SLATE OF INDEPENDENTS
TV Cream's A-Z of British Independent Production Companies
Regardless of your opinion on the quality of films today compared to years past, one thing remains a black (and white) fact - things aren't as interesting as they used to be. With so much money clanking about for even minor productions, the maverick risk-takers of old have packed up their tripods and buggered off, defeated. Nowhere is this more true than in Britain, where a once-thriving web of tiny, internecine studios, distributors and shoestring crackpots, making daft horrors, lurid naughty films and mad music hall diversions, has been overthrown by a hogload of blazer-over-t-shirt-sporting, floppy-haired accountants desperately waving the same half-arsed romcom "treatment" at Jude Law's rapidly retreating arse. It's just not the same.
In tribute to the great days when any bugger with a Wardour Street loft and a Bolex could set up shop as a studio of repute, we're cataloguing those small film companies that made their mark under the noses of the big studios from the twenties to the eighties. The rule - they must be substantially smaller than, say, Rank or MGM, or less well-known than your Hammers and your Ealings, but they have to have produced a significant body of work - ie. companies that just existed for one or two films (or even just for tax reasons) don't make it, otherwise we'd be here forever. So sit back as we unspool league upon league of old nitrate stock, as processed by men and women whose talent, creativity and dodgy business acumen show up outfits like W**king Title for the vacuous money launderers they are. Run telecine!
AMICUS PRODUCTIONS
The fag-end of the '50s saw rock 'n' roll cheapo producer Milton Subotsky team up with money man Max J Rosenberg for a Shepperton-based venture into second-string cinema. It's Trad, Dad was the result - a tempting blend of Chubby Checker and Arthur Mullard. Sci-fi sprang forth in the shape of the two soft-centred Cushing Who films, but horror was to be the studio's lasting legacy, and portmanteau horror films at that. Roy Castle and Alan Freeman were among the protagonists in the first, the darkly silly Dr Terror's House of Horrors, and over the next decade more were hatched - from the great From Beyond the Grave, Asylum and Tales from the Crypt to the less brilliant Vault of Horror and House That Dripped Blood. More hybrid horror oddness followed with The Deadly Bees (bee horror meets rock 'n' roll showcase), The Beast Must Die (Shaft vs the werewolf) and the 3-D lunacy of I, Monster. The late '70s saw horror fall out of audience favour, so Subotsky moved into daft cod-Victorian fantasy with the Doug McClure 'Time Forgot' films, before the studio finally pegged out circa 1979, and Subotsky finished its last magnum opus The Monster Club (fittingly, a portmanteau horror with musical interludes from BA Robertson) under his new Sword and Sorcery moniker.
The best and worst of Subotsky - From Beyond the Grave's Pleasence and daughter, and The Monster Club's star turn, BA Robertson.
ANGLO-AMALGAMATED
Ever-expanding agglomeration of small producers set up in 1945 by Stuart Levy and the sainted Nat Cohen. Started off making b-list crime fillers, often bankrolling the Merton Park (qv) series. More renowned flicks included Tommy Steele musicals, Poe adaptations in association with Roger Corman's AIP, and, infamously, Peeping Tom. But of course, it's the early Carry Ons which we most remember being heralded by that crouching bloke holding a giant metal gyroscope in just his pants. Engulfed by EMI in '69.
ASSOCIATED BRITISH PICTURE CORPORATION
New name for the old British International Pictures from the early '30s onward. Legendary productions include Brighton Rock, Ice Cold in Alex and The Dam Busters. Creamguide favourites include School for Scoundrels, the Hancock films, and Whacko! spin-off Bottoms Up. Empire included Transocean films (qv), Elstree Studios, ABC cinemas and Thames TV. Went bust in '68 and was bought up by EMI. Richard Harris was a notable name on their books. Offered Audrey Hepburn a seven-year contract on the strength of her delivery of her one and only line in top Alistair Sim legacycom Laughter in Paradise - "Who wants a ciggy?" She graciously declined.
