The third series of Mark Kermode's Secrets of the Cinema (BBC4/iPlayer), featuring episodes devoted to British comedy, pop music movies, and cult movies, was, to my mind, the best of all three series and the cult movie episode almost certainly the best episode of all. My list of films to watch, or watch again, just grew and grew as the series carried on.
I scribbled many down despite the near certainty, I'm not a young man, that I will never got round to watching them all. There was no fundamental change to the presentation of the show, Kermode still stands in front of a load of film props, although this time he occasionally helped himself to a wee dram and dressed down in jeans and bomber jacket for the pop music show, and methodically yet enthusiastically and knowledgeably breaks down film genres into their many component parts.
Interspersed with clip after clip after clip. For British comedy alone we were treated to excerpts from Carry On Cleo, Calendar Girls, Shaun the Sheep, Shaun of the Dead, A Fish Called Wanda, The Full Monty, The Personal History of David Copperfield, The Tramp, Theatre of Blood, Dr Strangelove, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Kinky Boots, The Rebel, Bedazzled, Withnail and I, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Paddington 2, Mamma Mia!, The Knack - and How to Get It, Riff Raff, AP:Alpha Papa, Blinded by the Light, Made in Dagenham, Carry on at Your Convenience, Bridget Jones's Diary, The Young Poisoner's Handbook, Sightseers, Nuts in May, Four Liars, Brazil, The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave, Hot Fuzz, The Titfield Thunderbolt, Local Hero, Passport to Pimlico, Bhaji on the Beach, and East is East.
Walworth's Charlie Chaplin was once the defining image of the cinema and the world's most famous person but as he didn't speak in his films many of his fans didn't know he was a Londoner. Bob Hope, Stan Laurel, Peter Sellers, and Dudley Moore were others that made big stars of themselves in America, in American movies. But some stayed here and made very British films.
Kermode cites Kenneth Williams, Margaret Rutherford, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alec Guinness, and Sanjeev Bhaskar as examples and many of them have played, or played versions, of that staple, baseline even, of British comedy - the little man. A basic archetype of British life, the little man is indefatigable of spirit and constantly at war with outrageous demons. A perennial underdog who sometimes wins but often loses, an early example in British cinema being George Formby with his quite filthy double entendres.
Formby, like Harold Lloyd in the US, even did his own stunts. Formby, like Norman Wisdom after him, played little men who revelled in, and chuckled at, their position but another British comedy character is the little man who thinks he's a big man. Think Arthur Lowe's Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army, Will Hay in Oh, Mr Porter!, or Basil Radford's Captain Waggett in Whisky Galore.
Bossy little Englanders often out of their depth, it's not hard to guess which way these men would have voted when it came to Brexit. Britain's hierarchical class structure is catnip to comedy writers and these little men are often middle class but think they're one layer higher. But one thing that cuts through the issue of class when it comes to British humour is the fear of being caught with your pants down.
It happens to John Cleese in a Fish Called Wanda and it happens on saucy seaside postcards and television sitcoms but some comedy writers subverted that formula and in Peter Cattaneo's The Full Monty and Nigel Cole's Calendar Girls we can see working class men and older women celebrating their flesh and their nudity and in so doing freeing themselves while giving us all a hearty chuckle.
These films are more nudge-nudge than they are erotic and it's said of the British sex comedy that its two defining features is that its films are neither sexy nor funny. From the fnarr-fnarr jokes of George Formby a genre emerged that was spearheaded by Robin Askwith's Confessions films (Askwith's Timmy Lea somehow managed to get his 'wild oats' as a pop performer, a driving instructor, and, most famously, a window cleaner - a callback to Formby's most famous song perhaps).
Less well remembered is 1975's Eskimo Nell (a sex comedy with Roy Kinnear, Christopher Biggins, and Christopher Timothy - sign me up) and less well celebrated than it should be is Alan Clarke and Andrea Dunbar's grim, but funny, Rita, Sue, and Bob Too. Even if you may never fancy a saveloy again after watching it.
The British are famously ambivalent about sex. We both love it and hate it and we don't seem to fully understand it. We're similar when it comes to crime. We demand criminals are locked up and that the key is thrown away and then we talk about how great the Krays were. So it's hardly a surprise that crime features heavily in British comedies from The Lavender Hill Mob and The Ladykillers to Sightseers and Four Lions.
Perhaps the only things Brits like taking the piss out off more than police, thieves, and randy driving instructors is Hollywood. The chip on our shoulder at their larger budget and greater power has resulted in some of the best and, oddly, most epic British comedies. From Carry on Cleo to Life of Brian, these films are as much jokes about Hollywood as they are about Cleopatra and Jesus.
