“Dear God!”: The Problems with “Vicious”

 

 

“Dear God!”

These are the words that Freddie, Ian McKellen’s character in ITV sitcom Vicious says with alarming regularity.  It is also a phrase that many people were no doubt thinking to themselves when they watched the first episode.   It seems somewhat ironic that, in the May 2013 edition of gay magazine Attitude, Derek Jacobi (who plays Stuart, Freddie’s partner) talks about the 1969 film Staircase, based on the play of the same name about two gay hairdressers in a long-term relationship.  Jacobi says of the film  that “[they] cast Rex Harrison and Richard Burton, two dreadful heterosexuals who just camped themselves to death and it was disgraceful.  Disgraceful!  Dreadful, dreadful”.  Going by this comment, it is fine for gay men to “camp themselves to death” as aging gay men, but not heterosexuals in similar roles.  Gay men playing gay roles in this way is supposedly funny, whereas straight men playing gay roles in the same way is offensive.

Vicious is, quite frankly, awful.  In fact, it is so bad that it is almost difficult to know where to start in pulling it to pieces.  But let’s start with McKellen and Jacobi themselves, who play the lead characters – sorry, caricatures – Freddie and Stuart who, we are told, have been in a relationship for fifty years.  I struggle each week to have a relationship with them for 23 minutes.  The original title of the series was Vicious Old Queens, and that, dear friends, pretty much sums up these characters.  There is nothing wrong with portraying an elderly couple as sarcastic and insulting towards each other – I’m sure many are – but the problem is that it is all they are.  It took until episode three for a genuinely affectionate moment between the two to be portrayed.   The whole thing is just so over-the-top, that one can only wonder if we are actually watching a well-worn party piece that McKellen and Jacobi have been performing for friends at dinner parties for years.  That two of the country’s greatest living actors – and most-loved gay men – have made such a huge faux pas  in their portrayal of gay men is really quite sad.  The Attitude article tells us that the “Freddies and Stuarts of this world deserve to be looked at, and their bravery deserves to be honoured”, and I agree wholeheartedly, but they also deserve to be looked at in a way that does not adhere to the stereotypes of forty and fifty years ago.  There is just simply too much…everything.

But we can not, and should not, put all the blame on to McKellen and Jacobi, because the writing really doesn’t give them much to work with.  A half hour sitcom on ITV runs for approximately 23 minutes per episode, and yet the writing is so thin that jokes are repeated endlessly in episode after episode:  the opening phone call between Stuart and his Mother; kicking the dog bed to make sure the 20 year old hound is still alive (it possibly committed suicide after watching this, to be honest); Frances de la Tour being ushered out of the house by Freddie and Stuart; the flirting between de la Tour and Iwan Rheon, who plays the good-looking (if slightly dopey) upstairs neighbour.  These might be amusing moments in one episode, but they recur each week, therefore it seems as if we will be presented with the same joke six times in one series.  That’s hardly making the most out of the little screen time you have.

The very style of the series harks back to the 1970s.  The vast majority of the programme takes place in one room, with a very small group of characters, and there are even little musical motifs and pictures of the outside of the house between each scene.  It’s like a gay George and Mildred or, heaven forbid, Terry and June.  In other words, we are watching a programme made in 2013 about gay men that makes Mr Humphreys in Are You Being Served look progressive – let’s face it, at least he was a happy gay man.

And yet I’m still watching it after three episodes.  I’m not quite sure why.  But there is certainly pleasure to be had from watching McKellen and Jacobi on stage hamming it up for all their worth – they are enjoying themselves, there is no doubt about that.  And the live studio audience are seemingly enjoying themselves too – is this one of those cases where the outtakes are funnier than the programme itself?  There is also no denying that Jacobi and McKellen have great chemistry – in fact, the whole cast does.  Frances de la Tour is quite possibly the best thing about the whole show – she too is hamming it up, but rarely crosses the line into vulgarity in her characterisation that the two leads seem to.   And finally there is Iwan Rheon as Ash, the slightly dopey upstairs hunk of a neighbour.  In each of the three episodes aired so far there has been a tease that he will land up at least half-naked.  Perhaps the possibility that his T-shirt will come off in at least one episode is the real reason why I continue to tune in.

