Fright (1971)

Director: Peter Collinson
Writer: Tudor Gates
Stars: Susan George, Honor Blackman, Ian Bannen and John Gregson

Index: 2025 Centennials.

There are plenty of things wrong with Fright that I can’t ignore, but there are also a heck of a lot of things right with it that I can’t ignore either. With half a century of hindsight, it’s an impressively powerful pioneer of a movie that deserves more attention and I’m happy to give it some as a celebration of Honor Blackman.

I wasn’t aware of it until now, but this is the progenitor of the babysitter in peril movie, a title only challenged by a short from the same year, Foster’s Release, with Dan O’Bannon as the proto-slasher. Here, that’s the similarly named Ian Bannen, who’s far from a one note slasher.

The plot isn’t a strong point, because it does little more than the tagline on IMDb states: “A babysitter is terrorized by the child’s father, escaped from an asylum.” That’s pretty much it for story but not for the film itself because the actors, the director and, surprisingly, the sound editor all bring a lot more to the table.

Fortune is a Woman (1957)

Director: Sidney Gilliat
Writers: Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, adapted by Val Valentine from the novel by Winston Graham
Stars: Jack Hawkins, Arlene Dahl, Dennis Price, Violet Farebrother and Ian Hunter

Index: 2025 Centennials.

In many ways, this is a quintessential British film, but I’m watching it for an American, as Arlene Dahl would have been a hundred years old today. The next most prominent woman in the cast, Greta Gynt, was Norwegian, but made her career in British film. Dahl didn’t. She only made two films in the UK, Wicked as They Come in 1956 and this a year later.

Otherwise, the names are all British. Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, a famous team in a slew of genres, wrote the script. Launder took the director’s role for comedies but Gilliat for dramas like this and he did here. Jack Hawkins is the star, with other old faithfuls like Dennis Price, Bernard Miles, Geoffrey Keen and even a young Christopher Lee lower down the cast. It was based on a novel by Winston Graham, best known for his Poldark historical series.

I should emphasise that it’s a mystery, as it’s keen to start out like a horror movie. We chase through the countryside to an old dark house, then zoom inside in horror fashion to focus on a painting of the very same house. We zoom in there too and there’s a dead man’s hand. It’s a nightmare sequence, being suffered by Oliver Branwell, an insurance investigator.

Sally of the Sawdust (1925)

Director: D. W. Griffith
Writer: Forrest Halsey, from the play Poppy by Dorothy Donnelly
Stars: Carol Dempster and W. C. Fields

Index: That's a Wrap!

While the star of Sally of the Sawdust is Carol Dempster, playing, well, Sally of the Sawdust, the key name here is her co-star, W. C. Fields, because this is a pivotal film in his career for a variety of reasons.

For one, he plays a versatile show man, Prof. Eustace McGargle. His first and, for my money, most impressive routine is comedic juggling, a routine that’s perfect except when he doesn’t want it to be, at which point he loses balls but uses a quick foot movement to regain them as if nothing untoward had happened. It should not surprise that this was Fields’s specialty as a vaudeville performer.

For two, it’s based on a stage play from 1923 called Poppy. That wasn’t his first experience on Broadway, as he’d debuted in 1905 and was a regular in Ziegfeld Follies revues, but it was a lead role, with Madge Kennedy, that made his name as an actor. He was the only actor to go from play to film and he shot a sound remake, Poppy, in 1936, with Rochelle Hudson.

For three, the routine that gets McGargle in trouble is the shell game, though he insists it’s not gambling at all but a game of skill. “It’s the old army game”, he claims. This film and That Royle Girl after it landed him a contract with Paramount and his first film for them was It’s the Old Army Game.