ASSOCIATED BRITISH PATHE LTD
Charles Pathe formed Pathe Britannia in the early years of the 20th century, and on his retirement in '29 the company was thusly retitled. Forty years of cockerel-heralded cinema newsreelery followed, but what about non-informative flicks? Well, they took over production of Torchy the Battery Boy after Gerry Anderson bailed out, funded Cliff's early films including Summer Holiday, got Jimmy Savile to link some promo clips of The Beatles and Alan Price together for Pop Gear, put Joe Brown and Harry H Corbett together as aspiring musical brothers in What a Crazy World, moved away from pop into supernatural fare with The Hand of Night, and combined the two for The Ghost Goes Gear, in which the Spencer Davis Group join their manager Nicholas Parsons in a haunted house. Best work for our money - Norman Rossington's stolen fire engine daftness Go To Blazes. In 1970 it joined ABPC and Anglo-Amalgamated in being subsumed by the all-powerful EMI.
ASSOCIATED LONDON FILMS
Born out of the famous comedy writers' collective Associated London Scripts - ie. Galton, Simpson, Speight, Milligan and Sykes all hunched over typewriters in a big house - under the aegis of Beryl Virtue. Steptoe, Garnett and Pompeii film franchises followed in short order, along with one-off oddities like The Spy With the Cold Nose and The House in Nightmare Park. Absorbed into impresario Robert Stigwood's film production company in the late '60s.
BEAVER FILMS
Production partnership of Richard Attenborough and Bryan Forbes, out of which Seance on a Wet Afternoon, Whistle Down the Wind and The Angry Silence emanated. Entirely innocent moniker suggested by Nanette Newman, relating to the beards the two moguls sported, and also with a nod to their hard working reputation.
Two ends of the spectrum - Beaver's folksy parable Whistle Down the Wind vs. Benmar's demented bikerthon Psychomania.
BLACKWATER FILMS
Seedy Soho sex outlet maintained by the notorious exploitation hound Derek Ford, responsible for portmanteau porn-ins Suburban Wives and the Gabrielle Drake-narrated Commuter Husbands, as well as the Charlie Slater-featuring train-bound bondage unpleasantness Diversions and sex-cum-horror inanity Scream... and Die!
BRITISH AND DOMINIONS
Venerable filmmaker Herbert 'Anna Neagle' Wilcox initiated this majestic-sounding corporation in 1928, which churned out over a hundred lightweight murder mysteries and comedies - many based on West End plays - over the next decade, many of them featuring Dame Anna, natch. Arguably beat Hitchcock to the first British sound film in '29 with Black Waters. Lancashire Luck, Peg of Old Drury, Rookery Nook, Come Out of the Pantry, Ask Beccles and Thark Turkey Time are the sorts of titles they just don't come up with anymore.
BRITISH LION
Long-running company with a chequered history. From humble roots under the aegis of Samuel W Smith making silent productions such as Wisp o' the Woods and A Nonconformist Parson, the company really came into its own when the redoubtable Alexander Korda took the reins after the war, ushering in the Imperial Phase likes of The Third Man and P&P's Tales of Hoffmann. Then, after some unseemly business with an unpaid subsidy loan in the mid-'50s, the studio was bailed out by such luminaries as the Boulting Brothers, Michael Balcon and Launder and Gilliat, paving the way for Hobson's Choice, the St Trinian's films, The Green Man, Lucky Jim, and countless Boulting/Sellers classics. More modernist fare arrived in the shape of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and the film of David Mercer's ace Morgan: a Suitable Case for Treatment. In its latter years, supporting co-productions was its main thing, helping the likes of The Wicker Man, The Beast Must Die, The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Long Good Friday to reach the screen, even though after 1976 it was basically just another wing of - yep - EMI.