I so want to like Vicious, and I confess that it does raise a smile or two each episode as some of the one-liners and put-downs are genuinely funny.   Deep down I hope that a second series gets commissioned and the writers and actors take note of the issues that viewers and critics have raised and the show gets tweaked to make it the success that we all want it to be.  I genuinely believe there is a funny, ultimately touching sitcom hidden within Vicious, but it just needs a little help finding its way out of a rather cluttered, messy closet.

Guilty Pleasures: The Amazing Mr Blunden (1972)

 

 

I must confess that I never really took to Lionel Jeffries as an actor, great though he was.  But I simply never warmed to him.  I think I forever blamed him for the downfall of Oscar Wilde after watching The Trials of Oscar Wilde as a teenager.  His career as director, which includes just five films, showed that he was as talented behind the camera as he was in front, if not more so.  His first directorial effort The Railway Children (1970) has become a classic and graces our TV screen at virually every bank holiday and, while familiarity can often breed contempt, it’s still a great film which you never move on from when it’s found by accident while channel-hopping.  Sadly, though, it was all downhill from there despite Jeffries directing talents, and it all ended in 1978 with the appalling The Water Babies which, rather appropriately, sank without trace.

Jeffries stuck with the family film formula with his next film, The Amazing Mr Blunden, which at one time was on our TV screens nearly as often as The Railway Children but hasn’t been shown for many years, and was out of print for a very long time on DVD until it was re-released in March 2013.  The film is based on the supernatural children’s novel, The Ghosts, by Antonia Barber, and tells the story of two children who travel back in time to try to save two children who were burnt to death in a fire a century earlier.  There are some remarkably dark elements to the film, especially considering it is aimed at a young audience, not least the endless threat that the children are in.  However, this is counter-acted by the gloriously over the top acting of some of the cast, including former sex siren Diana Dors who is almost unrecognisable in her grotesque make-up as Mrs Wickens, the woman trying to kill the kids.  Dors steals the show, but the child actors are also superb, especially Garry Miller who, according to IMDB, was never to grace our screens again.

Mr Blunden shouldn’t work.  It lacks the subtlety and refinement of The Railway Children and often descends into slapstick which sits at odds with the serious nature of the story.  But the film draws us in with its wonderfully atmospheric opening sequence (and the superb period atmosphere) and, after that, we’re hooked and willing to take all the various absurdities and cruelties that the film throws at us.  I confess it doesn’t work so well viewed as an adult, but it’s one of those films that you continue to love as you grow older, partly because it  brings back memories of the first time you saw it, which was probably sat with your Mother on Christmas Eve twenty or thirty years ago.

Dracula (1931) and the problems with restorations.

I have to admit that I started off by vowing that I wouldn’t buy the blu-ray boxed set of Universal horror films that emerged last year.  All signs were that the restorations were good, but did I really need them again?  And did I really want yet more duplication in my collection – after all, the DVD copies would have to be kept or I would lose all the sequels that they contain that the new set does not.  Still, Amazon offered it briefly at a very nice price, and so it now sits on my shelves.

I have yet to see all of the new restorations, but the ones I have seen look superb.  Dracula in particular has an image quality that is better that we ever could have hoped for, and the soundtrack has lost that loud hiss which has accompanied previous issues of the film.

Great news so far.

But there is a problem here, because the restoration of Dracula has only managed to emphasise that it really is not a very good film.  It’s a classic, yes.  And Lugosi’s Dracula is iconic.  And yet it is also a remarkably static film, directed with little directorial flourish by Tod Browning, and the script is often bland and leaden, and sadly based on a stage adaptation of the novel rather than the novel itself.  As such, despite being from the pre-code era, Dracula is a bowdlerised version of Stoker’s novel that is more creaky than the front door of Castle Dracula itself.

Saying these things is, I guess, almost blasphemous.  But I’m not saying these things purely for effect.  Other than Lugosi’s iconic portrayal of Dracula himself, the biggest appeal of the film was the atmosphere that oozed from the screen.  The problem while watching the new restoration is that we now realise that part of that atmosphere was due to the age and rather weathered nature of the film itself.  It is comforting and exciting in equal measure to watch an old horror classic late at night, perhaps at Hallowe’en or on a windy evening with the rain hitting against the windows.  But the atmosphere was in part due to the scratched print, the flickering picture, and the soundtrack that we have to strain our ears to hear.  In other words, part of the appeal was due to the fact the film was old and looked old.  With a sparkling print and a decent soundtrack, the atmospheric element has simply vanished, and all we are left with is a great restoration of a mediocre film.