The Carry On team became so famous they were almost like weird versions of pop stars, ugly pop stars if you like, and that brings us neatly to episode two - pop music movies. A double act like no other that began, at least it seems, with the appearance of Bill Haley's Rock Around The Clock in 1955's Blackboard Jungle.
Before growing to include films like (take a deep breath, these are just a few of the films in which we see excerpts of) A Star Is Born, Black Panther, High School Confidential, St Louis Blues, Holiday Inn, Spiceworld, Desperately Seeking Susan, Lady Sings The Blues, Amy, The Girl Can't Help It, Purple Rain, Sid And Nancy, What's Love Got To Do With It, The Blues Brothers, Anvil! The Story Of Anvil, Bohemian Rhapsody, Amazing Grace, Heavy Load, The Jazz Singer, Oceans 11, The Virgin Soldiers, The Harder They Come, Breaking Glass, Beyonce's Black Is King, Nick Cave's Idiot Prayer, and The Monkees' Head.
The last an anarchic acid trip featuring talking cows and Frank Zappa. Quite far removed from the jazz and blues films that had been made before Haley's appearance in Blackboard Jungle. To begin with they would focus on white jazz musicians like Paul Whiteman but later the likes of Cab Calloway would appear alongside Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.
Pop star 'vehicles', movies made specifically to increase a star's fan base and earning potential, would start in 1956 when Elvis starred in the western musical Love Me Tender. He'd go on to appear in many more films (most famously the likes of Jailhouse Rock and King Creole) and when the UK had a musical act to rival Elvis' popularity, The Beatles, they too began to appear in films like Help! and A Hard Day's Night.
Later, Madonna and Prince would follow this trend. But another facet of the pop music movie is the pop biopic. Films like Walk The Line, The Tommy Steele Story (made when he was just 21), and Expresso Bongo with Cliff Richard playing an alternate version of Tommy Steele. Later fans of the biopic would be treated to Rocketman (Elton John), The Buddy Holly Story (with Gary Busey as Lubbock's big cocked finest), Get On Up (James Brown), and Control (Ian Curtis and Joy Division).
More, or perhaps less, authentic is the rockumentary. The likes of Monterey Pop, Don't Look Back, Woodstock, and Gimme Shelter. Which, with scenes showing the murder of teenage African-American Meredith Hunter by Hells Angels who were acting as security for The Rolling Stones could double up as a horror movie.
Then there are the times when pop stars act. Think of films like The Bodyguard (Whitney Houston), Performance (Mick Jagger), Lisztomania (Roger Daltrey), How I Won The War (John Lennon - with Roy Kinnear - at last), The Man Who Fell To Earth (Bowie), Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (Bowie again), and Labyrinth (yes, and again).
Films like Can't Stop The Music and It's Trad Dad came out the wrong time (the end of the disco craze and the time trad jazz was becoming seen as boring and sober) to find much of an audience and others, The Ghost Goes Gear with The Spencer Davis Group and Never Too Young To Rock with Mud, have pretty much been washed away by the sands of time.
They look like fascinating curios to which you can add The Gonks Go Beat, a film that featured Kenneth Connor, Lulu, and The Nashville Teens. While the use of pop songs on huge films like Guardians Of The Galaxy and The Martian means pop music and film will stay wedded together for long into the future, it is, for me, curios like Gonks Go Beat that really tickle the interest.
Which is, perhaps, why I found the cult movie episode so enthralling. It took in a lot. Bladerunner, Midsommar, Fight Club, Glen Or Glenda, Lucifer Rising, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Pink Flamingos, Lost Highway, Howard The Duck, A Bout De Souffle, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hudson Hawk, Diner, The Wicker Man, Repulsion, The Tingler, Showgirls, Reservoir Dogs, Society, Blood Feast, Possession, Lolita, Mommie Dearest, Carrie, Mildred Pierce, Scanners, Eraserhead, The Slumber Party Massacre, Race With The Devil, The Curse Of Frankenstein, Let's Scare Jessica To Death, Crash, Women In Love, Driller Killer, City Of The Living Dead, Shaft, The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, Psycho, Twin Peaks, The Last House On The Left, Suspiria, Pan's Labyrinth, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, Night Of The Living Dead, The Wizard Of Oz, Chelsea Girls, La Grande Bouffe, The Seventh Victim, Rosemary's Baby, Baise-Moi, and Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song.
Them, and many many more, have all been considered, either now or at some point in time, to be cult movies. But directors and other film makers rarely set out to make a cult film or even get to choose if their film becomes one. Audience and circumstance do that. Those that do try can end up trying too hard and failing but it helps if a film includes at least some elements of bad taste or even transgression.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975, dir:Jim Sharman) was originally a flop at picture houses (as were many of these cult movies) but late night double bills at alternative and independent cinemas in New York and London (the Scala, for example) gave it a second chance and audiences, many of them in fancy dress, turned up, eventually - quite annoyingly, to sing along to every word.
