By 1962, the UK's Bryanston Films consortium - founded by a post-Gainsborough, Gaumont and Ealing Sir Michael Balcon in partnership with other such luminaries as Tony Richardson, Julian Wintle and Maxwell Setton - was in the full flush of success, having released such cinematic classics as The Entertainer (1960) and A Taste of Honey (1961) from director Richardson's own Woodfall Films as well as Karel Reisz' seminal 1960 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. By 1962, the same year they would launch Arthur Dreifuss' adaptation of Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow as well as Richardson's filmisation of Alan Sillitoe's script of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, they were presiding over an impressive roster of searing monochrome depictions of 1950s and early '60s life.
It was into this arena that they followed in the chilling footsteps of Hammer Productions' 1960 Cyril Frankel-helmed tale of rastopaedic impulses Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (for more on which, see here: http://psychtronickinematograph.blogspot.com/2015/09/never-take-sweets-from-stranger-1960.html ) with Don't Talk to Strange Men.
Packing its story into a brisk 65 minutes, the film has the feel of the similarly-lengthed Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre quota-filling B-pictures of the era, and tells the tale of the teenage Jean Painter (played by the then 23 year old actress and model Christina Gregg) and her accidental entanglement in the web of grooming of an unseen sexual predator.
Opening on a storm-lashed night on a darkened lane, where a young blonde woman (Bernadette Woodman) is offered a lift from an unseen driver as thunder crashes in the heavens above with pathetic fallacy, and her corpse is discovered post-credits amid the hay of a barn by a group of children. It is amid this febrile atmosphere of rural menace that we are introduced to young Jean, babysitting for her overworked publican brother in law Ron (Conrad Phillips) and looking after nephew little Timmy whilst her elder sister Marjorie is in hospital bearing their second spawn, Jean's routine is like a well-oiled machine, helping out at the Chequers pub until 9 PM each evening, then walking to the bus stop on Harper's Lane to board the omnibus and deal with the plain-talking simplicity of gruff ticket inspector Molly (Dandy Nichols in a series of constantly amusing cameos) on the way home to her parents (Cyril Raymond and Gillian Lind) and spirited younger sister Ann (Janina Faye). Already a veteran of this kind of material after Never Take Sweets from a Stranger, Faye had also made appearances in a number of other pioneering Hammer Horror classics, such as 1958's (Horror of) Dracula and 1960's The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll, and would feature in Steve Sekely's cinematic vandalism of John Wynham's classic The Day of the Triffids the following year. As Ann, she gives a tremendous performance of precocious pomposity, chiding her countryman father as an "Assassin!" for bringing home a hare that he's shot with his rife ("Polishing that murder weapon!") and declaring that she has become a Buddhist and shall be writing a stern open letter to the master of the local foxhunting fraternity.
It is into this routine that the faceless killer (there's an episode of Wallander in that, i'm certain) inserts himself when one evening waiting for her bus Jean answers the ringing telephone in the public call box and finds herself speaking with a beguiling and wheedling male voice that compliments her lovely voice, insists that their connection was some caprice of destiny rather than random chance and asks if she'll be by the phone box tomorrow, same time again (and now I have the lyrics for 'I'll Keep it with Mine' stuck in my head...). As the romantic and naive Jean returns home that evening full of strange feelings, her little sister guesses that some kind of tryst has taken place, but assumes it to have been with one of the patrons of Ron's pub, prompting this bit of conversation:
"But there were men, weren't there?"
"Yes, a few old corpses."
"How far gone?"
"About forty or so."
Now, an amusing bit of character work between two young girls it may be, but as someone who turns 41 the month after next I feel the need to resort to emojis and register my strongest 💀
Jean then confides in Ann about her assignation of the following evening with her unseen admirer, and paints an imagined image of a man with the hair of Cliff Richard, the clothing of Frank Sinatra and an E-type Jaguar. As the intelligent Ann begins to grow concerned about her airy older sister's ethereal infatuation - and the body count of young women in the area, like entropy, increases - Jean continues to lurk by the phone box each night to receive his calls, even adopting the alias of Samantha as a name by which the oh so wrong Mr Right should call her as a kind of dual identity.
"I don't like to think of you all on your own in that lonely lane, being talked to by strange men."
As 'Samantha with the sexy voice' is enticed to meet up with this charming man in person the following night, the perilous clandestine assignation is put at risk when Mr Painter declares that recent events of a nocturnal nature mean that neither of his younger daughters are to go out on an evening (foiling not only Jean/Samantha's necromantic rendezvous, but also little Ann's aspirations of attending the local dance), the sisters conspire to pretend to go to the cinema together (in a sequence that gives us a nice glimpse of Beaconsfield high street by the famous studios) so they can both attend their desired destinations - a plan that pitches both girls into a terrifying and life-endangering evening (an ending which I shan't spoil for once, for anyone who may wish to seek it out) and a gut-punch of a final line.
A neat little exercise in unease, well directed by Jackson, this is a curio i'd recommend people seek out if they can. But you probably shouldn't be guided by voices such as mine: I am a very strange man.
No comments:
Post a Comment