The same cannot be said for the others in the set I have worked through so far.  But they are, on the whole, much better films that Dracula.  Even the Spanish version of Dracula, filmed with a different cast on the same set, benefits from the restoration it has received.  But, again, it is a much better film than the English-language version, despite the fact it lacks Lugosi.

I can imagine that I would feel the same way about White Zombie if ever a well-preserved print was discovered and then restored.  Part of the appeal of that film, and part of what makes it so damn unsettling, is the poor state of the print itself, with it’s crackling soundtrack and eerily worn, often blurred, visuals.  Looking at a print that is so bright and shiny that it could have been made yesterday would ultimately ruin part of the enjoyment of the film.

There is a peculiar enjoyment to be had from watching not particularly good, creaky old films in worn prints.  Perhaps they remind us of when we first saw the film, late at night on an old analogue TV twenty or thirty years ago when we were twelve and hiding behind a cushion, scared that Dracula himself might fly through the window and appear in our very own living room.  Or perhaps, for some people reading this, an old cinema that specialised in showing dodgy prints of old classics and drive-in features.  Either way, most of us won’t remember our first encounter with these films as being fully restored, sparkling prints – and it was while watching old, tattered copies that we fell in love with them and, possibly, why we fell in love with them.

Know Your Place: Elvis Presley and the New York Times

To post in the film blog or the music blog?  Ok, the film blog got lucky!

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The New York Times is something of a strange old bird, with very clear ideas of what it likes, what it doesn’t like, and what is approves and does not approve of.   For the most part, Elvis Presley falls into the latter.  Even on the day after Presley’s death, the newspaper seemed to struggle to say something positive about the singer.  In a lengthy piece, Molly Ivans concentrated not on Presley’s singing or his long list of hit records, but his movies and live appearances.  She portrays him as a has-been who “was once the object of” adulation.  She says he made 28 films, “nearly all of them second-rate” and says that  Love Me Tender opened to “unanimous jeers from the critics”.[i]  There is a concentration on his lifestyle, his weight and his diet , with those pesky peanut butter and banana sandwiches getting their almost obligatory mention.

But what exactly was it that the newspaper didn’t like about Presley?  Well, the basic reason appears to be that it saw Elvis as a charlatan, as someone who tried very hard to be something he was not.  I co-wrote an article (with Mark Jancovich) last year on the newspaper’s treatment of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, and the conclusion of that article fits the paper’s view of Presley very well:  “The problem was not films or stars (such as Karloff) that knew they place but rather those (such as Lugosi) with [pretentions of] the middlebrow”.[ii]  I should explain this further by saying that Karloff was viewed by the paper as knowing his place and not taking either himself or his films particularly seriously.  Meanwhile Lugosi was viewed as someone who took himself much too seriously and was therefore derided for trying to be something he wasn’t.  And it is a similar stance that the paper takes with Presley.

Let’s take this examination back to the beginning, and the now famous article by Jack Gould reviewing Presley’s notorious appearance on The Milton Berle Show in 1956.  Already there are references to Presley’s perceived pretension.  Gould writes that Presley was “attired in the familiar oversize jacket and open shirt which are almost the uniform of the contemporary youth who fancies himself as terribly sharp”. [iii]  Already we can see that the stance is being taken that the singer is a nobody attempting to be a somebody.  In fact, Gould believes that Presley is only good at the “hootchy-kootchy” but then adds that is “hardly any reason why he should be billed as a vocalist”.

A similar theme is continued by Bosley Crowther in his review of Love Me Tender.  Iwans has already told us the film was jeered at by critics and, in the case of Crowther, she isn’t lying.  Crowther, always one for an impressive turn of phrase, writes that “the picture itself is a slight case of horse opera with the heaves, and Mr Presley’s dramatic contribution is not a great deal more impressive than that of the slavering nags”.[iv]  How’s that for a put-down?   Loving You, from the following year, is hardly welcomed with open arms either.   “Does Elvis sing?” the writer asks. “More of less” is his answer.[v]  There is a tendency in these film reviews to poke fun at Presley’s mannerisms and country-boy persona:  “’Uh need somebody,’ he informs the smitten young Dolores Hart, squinting over her shoulder (probably towards the nearest exit).”

