We have lost one of the beautiful faces and talents of 1960s British cinema.
The news of the death (people tend to say "passing" these days in regard to this sort of thing, don't they?) of the iconic Terence Stamp should not have come as a shock, really, The man was 87 years old, after all. Yet there was something about him - and I'm not just talking about his role as Kryptonian villain General Zod in Richard Donner's 1978 Superman and its 1980 Richard Lester sequel (and yes - the Lester version being superior to the 'Donner Cut' is a hill I am prepared to die on, whether Mr Stamp would agree with that assessment or not; I shan't litigate all of the reasons why I fervently hold to that here though. Another time mayhap) - that seemed as indomitable and permanent of the rock of Gibraltar.
He's far from the maddening crowd of humankind and reality now.
In considering something to review as my own meagre tribute to the great man, after mulling over everything from Steven Soderbergh's The Limey ("You tell 'im I'm coming!!!") to the 1967 Ken Loach joint Poor Cow that it 'sampled' (might have made for a good twin-spin double review) my thoughts first turned to his turn as the titular 'Toby Dammit' in the Federico Fellini-helmed segment of the 1968 portmanteau film Spirits of the Dead, based on the mysterious and imaginative tales of Edgar Allan Poe - the Fellini/Stamp collaboration being based on the story 'Never Bet the Devil Your Head'. Great though Stamp is in that movie, however, he commands only a third of the film; the others being led by Jane Fonda and Alain Delon respectively. Thinking there must be something else Stamp had done that was genre-adjacent (in the area, see?) it suddenly hit me that I'd had in my possession for years and yet for some unfathomable reason - it's time, it's always time-related - not got round to William Wyler's The Collector.
Based on the 1963 novel of the same name by the posthumously problematic John Fowles, author of The Magus (filmed by cinematographer par excellence Guy Green in 1968, starring Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (brought to the screen by kitchen sink pioneer Karel Reisz in 1981, courtesy of a script from pausing playwright Harold Pinter), the film adaptation was taken on by German-born Hollywood veteran, cousin of Universal pictures founder 'Uncle' Carl Laemlle and director of classics such as the 1939 Olivier-Oberon Wuthering Heights (not my own personal favourite adaptation of the novel, I have to say: as a Brontesaurus I much prefer the 1978 [contemporaneous with the eponymous Kate Bush anthem, pop pickers!] BBC Hutchison-Adshead version) and Biblical chariot porn Ben-Hur William Wyler.
The mid-1960s of course was the epicentre of the 'Swinging London' trend that saw many productions happening in the Happening United Kingdom; whereas the previous decade had seen some directors and writers moving to Britain from Hollywood they had been blacklisted victims of the McCarthy witch hunts such as Joseph Losey and Cy Endfield. By the middle of the Sixties however, many would choose to work across the Pond rather than out of necessity. The Collector's uncredited co-screenwriter Terry Southern had worked with Stanley Kubrick on Dr Strangelove the previous year and with Christopher Isherwood on adapting Evelyn Waugh's (and I still say that should be pronounced "Evellin Woff" rather than "Evil-Lyn Waah") The Loved One the same year, and would go on to co-pen Easy Rider with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson after this period of a flurry of UK-centred work that saw the American writer constantly jetting back and forth across the Atlantic doing a lot of his script work in the air over the North Pole in that aeroplane over the sea.
My first becoming cognisant of the movie was of course due to the baleful influence of Morrissey - another man who, like Fowles, has gone from feted for his earlier creative output to acknowledged as problematic for his sometimes repellent views though Mozza has managed it whilst still alive - due to the cover for one of my favourite Smiths tracks, the coruscating and effervescent 'What Difference Does It Make?, featuring a still of Stamp in character as Freddie Clegg. Though Stamp's initial demurring meant some early copies had Steven of Trafford himself cosplaying Clegg, with a hilariously incongruous glass of milk in place of the chloroform.
Zod (Not Zod).
Got milk? You're not going to pin and mount anyone like a butterfly with that, sonny boy.
Billed sardonically as "almost a love story", the picture opens by introducing us to Freddie (Stamp, his eye blue eyes at their most chilling) frolicking in the countryside with his butterfly net and cyanide jar, happily catching and killing defenceless beautiful creatures as is his wont. Stumbling upon an empty and isolated rural house that's advertised as being up for sale, he starts to explore the grounds and is apparently entranced when he finds the property has a very spacious dungeon-like cellar - the score turning from bucolic to baroque as his plan forms in his mind. Freddie is, of course, stalking attractive art student Miranda Grey (Samantha Eggar, in her feature debut) and has designs on her that are rather different to the kind one gets studying art and design.
Kidnapping Miranda to keep prisoner - of love, like the song that closes The Producers - in his newly acquired underground hidey-hole, Clegg (not to be confused with the eponymous protagonist of the Lindsay Shonteff movie) is quite clearly a dangerous obsessive who keeps his captive in relative comfort (unlike fellow deceased British star Julian Sands' Nick in Boxing Helena, he at least allows Ms Grey to retain her limbs) and proclaims that he will allow her to go free after thirty days - an allotted period that he has deigned to be enough for her to begin to "love" him. An intense psychological cat and mouse game between Freddie and Miranda unfolds; the film's minimal cast means that the majority of it is carried by the two of them, a bit like Malcolm McDowell and Madolyn Smith in The Caller (a film I covered last year).
While I thoroughly enjoyed The Collector and would exhort all to give it a whirl; I find myself loath to go into as much plot detail as I usually would in order to leave readers the room to discover the majority of the movie for themselves. I thought I pretty much know everything about it before I'd watched it (one can't really complain "SPOILERS!" about a film that was made fifteen years before one was born, in my view) but there remained some elements to be discovered that took me by surprise. Especially the ending. I thought Markus Schleinzer's Michael was downbeat. Yeesh.
For a somewhat lighter variation on the theme, 1968's The Bliss of Mrs Blossom is a female-led reflection of the film. Co-written by It'll Be Alright On The Night stalwart Denis Norden, it stars Sweet Charity herself Shirley Maclaine as a housewife who keeps her (consenting, in this case) lover locked in the attic of her house. This gender-flippery somewhat echoes the ultimately unused ending that Terry Southern was brought in to write for The Collector, when the producers were getting cold feet about the bleak ending of the tale getting past the scissors of the censors, which would have seen Miranda turn the tables on Freddie and have him as the prisoner. Oh, how the turns have tabled.
Featuring Palme d'Or winning performances from both Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar - along with a Best Actress Golden Globe win for Eggar's blistering turn - and with a music score by Maurice Jarre, composer of David Lean epics Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago and father of avant-garde soundscapenik Jean-Michel, The Collector is well worth a Terrace Stomp at anyone's home football ground. I can highly recommend the Indicator Blu-ray, which is bedecked with interesting extra items including a locations featurette and interview snippets with Stamp, Eggar and Wyler and deserves pride of place in any... uh... collection.
