The great retro web site Starlet Showcase is a tribute to the cinema's loveliest sirens. In one section, there are some nice shots of Claudine Auger as she appeared in the 1965 James Bond epic Thunderball, memorably playing the role of Domino. Love that see through outfit she posed in for publicity photos for the film. A pity the costume designer couldn't work out a logical way for her to wear it onscreen.  Click here to visit the site

 

 

Ten years ago a show appeared on British TV that was so strange, so grotesque, so dark, yet so utterly hilarious that it quickly developed a cult following and a number of popular catchphrases. It ran to three series and eventually a feature film. This was the League of Gentlemen, a weird combination of sketch show and sitcom which clearly took inspiration from old horror movies, detective dramas, sexploitation comedies, to name but a few. I took the opportunity to pin down the gents in order to unravel just what their influences were. The conversation immediately turns to Take an Easy Ride, described by Mark as almost being a snuff film. This leads to my first question:

Have seventies snuff films been an influence on you?

M- Just that one!

Is it available commercially?

J- No, its illegal. You risk prosecution! (Although a quick search later uncovers copies available on Ebay and YouTube)

M- It purports to be an information film. It’s really a rape exploitation film. It starts like ‘Charley Says’ then it just gets ridiculous! It’s horrible.

J- You realise you are getting old when you talk about these things. I was doing some work with We Are Klang (UK comedy outfit) and they started talking about ‘Two girls, 1 cup’ and I genuinely hadn’t heard of it! Imagine that!

Neither have I! A couple of years ago most of you did a commentary for Blood on Satan’s Claw. How did they know you were fans?

J- I think we’d mentioned it in one of our commentaries.

R- We tried to get the claw in a toybox for Daisy Haggard (in their new TV show Psychoville). Her Dad Piers Haggard directed the film.

M- Someone sent me a copy of The Frozen Dead. It only worked once, it was such a bad copy. You know that one with the frozen Nazis? It virtually doesn’t exist. It was a huge thing. In the horror film books of the seventies there were these huge colour plates from this film no one ever saw. It was terrible.

J- Someone gave me on video a copy of It!, which was also in those books.

M- With the golem??

J- Yes.

That’s just come out on DVD now with The Shuttered Room. I don’t know if you’ve seen that, but it’s terrible. It’s got Oliver Reed in it.

M- I always think of Beast in the Cellar.

It’s a similar thing except it’s in an attic.

R- Dame Aileen Atkins told me she was in an Exorcist rip-off I said “I Don’t Want to be Born?” She said “You’ve seen it’? “ Of course I have!” Joan Collins raped by a dwarf? Brilliant! She couldn’t believe I’d seen it.

Dame Aileen Atkins. That’s how she got the part in Cranford.

S- That’s how she got a Dame-hood.

I love that film, especially where the baby pushes the nanny into the lake.

M- It’s a horrible thing, that creature.

R- You had the devil’s child in Crooked House (recent portmanteau horror film screened on UK TV over Christmas, written by and starring Mark Gatiss) didn’t you?

M- Yes, The Devil’s Hand.

You often included references in your shows to old films, such as the episode Royston Vasey and the Monster from Hell (a reference to Hammer horror Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell). Was it to see if people would notice, or to make each other laugh?

M- We just needed to think of a title.

S- Do you remember? We actually watched that Frankenstein film, and from that we thought we should do something with torches. So we said ‘let’s burn the shop down’. So that storyline came from the film directly.

M- It’s a good title though isn’t it?

Oh it’s brilliant. It shouldn’t work but it does! You’ve also worked with people like Freddie Jones (in the Christmas Special) who of course once played Frankenstein’s monster.

J- We remembered him more from Children of the Stones.

S- And Elephant Man.

M- We’ve always had that kind of affinity with those films, and getting to work with various people over the years is sort of like repaying a debt.

J- David Warner for example. On the film (The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse), I couldn’t believe every day there was David Warner from every film I loved growing up.

M- One of the strange lessons of that is that he has no affinity with fantasy. You would think that as a viewer he must love those films. But he just did those films because that’s what people asked him to do. He’s become a complete genre hero.

There was such a dearth of filmmaking in the seventies that a lot of actors had to do whatever they could to get by.

J- Except the films were better then!

M- I was talking to someone the other day, who said that one day he’s going to corner George Baker and talk about a scene in a grim sexploitation film where he goes through his collection of vibrators. A long way from Wexford! It’s like when you see people like John Pertwee turning up in Val Guest rude sex comedies.

A- Like Au Pair Girls.

M- Yes.

J- Those semi-porn films always had amazing casts.

Speaking of which I noticed you’ve got Christopher Biggins in Psychoville?

R- We do, yes.

One of my favourite films of his was Eskimo Nell.

S- I’ve not seen that one.

J- That’s one of those mucky films.

It’s a classic! It’s a really clever film. It’s not just about sex, honest! It’s about a guy trying to make a film, and it ends up being a porn film by mistake.

S- Sounds good.

A- Christopher Biggins is in it, he’s brilliant!

M- Was he cast in Psychoville because of I:Claudius?

J- Porridge? Or chiefly Watch This Space?

R- We tried to fill it with references to Watch This Space!

When is Psychoville going to be on?

R- No idea.

S- We don’t know. It’s still being edited.

You’re pleased with it?

S- Yeah!

R- We’re just coming to the end of editing episode 5 which is looking very good.

Do you think people will see it as a sequel to The League of Gentlemen?

S- I think it’s inevitable. We had a marketing meeting today. They wanted to say ‘From the team who brought you The League of Gentlemen and we said ‘well not quite’.

Half! But aren’t people always going to put you all together?

S- We’re very proud of it!

M- We owe everything to it. It would be churlish not to.

M- Inevitably people are going to want to have a peg to hang us on.

Presumably you took you name from the film ‘The League of Gentlemen’?

M- Yes!

A favourite or just a good name?

M- I think I’d seen it quite recently and it was just a good name.

J- It is a great film. Very seedy.

Can I ask you about Sherlock? (It has recently been announced that Mark Gatiss is currently working on a new series of Sherlock Holmes TV dramas for the BBC.)

M- Yes.

Is this going to be in competition with Guy Ritchie?

M- It’s a coincidence. It always happens. There are always three Robin Hood films coming out at the same time. The character is still here because he’s been the most filmed character in all of fiction. There’ll be several more by next year! There’s no fight involved. Unless Harry Hill does it! This Holmes will be in the style of the 1940s Sherlock films where he fights the Nazis. We’ve tried to bring Holmes into the present day.

R – Does that mean he just Googles everything?!