It’s Saturday July 24th 1972 and you’re looking for a fantastical movie or two to enjoy. Perhaps you’ve already seen what’s on offer in Central London, or maybe it’s just not to your taste anyway. The next best option is to search the listings for greater London’s many local cinemas. (Both the national and the London press, as in the Evening Standard, print a limited selection of the movies on show, while Time Out always features a couple of pages of fine print spelling out what alternatives exist.) Of course, greater London is an exceedingly big place. To travel to and from, say, Uxbridge to Bromley is a journey of more than 100 miles involving a good few hours and more of potentially problematic public transport. So local cinemas are by no means a universally convenient option. But for those dying to see a fantastical film and possessed of the requisite time and money, these were some of the options for the coming seven days.
At the Odeon Streatham in Lambeth, there was a Saturday afternoon matinee showing of both of the mid-60s Doctor Who movies with Peter Cushing in the title role. Rarely then seen on TV, and of course never available for viewers on demand in any form, their brief combined appearance in South London might sound like the makings of a promising weekend afternoon. Against that, there was a fair likelihood that the cinema would be playing host to a mass of largely unsupervised kids, given the subject matter and the hour being very much, in 1972, their territory. What’s more, adults – worst of all, a single adult – travelling to Brent to watch two old Doctor Who movies on a Saturday afternoon always ran the risk, in the unenlightened Seventies, of being seen as decidedly, at best, odd. I wonder if any Who fans took along a science fiction-loving youngster or two to lend them cover?
We might argue whether Bond movies can truly be considered ‘fantastical’, and it’s certainly true that some are far more fantastical than others. But the old saying about beggars and choosers would apply even if I didn’t think 007 deserves a place here. (And I really do.) In 1972, Bond movies were perennial staples of holiday cinema bills. Yesterday we mentioned Diamonds Are Forever still being on in central London. But James Bond films could be found all over London’s cinema landscape during these summer weeks, being a proven draw for adults and children alike. This was a considerable boon to distributers, cinema owners and parents alike. And so, Odeons all over London, from Balham to Barking to St Alburns to Kilburn, were showing a double-bill of Dr No., from October 1962, and Thunderball, from December 1965, as the poster above testifies. Elsewhere, Goldfinger, from September 1964, was playing at the Kilburn State and elsewhere in the company of The Thomas Crown Affair, starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, from 1968. (In turn, the latter film was also been twinned for showings with 1967’s The Graduate and 1971’s Monty Python’s And Now For Something Completely Different. It all gets very confusing at times.) Closing on this very day in 1972, a double-bill of 1963’s From Russia With Love and 1967’s You Only Live Twice was playing in Slough, while, in yet another combination, You Only Live Twice and Goldfinger were at the Leytonstone Granada.
The recently-released scifi eco-thriller Z.P.G. – Zero Population, starring Oliver Reed, had a very brief and slight tenure in the West End. One of the era’s mostly-unsuccessful attempts to dramatically spin out prophecies of environmental collapse and dictatorial government, it was now coming to the end of its turn in the Odeons of North London, with Ealing, Rayners Lane and and Romford being a few of its last hold-outs there. On the coming Sunday, Z.P.G was transferred to some of the chain’s South London movie houses. Whatever else might be said for it, it’s a fascinating period piece. (The similarly underperforming Doomwatch movie, which we touched upon in yesterday’s blog, was a few steps behind on the same path, slipping out of central London and popping up in the less obviously plush of the capital’s cinemas.)
What a strange tradition it now seems to be, to release films north of the Thames before opening them southwards of it.
For those whose taste in the fantastical ran to horror, 1972’s Frogs had picked up some fairly good reviews – Time Out was particularly supportive – and could be seen all over the capital. Darlington’s Evening Dispatch called it “one of the strangest and most unnerving films to be seen, even in this unpredictable age”, while Manchester’s Evening News declared it was “not the sort of film you’d want Granny to take you to unless you’ve got a strong stomach”. But neither of them suggested that Frogs is a shameful, exploitative tale, as was often written in an almost kneejerk fashion about a great many horror tales. (Hilariously, as in did-he-really-write-that-in-1972, Alexander Walker in the Evening Standard warned, in a taken-for-granted fashion, that “it’s not recommended to those already on a bad trip”.) All of which suggests that the film, in addition to its many and appalling death scenes, carried with it a suggestion and more of playful integrity too. Plus, Today The Pond … Tomorrow The World! was simply a terrific tag-line.
Elsewhere, 1971’s Daughters Of Darkness, as co-written and directed by Harry Kumel, could be found in the likes of the ABC Romford. The Kensington News & West London Times wrote that the tale “should be of interest to lovers of the sophisticated brand of horror movie”, while going to give its readers every single important plot twist across two columns in a sad example of “summarise rather than criticise” . Not what you’d want to stumble across when you’re heading out to enjoy the shocks and turns of an “erotic thriller” featuring the (a)historical serial killer and pseudo-vampire Elizabeth Bathory. But it is telling that, as with Frogs, the film was often treated with more sympathy in the press than hindsight might suggest. The past could be far less prurient than certain versions of it would insist.
On the whole, devotees of horror were better served than scifi fans in London cinemas during this summer of 1972. Examples of Kubrick’s fantastical masterpieces, for example, might flash up briefly: 2001 was at Barnet this week, albeit without the bells and whistles, big screens and booming clear sound, of central London, while a late showing at the Muswell Hill Odeon featured 1964’s Dr Strangelove. But horror is ever-present to a degree that sci-fi, or indeed straight-played fantasy, couldn’t begin to match. For example, from Sunday to Wednesday next week, the Brixton Classic is hosting 1969’s The Oblong Box and The Dunwich Horror, both X-certificate movies which, again, received positive reviews in their days and would continue to do so from 21st century aficionados. Other X-rated horror double-bills included 1971’s Fright and 1970’s I Monster at the Park Royal Classic. The East Ham Odeon seemed to be running a mini-festival of them, with one night given over to 1969’s Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and 1966’s The Frozen Dead, another to 1969’s The Mad Room and 1968’s Corruption, and one more to 1970’s Taste The Blood Of Dracula and 1967’s Torture Garden.
There were other ways to see movies old and new, of course. Clubs, all-night showings, conventions, the NFT and so on. We’ll return to these later in the year in The Almanac Of The Fantastical.
The Almanac Of The Fantastical 