THE-PUBLIC-EYE?sid=d0451b8b-4f61-411a-baf0-17c5fe1a9e85&sr=3.426523&cp=1&pos=6 [accessed 21/02/2019] [2] Anon, ‘Public Eye’, The New York Times, July 19 1972. [3] Roger Ebert, ‘The Public Eye’, September 26, 1972, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-public-eye-1972 [accessed 02/02/2019]. [4] Roger Ebert, ‘The Public Eye’, September 26, 1972, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-public-eye-1972 [accessed 02/02/2019]. [5] Anon, ‘Public Eye’, New York Times, July 19 1972. [6] These horror movies are fictional. The clips that Belinda is shown watching in the cinema are from Hammer’s Brides of Dracula (1960)

Frankenstein Reimagined: The Mind of Mr Soames (Alan Cooke, 1970)

• This article was originally published as a booklet essay for the Powerhouse/Indicator Blu-Ray release of The Mind of Mr Soames. The film was a limited edition and is now out of print, but you can view the release info on the Powerhouse website here: https://www.powerhousefilms.co.uk/products/the-mind-of-mr-soames-le

The Mind of Mr Soames uses the premise of scientific progress to explore some unpleasant aspects of contemporary society. Terence Stamp plays John Soames, a man who has been in a coma since birth as a result of congenital brain damage. He is awoken, aged 30, following a highly experimental operation pioneered by the neurosurgeon Dr Maitland (Nigel Davenport). A literal baby in the body of a man, Soames has to catch up on years of education in the space of just a few months. Soames’ journey is captured by television cameras for a documentary series and attracts great interest from the medical community and the press. Soames’ education is overseen by Dr Maitland, who designs an intense training regimen in order to accelerate his mental growth. However, trapped in the institute and forced to study ceaselessly, Soames eventually becomes frustrated and acts out. Buoyed by his first encounter with the outside world, Soames finally realises his own strength and escapes…

The Amicus House of … Drama?

The Mind of Mr Soames represented a foray out of horror and into science fiction drama for Amicus, a production company known for their portmanteau horror films such as Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (Freddie Francis, 1965) and The House that Dripped Blood (Peter Duffell, 1970). Producers Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg had previously dabbled in science fiction with the modestly successful Dr Who and the Daleks (Gordon Flemyng, 1963), based on the popular BBC television show of the same name, and its sequel Daleks Invasion Earth 2150A.D. (Gordon Flemyng, 1966). They had also worked in the intersection between horror and science fiction (two genres that are often conflated) with The Projected Man (Ian Curteis, 1966), a film which follows the familiar trope of scientific-experiment-gone-wrong resulting in the physical and emotional disfigurement of the lead protagonist (played by Bryant Haliday).

Though science fiction had long been a part of the company’s oeuvre, The Mind of Mr Soames still represented something of a departure from type in terms of its dramatic ambitions; its subtle exploration of the human mind is a far cry from science fiction of the spaceships-and-aliens variety. The move into drama was one that the company had been pondering for some time. Subotsky had tried to buy Flowers for Algernon, the 1966 novel by Daniel Keys about a young man with a low IQ who participates in a scientific experiment that increases his intelligence (this became the successful film Charly [Ralph Nelson, 1968]). When this deal fell through, he decided to develop The Mind of Mr Soames from the 1961 novel of the same name by Charles Eric Mane.[1]

It’s Alive!

The Mind of Mr Soames may be a serious drama with a dash of science fiction, but the plot of the film seems somewhat horror-inspired, particularly as it adheres closely to various popular adaptations of Frankenstein (and in some ways, Soames is the Frankenstein film that Amicus’s Milton Subotsky was never able to make[2]). Soames is effectively ‘brought to life’ by advancements in medical science. His ‘creators’ do not understand his thought processes and as a result Soames is frustrated, escapes and causes mayhem in the local area. This is Mary Shelley’s story with a modern update: Soames’ life is fodder for popular entertainment, and his movement is restricted by the presence of cameras and reporters who are filming his progress for a television show. Soames is a romantic individual (romantic in the original sense of the word): he is sensitive and filled with wonder at the sublimity of the natural world, and he constantly delights in the discoveries of new feelings and experiences. The flashbulb that goes off in Soames' face when he is accosted by journalists in the final scene of the film is reminiscent of Frankenstein’s monster acting out in response to sensory overload. Like Frankenstein's monster, Soames’ rare innocence is pulled through the wringer of modernity and all it entails: the suppression of the individual in favour of collective social and scientific progress.

The first half of the film is framed by an intellectual interplay between two competing schools of psychological thought. Dr Maitland believes in discipline and study, with a highly structured schedule that keeps Soames constantly learning. He becomes fatigued and irritable and acts out as a result. Dr Bergen (Robert Vaughn), a consultant on the project, believes in the power of play in shaping early childhood experiences, and with that in mind he allows Soames to briefly leave the confines of the institute. The scenes in which Soames discovers nature for the first time are beautifully shot, and the juxtaposition between the natural world and the sterile hospital environment (in which the camera remains relatively static) is striking. The hospital scenes have a particularly ‘televisual’ feel, and this is perhaps influenced by the pedigree of director Alan Cooke, a prolific and able television director who had previously worked on Theatre 625, Armchair Theatre, and The Wednesday Play, among others.