Bearing this in mind it seems rather ironic that it is in Presley’s most ambitious film that he receives a good review for his performance.  Presumably it was rather a surprise for reviewer Howard Thompson as well, as he starts his review with the words “As the lad himself might say, cut my legs off and call me Shorty!  Elvis Presley can act”.[vi]  To be fair, it is Presley’s director and co-stars who gets most of Thompson’s adoration, but at least he is afforded with a compliment of doing a “good, convincing walk-through” of his part.

This isn’t the only positive article on Presley in the NYT in the 1950s, either.  John S Wilson wrote a lengthy article in January 1957 praising Presley’s first two albums, and states that they show he has “an impressive, if sometimes distorted, talent.”[vii]  He gives particular praise to Long Tall Sally, So Glad You’re Mine and Anyplace Is Paradise.   Despite this, a later article by the same writer refers to Presley’s singing as a “piercing yawp.”[viii]  I don’t know what a “yawp” is, but it sounds painful and might require medical treatment.

The New York Times had a similar view of Presley during the 1970s, and again often insinuates that Presley was trying to be something he wasn’t.   There is also a recurrent theme of Presley as a money-making machine.  The review of the Legendary Performer album from 1974 accuses the album of being just another compilation “tricked out” with the booklet and a “listing of his barefoot-boy-made-good career”.[ix]  Note once again the seeming animosity at the country boy not knowing his place in the world, and trying to “make good”.

There is also a scathing review of Elvis on Tour in which the writer suggests that the directors were “inhibited by the magnitude of their latest subject, Elvis Presley.  Or perhaps – dare I say? – his minitude.”[x]  Once again, there are assertions that Presley is simply surrounding himself in paraphernalia in order to look better than he actually is.  He is “fancily” photographed.  There are “split-screen frills”.  Elvis wears a “rhinestone-studded Batman costume” and is deemed not worthy of the 2001 opening.   Likewise, the arrangements of the On Stage album are considered in a review to be more “appropriate to a Las Vegas production of the Old Testament”. [xi]  Just as unflattering is the review of Elvis Now, in which Elvis is accused of singing “continuously out of tune” on Hey Jude, and that “he doesn’t really understand the phrasing it requires”. [xii]  In other words, he is attempting to sing something he really isn’t capable of.

Once again, there are a few decent comments scattered about amongst the pages of the NYT in the 1970s (other than the famous review of the Madison Square Garden concert).  A review of a Nassau Coliseum  concert from 1975 finds the singer’s youthful sexuality gone, but “in its place there is a wonderfully relaxed, ironic affection that can be almost as nice”.[xiii]  He also finds him in better form than two years earlier at the same venue, where he was “fat, lazy and ineffectual”.

The idea that the newspaper is most critical of people trying to rise above their station, or attempting to be something they are not, is verified in the reviews of the 1960s movies.  In his review of G I Blues, Bosley Crowther is pleased to see that Presley has turned into “such a fine young man”.[xiv]  Crowther likes the film because it is unpretentious, and it is pretention that troubles the NYT and its writers so much.   The somewhat more pretentious Wild in the Country, for example, is classed by the same writer as a “sentimental lot of nonsense”. [xv]  However, the straightforward musicals that many of us now condemn were often given favourable comments.  Kid Galahad is rather ridiculed, but “for a film about a singing prize-fighter (which is silly enough) it will do”.[xvi]  Howard Thompson tells us of Roustabout that there are “worse things than an Elvis Presley movie – far worse.”[xvii]  The same author comments that “coming on a balmy day, with no pretensions of art, ‘Viva Las Vegas’, the new Elvis Presley vehicle, is about as pleasant and unimportant as a banana split.”[xviii]

So, the treatment of Presley by the New York Times is not all that different from other stars that it saw as style over substance.  When these stars tried to be taken seriously (and we can assume that Presley’s grandiose entrances and lavish costumes of the 1970s fit into that category – at least according to the NYT), then they would be looked down upon as not knowing their place and of being pretentious.  But, when Presley was making his series of cheap and cheerful, unassuming movies in the 1960s he was (maybe a little grudgingly) welcomed, and by the time of the mid-1960s these films were treated like old friends – familiarity really didn’t breed contempt in this instance.  The NYT was happy – Presley was just a likeable, unassuming young guy with relatively little talent (in their opinion) who had found his place in a string of banal but pleasurable films – films with no pretention of high art whatsoever.