BRITISH NATIONAL FILMS
Started in 1934 by J Arthur Rank and a certain Lady Henrietta Yule of Bricket Wood, intended at first as an outlet for "improving" films based on Rank's methodist principles, latterly filling the coffers with countless vehicles for Arthur Lucan's Old Mother Riley creation. Rank had trouble getting distribution deals for his films initially, which he solved with the formation of the Rank Organisation in '37. The rest is gong-bashing history.
BRITISH TRANSPORT FILMS
Controversially started by the British Transport Commission in '49, this doughty promotional documentary company produced numerous quaint short subjects, beloved of large men in short-sleeved shirts and inappropriate facial grooming, for the next 36 years. John Betjeman, John Schlesinger, Vaughan Williams and Michael Redgrave lent their talents to such mesmeric wonders as Farmer Moving South, I Am a Litter Basket, Let's Go to Birmingham and melodic inter-city paean Overture One-Two-Five. And, to be fair, a shedload of purely functional tedium like Mechanical Rail Creep Adjuster, Croydon Food Production Centre and Planned Shunting With Tops.
BRYANSTON FILMS
Formed by Michael Balcon from the ashes of Ealing Studios in '57, this agglomeration of independent filmmakers had a run of successes in the early '60s such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Battle of the Sexes. American-oriented post-Suez African boy adventure Sammy Going South was a major flop, despite the presence of Edward G 'This better be about pizza' Robinson and Harry H Corbett, and the company wheezed its last in the '70s as distributor for such esoteric fare as Dark Star and, er, Deep Throat II.
BUTCHER'S FILM SERVICE
First there was W Butcher and Sons, nineteenth-century chemists and magic lantern manufacturers. Then they moved into camera production, before getting into film distribution in the Edwardian era. In association with many other companies, they produced and distributed a bizarrely wide range of stuff - from early silent comedies to literary adaptations, crime dramas with John Bentley as Paul Temple and "The Toff", variety shows like International Circus Review (featuring The Skating Typhoons, The Three Austins and Pongo), music hall vehicles for Frank Randle, Elsie and Doris Waters, George Formby, Norman Evans, Billy Cotton, Wilson, Kepple and Betty, Mrs Jack Hylton and Her Boys, and the brilliantly named The Radio Three. Most famously, there were the no-nonsense, no-frills, no-money filler thrillers of the '50s and '60s that can still be found lurking in the small hours on terrestrial to this day. Often derided - usually quite rightly - for their shoddiness, they nevertheless helped a good many nascent talents get a foothold both in front of and behind the camera, in particular straight acting roles for the unlikely likes of Frank Muir, Peter Glaze and Jackie Collins. Production companies distributed by Butcher's included Stoll, Nettlefold, Mancunian, British and Dominions (all qv), Progress, Empire Film Manufacturing and rogue American outfit The Masquers Club of Hollywood.
Sammy's Super T-Shirt or Brief Encounter? Tough choices down at the BFI.
CINEGUILD
Grand-sounding title for a company set up by producer Anthony Havelock-Allen, photographer Ronald Neame and David Lean. For the next seven years, classy Noel Coward and Dickens adaptations jostled alongside Brief Encounter and Lean's biopic of Victorian murderess Madeleine 'not Eureka' Smith.
CORONADO PRODUCTIONS
American producer David E Rose's British-based '50s outfit, churning out so-so adventure efforts like Sea Devils (Rock Hudson as a nineteenth century Guernsey smuggler), top Stanley Holloway/Sean Connery wartime blagging comedy On The Fiddle (produced by Ben 'Benmar' Fisz!) and Michael Winner-directed rock 'n' roll oddity Play it Cool (together at last - Billy Fury, Shane Fenton and Bernie Winters!)
CROWN FILM UNIT
The former GPO Film Unit received more regal nomenclature as the war forced an alliance with the Ministry of Information, and homely stuff like the fabled WH Auden chunterings of Night Mail mutated into the more serious likes of Christmas Under Fire and The Eighth Plague. Then as peace broke out rather lighter fare appeared, such as Copy Book Please, in which Terry-Thomas schooled us in the correct way to write a letter.