Whilst proceeding from an interesting premise, the plot of Soames often feels slightly underdeveloped, and this is surprising given the fact that producer Milton Subotsky was obsessed with script editing and would often direct much of his energies into sourcing and developing new material. Roger Greenspun of the New York Times agreed, writing, ‘The Mind of Mr. Soames is full of boldly introduced but ultimately undeveloped character clichés.’[3] There are many aspects of Soames that one feels could have offered thought-provoking perspectives on society and media culture if only they were developed more fully. Other plotlines were lost in the process of adaptation, but could have added some extra tension to the film had they been incorporated. For example, in the novel of the same name, a reporter locates Soames’ long lost mother and sister to cash in on his story, and a legal battle follows which overwhelms our protagonist.

That said, the scientific-experiment-gone-wrong trope is an exceptionally common one in science fiction – and often, as in Amicus’s previous production, The Projected Man, it can be a hackneyed device deployed in the service of advancing the plot. But The Mind of Mr Soames attempts to use its premise to go further. This is not the trite myth of the modern Prometheus, in which scientific progress results in the potential for dire widespread social consequences (after all, how many comatose-from-birth adults could possibly exist in the world?). Rather, Soames focuses in on one character in order to explore the human condition; but what the film seems to crave is the space to address this subject in a satisfying way.

Stamp Collection

Actors select roles for a variety of reasons and it is perhaps crass to be struck by the peculiar dissonance of seeing a favourite star departing from type. It is also difficult to assign a particular ‘star persona’ to Terence Stamp, a peripatetic artist who moved between a variety of eclectic leading roles throughout the height of his career. Nevertheless, it is a little disconcerting to witness Stamp, three years after he played Dave in Poor Cow (Ken Loach, 1967) wandering around a city dressed in a pink romper suit (an outfit that he reportedly chose for himself).[4] Though Stamp’s 1960s filmography was limited, he starred in some of the defining films of that decade: Billy Budd (Peter Ustinov, 1962) Poor Cow (Ken Loach, 1967) and Far From The Madding Crowd (John Schlesinger, 1967). He also made some bad decisions, turning down the role of Alfie (Lewis Gilbert, 1966) in order to star in the retina-burning camp spy-comedy flop Modesty Blaise (Joseph Losey, 1966).

Stamp worked with some of the greatest directors of the era, collaborating with Pasolini in Theorem (1968) and with Fellini in Spirits of the Dead (1968). His personal life was no less glamourous: he shared a house with Michael Caine and he dated two of the most beautiful, accomplished women of the 1960s, Julie Christie and Jean Shrimpton. Stamp acknowledges that the ‘work dried up after The Mind of Mr. Soames in 1969. Hu-Man (1975) was the only serious film I did [during those years], and that was really independent.’[5] In truth, the work had dried up a few years before: in 1969 a writer for the Chicago Tribune noted that it ‘seemed a long time, another era, since [Stamp] was being hailed as the golden boy of the British screen – though, in fact, it was only five years ago.’[6] Stamp, at a loss to explain why his success turned fallow, largely gave up on the idea of being a leading man by the 1970s, and by the time he was offered the role of General Zod in Superman (Richard Donner, 1978), he was finally ready to be, in his words, a ‘character actor’.[7]

For much of his early life Soames is unable to speak, but Stamp effectively manages to communicate his bewilderment at new sensations and his frustration with Maitland and his demands. At other times, Stamp plays the role with a vacant, wide-eyed naivety that is surprisingly convincing given the strangeness of this juxtaposition of a baby in the body of a mature adult. Some of the action here borders on the absurd. As Roger Greenspun notes, ‘Terence Stamp must have the best fun in the movie. Not only does he get to cry a lot and to play with toys, but he also is allowed at one time or another to dump baby food on all his doctors and keepers.’ The Mind of Mr Soames brings together a cast of distinguished actors: Robert Vaughn is excellent as the caring and compassionate Dr Bergen, while Nigel Davenport’s Dr Maitland is a compelling foil to Bergen’s more progressive teaching style. The Mind of Mr Soames never achieved the success or acclaim of Ralph Nelson’s Charly, and according to the fanzine Little Shoppe of Horrors this was because the distributors, Columbia, did not give it enough of a ‘push’.[8] This must have come as something of a disappointment to Amicus at the time, but we can still appreciate the film today for its fascinating themes, its excellent all-star cast and, of course, that gloriously absurd image of Terence Stamp in a pink romper suit.

Reference list:

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[1] 'Amicus: Two's A Company', Little Shoppe of Horrors, Issue 2 (1973), p. 13. [2] In 1956 Subotsky had written a screenplay titled ‘Frankenstein and the Monster’ for Hammer Films, (then a fledgling company) but this was thought substandard by Hammer’s top executives, who scrapped it and commissioned a different screenplay to be directed by Jimmy Sangster. This became The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and it launched Hammer as the company that became the last word British horror. In interviews, Subotsky denied being bitter, although in subsequent years he was frequently critical of Hammer’s horror productions. [3] Roger Greenspun, ‘Screen: Wild Child of 30’, New York Times, 13 October 1970. [4] The Courier Journal, 20 April 1969. [5] See https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/interviews/meetings-remarkable-men-terence-stamp-interview. [6] The Courier Journal, 20 April 1969. [7] Andrew Pulver, Interview: Terence Stamp, The Guardian 12 March 2015. [8] 'Amicus: Two's A Company', Little Shoppe of Horrors, Issue 2 (1973) p. 13