 

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[i] Iwans, Molly.  “Elvis Presley Dies; Rock Singer was 42”.  NYT.  August 17, 1977, p. 43

[ii] Jancovich, Mark and Brown, Shane.  “’The Screen’s Number One and Number Two Bogeymen’: The Critical Reception of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the 1930s and 1940s”.  In Kate Egan and Sarah Thomas (Eds) Cult Film Stardom:  Offbeat Attractions and Processes of Cultification.  London: Palgrave MacMillan (2012).

[iii] Gould, Jack.  “TV:  New Phenomenon” NYT.  June 6, 1956, p. 67

[iv] Crowther, Bosley.  “The Screen:  Culture Takes a Holiday”.  NYT.  November 16, 1956, p. 22

[v] H.H.T.  “Elvis Presley Meets Success in ‘Loving You’” NYT.  July 18, 1957, p?

[vi] Thompson, Howard.  “Actor with Guitar”.  NYT.  July 4, 1958, p. 15

[vii] Wilson, John S.  “Elvis Presley:  Rocking Blues Shouter”.  NYT.  January 13, 1957, p. X16.

[viii] Wilson, John S. “What Makes ‘Pop’ Music Popular?”  NYT.  December 8, 1957, p. SM13.

[ix] Dove, Ian.  “Elvis Presley ‘Legend’ Presented Anew”.  NYT.  January 16, 1974.

[x] Canby, Vincent.  “Screen:  Elvis on Tour”.  NYT.  June 7, 1973.

[xi] Heckman, Don.  “Presley’s Back, The Nice are Leaving”.  NYT.  August 30, 1970.

[xii] Heckman, Don.  “Presley – Has the Rocker Become a Crooner” NYT.  March 12, 1972.

[xiii] Rockwell, John.  “Presley Treats Fans to His Best”.  NYT.  July 21, 1975.

[xiv] Crowther, Bosley.  “Screen: Elvis – A Reformed Wriggler”.  NYT.  November 20, 1960.

[xv] Crowther, Bosley.  “Screen: Presley is a Problem Again”.  NYT.  June 10, 1961

[xvi] Crowther, Bosley. “Screen: A Ferocious Elvis Presley”. NYT.  March 7, 1963.

[xvii] Thompson, Howard.  “Elvis Presley stars in ‘Roustabout’”. NYT.  November 11, 1964.

[xviii] Thompson, Howard. “Elvis Presley Teams with Ann-Margret”.  NYT.  May 21, 1964.

Let’s Reboot Television!

A man from Virgin Media came yesterday and fitted me with a Tivo box.  Whilst looking through the instructions, I was told that if it froze or got stuck, it would need rebooting.  My feeling, wading through the TV schedules in the UK these days, is that it’s not the Tivo box that needs a reboot, but television itself.   Somehow, since virtually every home has gained (to some degree) a multitude of extra channels, the main ones seems to rely more and more on tried and tested programmes, and tried and tested formulas.

While I can understand to a certain degree that people gain pleasure from watching those two-hour police dramas that move at a slower pace than the Lord of the Rings films, just how long can and should they go on for before something new comes along to take their place?  I shall be brutally honest, I blame “Morse” for everything.  After all, he was the one who started the now endlessly-recycled idea of a miserable old git taking 120 minutes (and at least 50 advert breaks) to solve a remarkably dull murder-mystery littered with remarkably dull characters.  When Morse got killed off in the final episode, I gave something of a silent cheer…while my Mother mourned.

But the death of Morse wasn’t the death of Morse.  Lo and behold, ITV came up with the idea of “Lewis” to cheer us all up with more of the same, and then we were treated to “Endeavour” which “entralls” us with the early adventures of Morse.  I am awaiting the announcement of a new series in which Morse’s spirit helps solves mysteries that baffle any policeman with a cheerful disposition and a relatively normal family life.

And Morse simply opened the floodgates for likes of “Frost” and “Midsomer Murders” – the latter now having waded through some fifteen series.  Even “Foyle’s War” couldn’t be allowed to finish with the end of the war – instead it wanders on in repetitive fashion with people watching possibly more through habit than enjoyment.    Likewise, ITV have insisted on continuing with their awful “Marple” series long after they ran out of actual Marple stories to destroy with their ridiculous adaptations.  Now they transplant the old busybody in mysteries where she doesn’t belong at all.  Agatha Christie must be turning in her grave.