DANZIGER PRODUCTIONS
Productive outfit operating mainly out of New Elstree Studios under the aegis of brothers Edward and Henry Lee Danziger who during the '50s and early '60s turned out hundreds of TV programmes (Man from Interpol, one-armed detective Mark Saber etc.) and dozens of films - on the good side, semi-classy Brian Clemens Poe adaptation The Tell-Tale Heart, and, er, interesting Chistopher Lee schizo melodrama Alias John Preston. On the less good side, a range of nudie cuties, and a bizarre obsession with polygamy (Babes in Bagdad, Three Spare Wives, Part-Time Wife, Two Wives at One Wedding etc.)
DORMAR
Quaint little '60s company that made documentary shorts and, more importantly, quaint little '60s comedies, mostly of the semi-silent Tati/Plank variety, from snug building site whimsy A Home of Your Own to Roy Kinnear's street-sweeping odyssey Albert Carter, QOSO. San Ferry Ann was a longer version of the same thing, and Just Like a Woman, a more conventional relationship comedy, featured Wendy Craig, Barry Fantoni as a hippy and Clive Dunn as a demented, quasi-Nazi Bauhaus architect.
Gainsborough gets gritty for Boys in Brown, then lightens up for the sainted Crazy Gang.
GAUMONT-BRITISH PICTURE CORPORATION
French-owned company based in Shepherd's Bush from 1912 onwards, initially the domain of the Ostrer brothers, but later loosely tied in with Gainsborough. Many early Hitchcock favourites came out of it, particularly the original 39 Steps, and also the Nervo-and-Knox-only Alf's Button.
GOLDCREST FILMS
Inaugurated in '77 by Canadian producer Jake Eberts, the meteoric rise of this company to the status of 'saviour of the British film industry' and its even more rapid decline is the stuff of legend. With the likes of Puttnam and Welland in the vanguard, high profile successes like Chariots of Fire, The Mission and The Killing Fields were a shoo-in, along with stuff that's more up our street - Local Hero, The Ploughman's Lunch and P'tang Yang Kipperbang. Jake and chums snared 15 Oscars between them for that little lot, eight of them for Gandhi. Then came an ill-advised expansion into other territories, Absolute Beginners, White Mischief and Revolution. Game over.
GOODTIMES ENTERPRISES
Before Goldcrest, The Puttnam had his fingers in both Enigma Productions and the splendidly monickered Goodtimes Enterprises, the home of his early executive production forays. Music-related films were the order of the day, from the ace Performance through Alan Parker debut Melody (two kids want to get married to a Bee Gees soundtrack), bizarro fairy-tale reworking The Pied Piper (with Donovan in the title role!), David Essex rock star double-header That'll Be the Day and Stardust, and the magisterial Slade in Flame. Also knocking about were Bugsy Malone and some of Ken Russell's luridly boring composer biopics. Odd film out in the roster was silly, silly, camped-up Michael Moorcock adaptation The Final Programme, which didn't star either Jack Wild or Roy Kinnear, and was thus doomed from the start.
HANDMADE FILMS
Well, the story of how Dennis O'Brien and George Harrison clubbed together to help out Terry Jones in the Tunisian desert is well-worn, but more momentous for us was their bankrolling of John Mackenzie and Peter MacDougall's no-holds barred version of Jimmy Boyle's underworld autobiography A Sense of Freedom for STV at about the same time. Three tiers of product for this one - great stuff (Brian, Bandits, The Missionary, Long Good Friday, A Private Function), "interesting" stuff (Mona Lisa, Track 29, Scrubbers, Bullshot) and downright cobblers (Water, Shanghai Surprise, Nuns on the Run, anything with Richard E Grant in). Rather too much of the latter ensured the sinking ship had to be bailed out by Paragon in '94.
