Discover Top Posts Tagged with #robert s. baker

The Hellfire Club (1961) - Danish Program

#hellfire club #peter cushing #adrianne conni #keith michell #1960s movies #robert s. baker #monty berman #adventure #movie programs

13 East Street

Robert S. Baker USA, 1952

#13 East Street #The End #Robert S. Baker #1952 #gif #kiss #1950s #USA #Columbia Pictures

Jack the Ripper (1959)

#jack the ripper #lee patterson #betty mcdowall #eddie byrne #ewen solon #1950s movies #robert s. baker #monty berman #movie poster

Yet the British cinema evolved its own Romantic genre: the horror film. A minor cycle of gruesome crime films with Victorian backgrounds indicate the 'zone' between Gainsborough grimness and horror proper. They are almost invariably shorn of their purple passages by the British censor, so that British spectators of Jack the Ripper (1958), The Flesh and the Fiends (1959), The Siege of Sidney Street (1960), and The Hellfire Club (1960) have had to content themselves with that atmosphere of gloomy criminality which murder fans so often find satisfying in itself.

Raymond Durgnat, A Mirror for England

#raymond durgnat #a mirror for england: british movies from austerity to affluence #gainsborough pictures #robert s. baker #monty berman #john gilling

The Saint: The Saint Sees it Through (2.27, ITC, 1964)

"Ernst... aren't you ever afraid?"

"I discipline my mind. I'm learning gradually to discipline others. With you I failed. But it doesn't matter."

#the saint #the saint sees it through #leslie charteris #robert s. baker #ian kennedy martin #roger moore #margit saad #joseph fürst #elspeth march #guy deghy #larry cross #gordon sterne #carl duering #peter perkins #graeme bruce #caron gardner #billy dean #a relatively rare adaptation of one of the full length Saint novels (the crew had understandably concentrated on the large supply of short #stories Charteris wrote instead)‚ Sees It Through was also the last full Saint novel Charteris would write (he'd continue with short #stories and there would be more novels ghostwritten by other authors). this is also notable as one of the first screenwriting credits of #Kennedy Martin who‚ with brother Troy‚ would establish themselves as two of the most prolific writers of cops and robbers tv over the next #decade‚ with The Sweeney‚ Z Cars‚ Edge of Darkness and Juliet Bravo among their creations. there's a chance this was never designed as a #season finale (what with the complex alterations between production orders and transmission orders) but it feels quite a suitable way to #bow out on s2; the case is appropriately big and international‚ Simon's motivations for once deeply personal and clearly affecting for him.#Saad was snapped up during her fairly brief flirtation with english language productions (she returned to her native Germany a few years #after this) and is notable for playing a Saintly love interest who not only has history with Simon‚ but whom he appears to have actually #been in love with‚ and who may have broken his heart (rather than the more expected reverse). Fürst is good value as always and mostly #keeps his villainous psychiatrist (this ep has a lot to say about psychiatry‚ none of it good) from tipping into pantomime baddy #i must say I'm grateful for the wealth of bts photos this episode seems to have generated‚ particularly regarding the extensive makeup job #for Simon's sailor disguise (clearly hours of work‚ but onscreen for all of two minutes before he rips it all off and reveals himself!)

In the historical Hellfire Club one of the prominent 'Monks of Medmenham' was John Wilkes, Whig M.P. for Aylesbury. At this time, when Parliament was so corrupt that bribes had brought, or rather bought, it under the control of George III, Wilkes defied the King, and was acknowledged as the champion, not only of free speech, but of the parliamentary principle, of the middle-classes, of the City of London, and of the common people. He was, indeed, the main focus of countervailing power to royal despotism. Prosecuted for obscenity, he was expelled from the House of Commons, and arrested. The public demonstrated outside his jail and the military shot six demonstrators. Even in prison, Wilkes's purse and connections enabled him to maintain his riotous life, while being three times re-elected to Parliament and three times re-expelled. He then became the first politician to hit on the technique of stumping the country to whip up support, and he succeeded in inflaming not only the British Isles but also the American colonies (so that he's a godfather to American independence). He became Lord Mayor of London in 1774, and won his case, in that the King's control of Parliament gradually wilted. His own democratic movement was split and broken in its turn when in 1780 he had to order troops to fire on anti-Catholic rioters. But his own example of personal courage and integrity was influential and lasting. It is not my suggestion that all films about the Hellfire Club ought to be about Wilkes. It is that if Wilkes, as a defender of British liberties, had been as well known as he ought to be, then stories about the Hellfire Club would immediately take on a morally and socially more lively and complex approach. What with jolly gypsies storming prisons on behalf of a dispossessed Lords' son, some vague idea of Wilkite agitation seems to be in Sangster's mind. But their role is a vigilante one of restoring a traditional hierarchy and morality: they're anti-Wilkes! Sangster's other films have relished moral ambivalence, as we shall see. But here he seems to have been paralysed by the weight and bias of school-room history, which consistently presents exactly the same distortion of history as this and The Young Mr. Pitt. The authoritarian forces are whitewashed, democratic forces blackwashed or forgotten.

Raymond Durgnat, A Mirror for England

#raymond durgnat #a mirror for england: british movies from austerity to affluence #the hellfire club #robert s. baker #monty berman #john wilkes #jimmy sangster

This bias appears even in Robert S. Baker's and Monty Berman's The Hellfire Club (1960). It may seem strange to link this costume melodrama with anything so serious as history. But this very disimilarity underlines the point. Jimmy Sangster and Leon Griffith's screenplay has the good legitimate brother (Keith Michell) being cheated out of his inheritance by the bad bastard (Peter Arne). He is consigned to prison and snatched there from by the gypsies, his childhood friends. He finally breaks into a Hellfire Club orgy, and exposes his wicked brother.

Raymond Durgnat, A Mirror for England

#raymond durgnat #a mirror for england: british movies from austerity to affluence #the hellfire club #robert s. baker #monty berman #jimmy sangster #leon griffith

Jack The Ripper (1959)

Directed by Robert S. Baker and Monthy Berman

Written by Peter Hammond and Colin Craig

Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster

With: Lee Patterson as Sam Lowry, Eddie Byrne as Inspector O'Neill, Bettie McDowall as Anne Ford and Ewen Solon as Sir David Rogers.

Plot: A serial killer is murdering women in the Whitechapel district of London. An American policeman is brought in to help Scotland Yard solve the case.

Photos (and further information): Black Hole Reviews & Speakeasy