This rant is somewhat caused by the receipt of next week’s Radio Times, which tells me that the highlight of the week (aside from Dr Who, which the magazine is obsessed with) is a new episode of Jonathan Creek.   Jonathan Creek?  Surely that’s the only programme in the world with more final episodes than “Only Fools and Horses?”   It seems to have been farewell-ing for over a decade.  We are also told in RT that Have I Got News For You is back for a 45^th series.   That’s more series than “Casualty”, and I really thought nothing had been around for longer than that (a mere 27 series, in case you were wondering).   And yes, I know that BBC4 is “thrilling” audiences with various new crime dramas from mainland Europe – but surely these are just Morse/Lewis/Foyle/Midsomer with added subtitles.

ITV2 and ITV3 are even worse.  ITV3 should be renamed the “Poirot and Lewis” channel, as they appear to show little else.  And this is something I fail to understand.  With thousands of programmes in the vaults, the same 100 or so 2-hour dramas are just recycled endlessly – and still manage to receive 1.5 million viewers on a regular basis.  Is television so awful – and are we so easily please -  that we watch murder mysteries we last saw a month ago?

Of course, it’s not just dour murder mysteries than are recycled.  Since the success of Bargain Hunt, our daytime schedules are littered with antiques programmes. And since the success of Pop Idol we have been treated to around 300 series of X Factor/Britain’s Got Talent/The Voice/Fame Academy/Popstar to Operastar.  These are all enjoyable in their way – but they get less and less enjoyable with each series.  At what point exactly will the entire TV viewing public shout at their TV set “ENOUGH!  I CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE!”  There is, after all, less repetition when watching the BBC News channel, which shows us the same reports every hour.

What would I like in the place of these stalwarts?  I have no idea, and the problem seems to be that those in charge of the schedules don’t have much idea either.  Ideas and formats are always going to be recycled, but early evening viewing on BBC1 (centred around Casualty) seems to look the same now as it did 25 years ago, and eventually something has to give.  Surely a new schedule that avoids hospitals and police-dramas would be bliss?

On the plus side, the last of the Poirot books are being filmed as we speak, and so David Suchet will have to give up his impersonation of the Belgian detective at that point, after 14 series.  Unless, of course, ITV decides to transplant the character into a set of stories where he doesn’t belong at all…

Ghost Ship (1952)

Multi-channel TV is frustrating, isn’t it?  Half the channels aren’t in listings magazines, and the ones that are seem to show the same thing day in and day out.  Then you go channel hopping and find something you want to watch on a channel you can’t normally find listings for – only you find out the programme or film is half finished and is the only thing on any channel that is not going to be repeated again!  But occasionally, you find something unexpected, and so it was when I happened upon the Horror Channel showing Ghost Ship – no, not the Val Lewton film from the 1940s, or the dire special-effects laden concoction from a few years ago, but a perky little British B-movie from 1952.

Outside of the well-known British films of the period, we rarely see on our TV screens these little B-movie gems that move along at such a quick pace that all plot holes and questionable acting is forgotten.  The film tells the story of a couple played by Dermot Walsh and Hazel Court who go to look at an old yacht with a view to buying it to use as a houseboat.  However, they are warned off from doing so because of the rumours that the boat is haunted after a mysterious accident a few years earlier.  Needless to say, they buy the yacht anyway, and start to carry out repairs, but before long various strange events start to occur.

The film is an oddity in many ways.   The acting in the film is unusual.  The two leads are played by relatively well by Walsh and Court (despite dodgy accents) and yet I had to look up on IMDB to see if most of the supporting actors were professionals or amateurs.  The film was written and directed by Vernon Sewell, whose perhaps best film was the Second World War drama The Silver Fleet from a decade earlier, and starring Ralph Richardson.  Sewell’s script is unusual for a B-movie potboiler in that it includes not one but two flashbacks, one of which takes place during a seance!  But it also moves at a relatively leisurely pace too – which is rather difficult in a film lasting only seventy minutes or so!  Five minutes is taken halfway through during a party scene for a painful-to-watch comedy sequence involving a drunk guest (Ian Carmichael), and in another section a psychic investigator also takes the time to carry out demonstrations using tuning forks!