HEMDALE FILM CORPORATION
Not strictly British, this company, but David Hemmings provided one half of the initial impetus and the name (the other being producer Jon Daly III), and in its early incarnation - ie before it hit paydirt with the likes of The Terminator, River's Edge and Platoon - it produced many a quirky Brit-oriented flick. Shelley Winters played a psychotic child molester in decidedly non-classic horror Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? More wholesome was Lionel Jeffries' delightful ghostly romp The Amazing Mr Blunden. Peter Sellers clocked up the performance of his career in the downbeat underground entrapment nightmare The Blockhouse, while Ken Russell covered Ann-Margret in Heinz for the ever-daft film of Tommy. A film production company with a very broad brief, then.
INDEPENDENT ARTISTS
Solid '50s company that churned out basic, no-frills thrillers (most famous of which is probably Tiger Bay), the odd comedy like Hardy Kruger's Kraut-at-Cambridge wryness Bachelor of Hearts and the all-star PoW camp pastiche Very Important Person, efficient horrors like the Peter Wyngarde-starring collegiate witchcraft shocker Night of the Eagle, and effects-free sci-fi Unearthly Stranger. Terence Alexander, Gordon Jackson, Geoffrey Keen and Dermot Kelly were all regulars on their books. Most notable work - This Sporting Life, in partnership with Rank. Then came the inevitable move into telly, producing classy Herbert Lom psycho-thriller series The Human Jungle.
Hardy Kruger graduates as Bachelor of Hearts, while Diana yields it in a Morrissey-endorsed iconic image.
LONDON FILM PRODUCTIONS
Long-running company set up by monolithic director Alexander Korda. Early silent productions gave way to sound successes, the breakthrough being the Korda-directed, Charles Laughton drumstick-tossing Private Life of Henry VIII. Many quality films followed - Things to Come, The Four Feathers, The Thief of Baghdad - all with that distinctive Big Ben ident. Later, Korda moved in British Lion, and London/Lion co-prods like The Third Man sprang up. The company didn't survive Korda's death in '56, although a revival of sorts (helped by Samuel Goldwyn's purchase of the studio's mighty back catalogue) led to the company resuming business in the '70s as a historical TV drama house, the likes of I, Claudius, Poldark and, er, Frankie Howerd comedy horror The House in Nightmare Park issuing forth, though film buffs regard any link between the telly London Films and the original as tenuous at best.
MANCUNIAN FILM CORPORATION
Not all British films were produced in the Home Counties. Even by the standards of most of the companies listed here, Mancunian was a tiny operation, set up by Ardwick lad John E Blakeley in the '30s to capture the North's leading music hall acts on celluloid. George and Beryl Formby starred in early offerings Boots! Boots! and Off the Dole. Unemployment themes continued in bizarre-sounding musical Dodging the Dole, with characters given names like The Little Bundle of Fun, The Simplicity of Genius and The Generator of Electric Radiance. Then came star vehicles for Duggie Wakefield (Gracie Fields' brother-in-law) and his Gang, Norman 'Over the Garden Wall' Evans, Nat 'Rubberneck' Jackley, 'Two Ton' Tessie O'Shea, Jimmy 'The Clitheroe Kid' Clitheroe, Josef 'Hear My Song' Locke, and best of all Frank 'Baa, ah've suppped some stuff toneet!' Randle, whose Private Randle films, and the perfectly-titled School for Randle, are crying out to be shown on daytime terrestrial once someone gets their finger out. When the business accrued enough cash to open their own premises, Sandy 'Can You 'Ear Me, Mother?' Powell was the first to hot-foot it to the Rusholme studios for the Maine Road shenanigans of Cup-Tie Honeymoon. Later Blakeley sold up, and after a few nondescript crime thrillers with no music hall routines gratuitously shoehorned into the plot, the Corporation was no more.
MARBLE ARCH PRODUCTIONS
Confusingly, not a British-registered company at all, this one, but then what else other than Transatlantic confusion would you expect from Lew Grade? This is where he made assorted limp TV movies, bombing Dick Shawn sitcom Mr and Mrs Dracula, and, more interestingly, the bankruptcy-initiating bathtub bonkersness of Raise the Titanic!
