The 1970s: smut, slash, awfully good.

Why 1970's?
It's part of an ongoing art research project about 1970s British film culture. 

1970s, British, film and culture. Are these not contradictory terms?
Yes and no. Admittedly American funding had dried up, government support was limited and the studio system was in decline (Hammer and Carry On both fizzling out). In a fragmented culture, there was space for independent, experimental and niche production. Films were testing the limits of censorship and poor old Mary Whitehouse. H&S (horror and sex) would become inter-twined "exploitative" themes in the 1970s. Cinema going was in marked decline with TV in the ascendant. Hence all those film adaptions of popular 1970s sit-coms. Critics have reviled the 1970s British output, especially in relation to New Hollywood and German cinema of the same period. There is a high quota of dross, however the period is ripe for revision. Check out the recent work of film scholar Sue Harper and historians Andy Beckett and Dominic Sandbrook. 

What's the personal connection?
I'm a child of the 70's. Family tell me that as a wee nipper, I freaked out when I first saw Norman Wisdom's crazy antics on TV. There is a vague memory of Summer Holiday and Dr No screened for families on a saturday morning. Then the usual American block buster suspects: Star Wars and Close Encounters. 
My local was the ABC Edgware Road / Harrow Road. I attended when it was still a single screen (King Kong, 1976, Swarm, 1978) and again when converted into a multiplex in 1979. My rite of passage came as a teen in the late 70s and early 80s, bunking in to X-rated , invariably horror double bills: for example, Friday The 13th and The Burning, were coupled in 1980. One English film that I saw, haunted me. After thirty years, I only remembered it as the film with a supernatural context and a lacerating finale. Last year, I re-discovered the film after a visit to Westminster Archive. It was Terror (1978).

What are my filmic high points?
Deep End (1970), Get Carter (1971), The Devils (1971), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), Don't Look Now (1973), Radio On (1979) are all highly regarded (not always so). 
Death Line (1972) AKA Raw Meat. Fab horror flick about cannibals in the London underground. Has a stunning and disturbing long take sequence. Eccentric performance from Donald Pleasance.  
The Other Side of The  Underneath (1972). The only British feature film directed by a woman in the 70s, Jane Arden. Raw, experimental, feminist critique blurring the boundaries of drama and documentary.  
Frightmare (1974). Cannibalism (again) in the Home Counties. Pick of Pete Walker's horror output. Starring great Sheila Keith. 
Eskimo Nell (1974). The best of the limp sex comedies made during the 1970s. Self reflexive film about the making of a porn film: "I just can’t do it. Look, I am not capable of writing the first all British pornographic kung-fu musical western."
Pressure (1975). First feature film made by a black director, Horace Ove. Searing dissection of racism. Set in Notting Hill.  
Queen Kong (1977). Spoof of the Hollywood classic. Kong (giant female ape) and Fay (Robin Askwith), fall in love. London hilariously destroyed with low-fidelity special effects. So awful, I do like you.  
Nighthawks (1978). Britain's first explicitly gay film. Gritty drama with stunning class room sequence.    

What's going down in the archive and how is art generated?
At the Southwark local history archive, I'm leafing through the news for 1970 and 1971. It's a slow microfiche process, but just as you cross-fertilise and get side tracked on the internet, there are stories waiting to be unearthed that bring the period to life. 
I know that horror and sex-comedies were the staple diet of the British film industry during this period. But what does the archive tell us about films screened in South London. Elephant and Castle had its ABC and Odeon cinemas, with the Odeon generally geared to more family-orientated films and the ABC a bit more grungy. Independent chains are represented by Studio 6 and 7 on Lewisham high street. Then there is the Tatler Cinema in Stockwell presumably showing uncensored films for male "members" only. 

The ABC chain in South London for w/c 19th October 1971 accounts for every conceivable taste: 
Canadian horror in 3D with Eyes of Hell (X) showing at Croydon and Tooting
Martini and spaghetti cocktail with You Only Live Once (A) & A Fistful of Dollars (X) showing at Brixton
Psychedelic philosophy with 2001: A Space Odyssey (U) showing at Camberwell. 
Classic Hollywood with Humphrey Bogart week showing at Catford.
Scandinavian soft-core with Without A Stitch (X) ) (G.L.C.) and Seventeen (X) showing at Elephant and Castle. 
Hollywood coming of age drama called Summer of 42 (X) showing at Forest Hill. 
Action adventure with The Last Valley (AA) showing at Old Kent Road. 
Western with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (A) showing at Putney.
Box office hit of the year, Love Story (AA) showing at Streatham. 

What also caught my eye in 1971 was a craze for topless petrol attendants at service stations in Tooting and Brixton. 
There's a headline in the South London press on 14 September showing how a sales stunt back fired. Models had been booked for a topless sales promotion at the new Total service station in Plough Lane, Tooting. However they refused to be topless at all times because it was too cold and worked in see through blouses.  
A spokesperson for Total said, "This was rather unfortunate because we pointed out to the model agency that we wanted girls to be completely topless while they served at the pumps and when they arrived it appeared they had not been told this."
A Wandsworth Council spokesperson said, "I doubt if there is very much we could do about this case under the terms of the Trades Description Act. The customers were not being forced to buy petrol under false pretences as they were free to drive elsewhere if they arrived and found no topless girls here."
December 7th 1971 has an advertisement for Burmah Brixton Auto Point:
PETROL 1p PER GALLON! Yes only one penny (4 gallons cost 4p) limited to 1st 25 cars only
THEN FREE CHAMPAGNE (second 25 drivers) PLUS PETROL 5p OFF EVERY GALLON
BIKINI MONEY GIRLS. 

I suppressed a giggle in the archive. This could have been a scene straight out of a sex comedy film of the period or a Benny Hill sketch on TV. It illustrates the crude sexism prevalent throughout this decade. It has inspired a tongue-in-cheek drawing in oil pastels. 
Another drawing is based on a film I've just seen called Bay of Blood (1971) AKA Twitch of the Death Nerve or Reazione a Catena or Ecologia Del Delitto and also known by numerous other titles.  
Hammer Horror in the late 1950s made a huge impact and re-invigorated the genre. Italy, in particular, took our blood spilling to heart and upped the stakes. The Giallo films that followed in the 1960s and 70s (Mario Bavo, Dario Argento etc) would feed back into the British and American films of the 1970s and 80s. 
Director, Norman J Warren on the making of Terror (1978):
" I went to see Suspiria (by Dario Argento) at the cinema by accident, and it blew my mind. I saw a new take on horror – none of it made any sense, and the lighting and sound was all crazy. So we said let’s make a film that doesn’t have a story – we just wrote down everything we liked about horror films."
I can't find any trace of a British screening of Bay of Blood for the 1970s. It might have had trouble with the censor. Watching the slasher films as I did in the late 70s, early 80s, Bay of Blood can be seen as a groundbreaking predecessor setting the new and bad rules for the genre . It's shot in typically creative Bava-scope and has a beginning and ending to literally die for. My drawing illustrates the opening sequence showing the death of a wasp and the concluding sequence when ........ (plot spoiler alert!). In between, I can forgive the plot and characters who have limited rhyme or reason. 
As a footnote to this blog, see my Friday the 13th drawing. I continually question my lurid fascination for horror. When grounded in engaging story and psychological suspense, it's thrilling stuff. However the laissez-faire flippancy and gruesome murders by number, tend to leave me cold and ethically troubled.