A sci-fi/horror musical works perfectly because when it comes to genre splicing, cult movie status loves it. There have been vampire westerns, surf-heist movies (Point Break), and numerous horror comedies. While the films of David Lynch have attracted a cult audience they are, perhaps, too popular to really fit the description. Too good as well. Many cult films are of the "so bad they're good" kind.
1936's Reefer Madness was intended as an anti drugs propaganda film but was so ludicrous it was picked up on by the very people who had failed to heed its message. 1938's Sex Madness was made to warn audiences about syphilis but the audience it found, eventually, weren't watching it to learn about the dangers of venereal diseases.
Robot Monster featured a gorilla in a space helmet delivering speeches from Shakespeare and Ed Wood's infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space was soon dubbed the worst movie ever made. Both of these, of course, went on to become famous cult flicks and when, in 1994, Tim Burton made his Ed Wood biopic with Johnny Depp in the title role that, also, performed poorly at the box office before going on to garner cult acclaim.
Weird world cinema is very popular with cult movie aficionados. Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni, Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura, Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, and Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless all feature in the cult canon. Many of these films innovate and play with the cinematic form in a way that US or UK movies rarely do.
To the list you can add the Czech new wave cinema of Milos Forman (The Firemen's Ball), Jiri Menzel (Closely Observed Trains), and Vera Chytilova (Sedmikrasky - or Daisies). I've seen some of these films and the others I would like to see at some point. The same goes for the films of one of cult cinema's most outre auteurs, the Chilean maverick Alejandro Jodorowsky.
He made, and still makes - aged 92, hallucinogenic spaghetti westerns spliced with religious imagery like El Topo, Holy Mountain, and Santa Sangre. The latter is the only film I've seen in which an elephant is eaten by savages and a woman allows an inflatable skeleton to suckle her breast. Jodorowsky would give his cast magic mushrooms before filming to set the right mood but his attempt to make a fourteen hour film version of Dune with Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, and Salvador Dali all starring was, unfortunately, too ambitious even for Jodorowsky.
Deeper still into cult movie icon status than Jodorowsky are cult cult movie makers like Kenneth Anger. Anger made films like Lucifer Rising and Invocation Of My Demon Brother, he was a student of Aleister Crowley, and called his films spells or incantations and claimed they were designed to entrance, rather than entertain, the audience.
Anger shocked but it wasn't his raison d'etre. That's not true of all cult movie makers. From F.W. Murnau's 1932 Nosferatu and through early versions of Dracula and Frankenstein shocking, scaring, or simply horrifying the audience has often ensured cult success. In 1968, George A. Romero's Night Of The Living Dead raised the stakes and 1983 saw David Cronenberg's Videodrome push a kind of horror based on a fear of new technology.
At the same time, new technology was being used to promote horror and shock polite society. It was the era of the video nasties, films like Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead and Meir Zarchi's I Spit On Your Grave. More recently there has been Eli Roth's Hostel and the Saw franchise and Kermode even makes a reasonable case for Mel Gibson's 2004 The Passion Of The Christ being worthy in this list of shock horror cinema.
But it's not all horror in the world of cult. There is room for camp too. From Busby Berkeley's 1943 The Gang's All Here to Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar eleven years later there is always room for a bit of camp at any cult movie theatre. The undoubted master of camp cult cinema is John Waters and his 'muse' (if you must) Divine.
In Multiple Maniacs, the audience can witness Divine being violated by a giant lobster and in Pink Flamingos, our hero eats a real dog shit. It's not the only example of taboo breaking or, to return to an earlier point, transgression in the world of cult cinema. A Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist, and even Tod Browning's 1932 Freaks all follow in the footsteps of Luis Bunuel's 1929 Un Chien Andalou.
Slicing up eyeballs, I want you to know. Nearly one hundred years on from the disturbing, yet iconic, image it's hard to know what films may be future cults and Kermode suggests that some films, The Toxic Avenger and Sharknado are mentioned, are trying too hard. Instead he suggests Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, Boots Riley's Sorry To Bother You, and Bong Joon-ho's Oscar winning Parasite.
But the truth is, he doesn't know. Which is a rarity with Kermode because he knows more about cinema than any other presenter I've seen on television before. The fact he can string all this knowledge into some form of recognisable narrative and make it entertaining as well as educational, and that the budget - excerpts aside, presumably - can't be much for these programmes, suggests he may well be back for a fourth series before long. I'll be there to watch and report back.
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