Microbudget mirth from Tessie O'Shea and Frank Randle, Somewhere in Politics. Meanwhile, Somewhere in a bathtub, Lew raises that pesky Titanic.
MERTON PARK STUDIOS
The leafy SW19 garden suburb played host to over 130 no-nonsense second features from 1942 onwards, usually crime based, usually featuring a car chase down the same nearby hill and in front of the same local landmarks. Two anthology strands dominated proceedings - the Edgar Wallace stories (preceeded by the titular writer's revolving head) and the Scotland Yard/Scales of Justice series of true crime dramatisations introduced by dour, jowly criminologist Edgar Lustgarten. Stars of all stripes, from Arthur Askey to James Mason, Harry H Corbett to Michael Aspel, passed through the Merton Park gates, until their last feature, Scales of Justice drama Payment in Kind, in 1967.
NETTLEFOLD STUDIOS
Photographer Cecil Hepworth built the original Walton-on-Thames studios in 1899, but it wasn't until 1926 that they fell into the hands of brummie industrialist Archibald Nettlefold. Yorkshire comedian Walter Forde was a big draw in screwy films such as Would You Believe It! and You'd Be Surprised!, as did John Bentley for his Paul Temple and "the Toff" films (distributed by - but of course! - Butchers). A later move in TV production brought forth the Richard Greene Robin Hood series, utilising an innovative "shrubbery on wheels" set construction method to enable an episode to be banged out in just over four working days. Despite this, the '50s weren't kind to Nettlefold, and the studios were pulled down in '61.
PALACE PICTURES
A video distributor founded in the early '80s by Steve Woolley and Nik Powell to channel stuff like The Evil Dead and Bloody Kids, which evolved into a proper production company, making quirky Film on Four fare like Letter to Brezhnev and Company of Wolves, as well as shit films by Peter Greenaway and Richard '2000AD annual and a pair of scissors' Stanley. Dead in the water by '92.
PARADINE PRODUCTIONS
David Frost of course, developing a filmic wing of his ever-expanding post-LWT media empire, whose first film was the rather humble Ronnie Barker saucy short Futtock's End. Over the years, output was varied, to say the least - comedy flop Rentadick vied with Richard Roundtree western Charley One-Eye, Bryan Forbes Cinderella musical The Slipper and the Rose with William G Stewart sitcom The Tea Ladies. TV specials from Ultra Quiz to Guinness World of Records to the hastily-buried Strategic Humor Initiative have kept the slumbering behemoth ticking over in recent years, though the much-postponed film Ssh..., promising to "break the boundaries of cinema", is still "in production" as we speak.
Unfortunate Frost-funded fol-de-rol in Rentadick, and one of the countless Old Mother Riley films (MP, if you're keeping score at home).
ROMULUS FILMS
Aaah, do you see what brothers John and James Woolf did there? Founded in 1948, the cinematic siblings oversaw classics like Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, The African Queen and The L-Shaped Room, alongside toppo Sellers comedies The Wrong Arm of the Law and Heavens Above! plus the musical Oliver! and daft Alfie Bass short The Bespoke Overcoat. Inevitably enough, a sister company, Remus Films, was also in action in the early '50s, turning out Room at the Top and The Iron Petticoat. Sir John's son recently revived Romulus to make fantasy oddity Revelation.
SALON PRODUCTIONS
Post-Trotwood (qv) sleaze house under the thumb of Soho mastermind Stanley A Long for the duration of the '70s, during which time he progressed from making sordid, cod-documentary exposes like The Wife Swappers, through jokey sex-down-the-ages sketch films like Naughty!, through to the brazen Confessions rip-off series of Adventures films. In between, he did produce Eskimo Nell, a sort of post-modern porn industry semi-satire, which is possibly the only one of these sorts of films that's actually worth watching - an achievement, of sorts.