So why am I writing about this rather mediocre effort?  Well, because, despite its flaws, it’s all rather fun and amusing – from the Marie Celeste-type mystery element, to the hokey seance sequence, to the twist at the end (that you may have to watch twice to actually understand!).  Like the best B-movies, it doesn’t take itself  seriously, and the viewer feels as if much of the time the whole thing is being played with a wink and a nudge.  The plot is simple but intriguing and the lead players attractive and sympathetic.  In other words, should you come across this while channel-hopping, there are worse ways to spend 75 minutes.

It has to be said that the print on the Horror Channel left a little bit to be desired, with some rather odd framing in places that resulted in people literally losing their heads – perhaps it added to the charm!  But the film is also (rather surprisingly)  available on DVD from Optimum whose reputation would suggest has no such issues.

Mental Illness Comes Out of the Celluloid Closet

“You feel invisible.  You feel like a ghost, and a ghost that nobody believes in.  There’s this sense of isolation” (Susie Bright)

“There are lots of needs for art, and the greatest one is the mirror of our own lives and our own existence.  And that hunger I felt as a kid looking for gay images was to not be alone.” (Harvey Fierstein)

In many ways, the above quotes changed my life.  They are taken from the documentary The Celluloid Closet, which I first saw as a twenty-two year old closeted gay man back in September 1996 when it first aired on British TV.   This was two months before I started work as an admin assistant at the university with which I am still connected.  That six month contract lasted for nine years, before I called it a day and commenced my BA degree in 2005 at the same university.  Eight years later, I’m a few months from handing in my PhD – and a long way from that office where I used to work in the School of Computing.  Quite whether I would have handed in my notice and pursued a degree in film had I not seen The Celluloid Closet is something I shall never know, but that documentary – and, in particular, the quotes above – certainly got me interested in film history in a way that I had not been before.  While I had always liked old films, my eyes had been opened to what these films could tell us about our past (and our present), and suddenly there was a personal angle to film history: What did it mean to me?  And, as for those quotes with which I open this lengthier-than-usual post, well, they somehow described how I was feeling living in a small village, not out of the closet, not brave enough to enter a gay bar in the nearest city, and a few years before the internet became a common feature of our lives.

Recently, I was involved in a discussion on a message board about the mass shootings that took place in America last year (bear with me, this will all come together eventually).  The issues being discussed were not just ones of possible changes to gun control in America, but also about mental health issues, particularly in the young, and the part these had had in the shootings.  What became clear was that mental health problems were still heavily stigmatised, and rarely discussed, and certainly not “normalised” for the most part (in parts of the USA), and thus many people who needed help were simply not getting it due to the stigma attached to admitting they had a problem.  There have been campaigns in the UK over the last five years or so to try to get mental health issues such as depression and schizophrenia talked about more within society and to try to educate people about these problems and remove the stigma attached to them.   While things are slowly changing in the right direction, it still seems odd that I fear the reaction to telling someone that I am bipolar more than the reaction to telling them I’m gay – especially having been a teenager at a time when homosexuality was largely not accepted by the masses.  In one area we have moved on so far (things aren’t perfect, but they rarely are), but in the other we haven’t progressed a great deal since I was diagnosed back in 1995.

The comments that Susie Wright and Harvey Fierstein made in that 1996 documentary don’t really hold true any more with regards to homosexuality.  That is thanks, in part, to the rise of the home video industry and, more importantly, the introduction of the DVD – a platform far cheaper to produce than VHS tapes.  A multitude of gay-themed films are now available to us – some good, some bad, some just plain ugly.  OK, most are independent or foreign language films, but Hollywood is making headway too.  And, more importantly perhaps, we are even finding LGBT characters in films and TV shows that are not actually about being gay or lesbian.   This goes further to “normalising” homosexuality far more than a gay film that seems to consist only of gay and lesbian characters and is solely about being gay.  Take the Robin Williams vehicle The Night Listener, for example.  Here is a film in which the sexuality of the character just is; it actually has little or no relevance to the narrative.  Or how about the US TV series The United States of Tara, in which the teenaged son of the family is gay, but there is no big coming out scenes?  The family already accepts him for who he is before the first episode even starts, and his various coming of age issues are much the same as those of any other teenager, gay or straight – except that his mother has a multiple personality disorder.  Although it is worth saying that the killing off of one of the gay characters in the series was an unwelcome harking back to the Hollywood of the past where gay men just were not allowed to be happy.  It was one of the few bad moves the series made, and leaves something of a bitter aftertaste simply because of this throwback to earlier times.