STOLL PICTURE PRODUCTIONS
Early-doors brainchild of Aussie impresario Sir Oswald Stoll, making firstly silent shorts like The Amateur Gentleman and The Solitary Cyclist, and latterly just about every Sherlock Holmes story going, with Eille Norwood in the part. Never survived the coming of sound, though their Cricklewood studios were taken over by Butcher's to make - yes - the Old Mother Riley films. Small industry, wasn't it?
TEMPEAN FILMS
Robert Baker and Monty Berman met during WWII in the British Army Film Unit and, freshly demobbed, set up as a production company, turning out low-budget thrillers based on a book of true crime stories they'd found, with Baker directing, Berman photographing, and both splitting production duties. Later came such wonders as The Trollenberg Terror, in which Janet Munro and Warren Mitchell's comedy German professor come up against a giant, tentacled crawling eyeball. All were distributed by Eros Films. In 1962 they adapted Leslie Charteris' Saint books for ITC, and thereafter turned to the small screen, developing The Baron, The Champions, Department S and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).
TEMPLAR FILMS
Glaswegian documentary shoestringers Robert Riddell-Black, Bob Russell and David Low formed this backroom newsreel business in 1950. Panorama commissions and footie coverage helped swell the company into a thriving documentary short house, with Clydeside industrial filming a speciality. Seawards the Great Ships, the story of the construction of a tanker from drawing board to launch narrated by Kenneth Kendall, was their masterwork. Less feted were Cumbernauld New Town Inaugural Ceremony and Kilmarnock Demolition.
TIGON FILMS
Whizzkid publicist Tony Tenser went from small-time distributor Miracle Films ('If it's a good film, it's a Miracle!') to strip club-sponsored Compton Films (nudie efforts, often involving Derek and Donald Ford, as well as more respectable Polanski classics), to one-man film distributor Tony Tenser Films, to setting up his own studio in 1966, with the financial help of the Trocadero-founding Hyman brothers. Lurid mind control chiller The Sorcerers was an early hit, with Boris Karloff relishing a quintessential 'evil prof' role, and hotshot director Michael Reeves went on to make the brilliant Witchfinder General with Vincent Price before a tragically early death. Blood-draining serial kill-in Scream and Scream Again featured Price, Lee *and* Cushing (oh, and Peter Sallis). Less successful were The Blood Beast Terror, the rather tautological Haunted House of Horror (with Frankie Avalon!) and Zeta One (Charles Hawtrey and James Robertson Justice are terrorised by an invasion of topless women), a Somewhere in between were Blood on Satan's Claw and Beryl Reid and Flora Robson's teacakes-and-terror curio Beast in the Cellar. It wasn't all horror - late period Norman Wisdom folly What's Good for the Goose, Raquel Welch western Hannie Caulder, classic comedy portmanteau The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins and the Mark Lester Black Beauty all marched out of the studio's doors. That said, it was still mostly horror - Tigon bowed out in the early '70s with a tempting blend of Vicki Michelle horror-sauce Virgin Witch, a Doomwatch film and Cushing-Lee Victorian serum strangeness The Creeping Flesh.
Period horror in Blood on Satan's Claw and, er, period horror in Gonks Go Beat.
TRANSOCEAN FILMS
Odd name for a very British company, Producing very British comedies mainly directed by Roman ex-pat Mario Zampi (but cf Two Cities). Laughter in Paradise, the peerless Alistair Sim mischievous will comedy, was probably the most well-regarded, but there was also Top Secret, with George Cole as a plumber turned accidental spy, and of course Bottoms Up!, the Whack-O! film complete with Richard Briers and a "whacking platform". Then practically nothing for about a decade, until 1969 when esteemed TV comedy producer Duncan Wood remade Laughter as Some Will, Some Won't, with Michael Hordern, Thora Hird and Ronnie Corbett, and a rather broader comedic note than before, as befitted a veteran of Benny Hill.