If homosexuality has been normalised on our screens over the last fifteen years or so, depression and mental health issues have been conspicuous by their absence.  Which brings me back to those two original quotes at the top of this post – those with mental health issues are largely still invisible in film and TV, and there has certainly been no mirror images for sufferers on the screen – especially if you are young.  A number of European films come to mind – Lakki: The Boy Who Could Fly (1992), The Man Who Loved Yvenge (2008) (both Norwegian), and Presque Rien (2000) all deal with depression and other issues.  Ben X (2007) deals with autism, and this and other movies such as The Suicide Room (2011) and The Class (2007) present us with characters who suffer either from alienation or depression, or both depending on how you read the film.  But in the UK and America, depression and mental illness is sadly absent from our screens.  But finally, I believe that is slow changing thanks to  a slow but steady stream of recent films dealing with the issue.

For example, Dare (2009) is an independent film dealing with both issues of sexuality and mental health.  The film follows three teenagers as their lives intertwine romantically, with the film itself divided into three sections, with each one devoted to the story of one of the characters.  Johnny is the “bad boy” character that is at the centre of the film, and with whom both Ben and Alexa (the other two of the trio) become involved.  What we are perhaps surprised about when it comes to Johnny’s section (the last) is that underneath the bad boy image he is actually a troubled young man who sees a psychiatrist on a regular basis.   Johnny’s “issues” are never actually spelled out to the view, although we are led to believe that they are related to a sense of isolation, alienation – and depression.

Only last year, The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) provided us with another character, Charlie, who is suffering mental health issues following the death of his friend.  This issue bubbles beneath the surface of the film for the majority of its running time, before finally erupting in the final reel, and yet it is still dealt with in a sympathetic and realistic way.  However, if I was watching these two films as my teenaged self, I still wouldn’t be able to relate to these characters particularly.  There was something that they had that I didn’t as a depressed teenager:  a reason for being depressed.

The vast majority of us suffering from clinical depression really don’t appear to have a reason for being the way we are.  It’s not because a relative passed away, or the cat got run over, or because we got bullied at school.  All of these might be triggers for periods of depression, of course.  But, if I have learned anything about the illness over the last two decades, it’s that it just is and that there is no underlying cause.

This is where It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2010) fits in.   In this fine film, Craig, a young man played by Keir Gilchrist (who, coincidentally played the gay son in United States of Tara), checks himself into a psychiatric ward when he fears that he might harm himself.  He thinks he will be in and out by the next day and back at school, but he soon finds out that he has to be admitted for a week – and also that the juvenile ward is closed, and so he will be kept in the adult ward.  There are some parts of the film that are slightly hard to believe.  For example, as a depressed teenager, Craig seems remarkably at ease in social situations and makes friends within the ward very easily.  However, this is a film – and ninety minutes watching a boy who doesn’t speak to anyone would make for relatively dull viewing.   What I found most remarkable watching the film from the viewpoint of someone who has suffered from bipolar for eighteen years, is that Craig isn’t depressed for any particular reason.  Sure, he has stresses from home and school and so on, but these are never really presented to us as the reason for his depression. He is simply a clinically depressed teenager – and, while he will have ups and downs, it’s something he will have to deal with for the rest of his life probably.  From this point of view, the film is something of a revelation.  After watching the film, my reaction was “At Last!”

Will films like  It’s Kind of a Funny Story, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and other films covering these issues such as Dare and Some Day This Pain Will Be Useful To You (2011) (and a TV series such as The United States of Tara)  make a difference on how teenagers view depression and other mental illnesses?  Well, it’s hard to say, but it is even more unlikely that these issues will be discussed and somehow de-stigmatised if they remain buried and not talked about or portrayed in the media.  These are certainly not issues that are going to go away – but they are also issues that are difficult to include in films and TV series – how does one approach depression, portray it realistically, and yet also make it entertaining?  Thankfully, It’s Kind of a Funny Story manages to do this, but it is not in the majority.  To see the other side of the coin, check out the aforementioned tedious Lakki:  The Boy Who Could Fly.

These are difficult issues.  But thankfully, slowly but surely, they are being portrayed in films and TV series aimed at young people – and that can only be a good thing.

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And yes, I know the films discussed above and neither “silent” nor “classic”.  But hey, with your own blog you can veer from the path occasionally!