TROTWOOD PRODUCTIONS
Early name for Stanley A Long's brand of nascent nudity during the '60s, prior to the notorious Salon Productions (qv). Responsible for odd stuff like London in the Raw and Primitive London, in which shots of topless bathers jostled with Billy J Kramer, chickens being executed, Mick MacManus in action and Barry Cryer. Then came the '70s, cheap colour film, relaxation of censorship, and a drop in the weirdness quotient.
TWO CITIES FILMS
Established by Italian immigrant producer Filippo Del Giudice and director Mario Zampi in 1937, the Tower Bridge logo heralded films from a company which aimed to "bridge the gap" twixt London and Rome, though most fare was as English as toast and dripping - Blithe Spirit, Henry V, The Importance of Being Earnest and In Which We Serve were all notable productions. Our favourites - Odd Man Out and The Rocking Horse Winner.
TYBURN FILMS
A horror stable with quite a pedigree - founded by the son of esteemed director/cinematographer Freddie Francis, with the old man himself behind the lens - what could go wrong? Well, loads. Young Kevin Francis only managed to squeeze three iffy shockers out before the bailiffs moved in. First up was Persecution, in which Ralph Bates drowned his mother Lana Turner's cats. Legend of the Werewolf found Sir Fred directing, classic horror signifier Peter Cushing and comic horror signifier Roy Castle acting, and was lighter in tone and all the better for it. Better yet was Tales That Witness Madness (but cf. World Film Services). Cushing stayed on for lurid "something in the attic" gothic fog-in The Ghoul, but the money was swiftly running out. Then, in '82, apropos nothing, the long-dormant Tyburn released G'Ole!, a peripatetic filmed account of the 1982 World Cup, narrated by Sean Connery. Last heard of in March 2005, oddly enough, attempting to sue one Bijouflix LLC for distributing "poor quality" copies of Legend. Hmm...
The ridiculous to the sublime - Tales That Witness Madness and A Taste of Honey.
WOODFALL FILM PRODUCTIONS
Conjured up in the late '50s by playwright John Osborne and director Tony Richardson, you'd expect plenty of angry, heavyweight modernist drama to come out of this company. And it did - Look Back in Anger, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, A Taste of Honey and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning cemented a wodge of irrefutably classy productions. But there was also manic comedy from Tom Jones and The Knack (not the respective popular musical turns, you understand), confusing Nicol Williamson showcase Inadmissible Evidence, the fantastic Kes, the shite Ned Kelly with Mick Jagger in chinstrap beard and bucket helmet, and Joseph Andrews, a misjudged attempt at Tom Jones Mk. II.
WORLD FILM SERVICES
Relatively gargantuan celluloid arm of the World Group, as founded in '59 by former head of PR at Associated Television John Heyman, which jumped all over the world, and indeed the shop, to fill its production rag-bag. Tennessee Williams flop Boom and David Mercer's version of A Doll's House provided highbrow fare, while the other end of the scale was taken care of with Charles Bronson-starring Lolita-lite Twinky and David Niven as an ageing comedy Dracula in Vampira. In between, Joseph Losey steered Elizabeth Taylor through some atmospherically bewildering psychodramas, and exploitation hound Robert Hartford-Davis (cf Titan) turned in a handful of blaxploitation also-rans. The '80s brought success with The Honorary Consul and The Dresser, alongside the study in mediocrity that was cyborg kid video shop clogger DARYL. But we'll always remember them for the Amicus portmanteau manque that was Tales That Witness Madness, possibly ther most bizarre British horror of them all, featuring an imaginary tiger, a haunted, time-travelling penny farthing, and of course the notorious story wherein Michael Jayston dumps Joan Collins for a walking tree, which is as suitable a point as ever, we think, to draw our survey of defunct production houses to a dignified close. Unless of course W**king Title fancy knocking up a remake sometime. Liz Hurley would be a shoo-in for the role. But who would play the Joan Collins part?
