0001 From Tatiana to Tin Men

Its been almost a month since the Strange England blog went public and I'm writing this on a Sunday evening while Nicholas and Alexandra plays on the TV.  I recorded it earlier, amused at the serendipity of its scheduling, just a few short hours after I had been writing about Lynne Frederick's career.

The film is from 1971 and Frederick plays Tatiana, the second daughter of the tsar and tsarina of Russia. To the best of my knowledge the actress was just 17 when she made the historical epic although it was her second feature film after debuting in No Blade of Grass the year before.   It wasn't my intention to talk about her again quite so soon but up she popped as though summoned by kind thought alone.

 

There are a lot of other fine actors in Nicholas and Alexandra, who may also feature in this blog somewhere or another at some point in the future but there is one amongst them for whom many, many words will be written here as I consider him as much of a charismatic and eccentric a figure within the realms of Strange England as was the character he played within the Russian Court.

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin as channelled by the great and mighty Tom Baker is perhaps the actors third finest role after that of the 4th Doctor and just being himself!  And I say that with great affection because Baker delights me to the very core of my being.  He's been a constant hero of mine and while I've never once sported a multi-coloured scarf or floppy hat in tribute, I can summon his voice to my ear and his nonchalant swagger as the Time Lord and those things alone are enough to warm the soul and make me smile from within.  You have been warned.

 

So what else ?

 

Well to help me with the Sunday morning ritual of ironing the work shirts for the coming week, I usually like to venture back in time with an episode or two of old TV from yesteryear.  Today it was SKY episode two from 1975 and The Georgian House episode one from 1976. I've thoughts on both to be shared later on but perhaps the most unsettling image from either was the severity of the actress Adrienne Byrne's "bob" haircut!  There will be more pictures from the show in due course, and not least because the internet seems sadly lacking in such, but its funny how what looks quite lovely on Joanna Lumley's Purdy by year's end, is quite distracting on Byrne's Abbie.

Shifting thoughts on fashion; The very best example of a "culture in flux" perhaps!

 

Which brings us very nicely round to this;

Once upon a time I owned a copy of this TV-Times Souvenir Extra featuring The New Avengers.  It was from 1977 and stuffed full of coloured pictures with a concise history of The Avengers in its original form and its re-branded continuation.  It was a great magazine and I took a pair of scissors to it in order to add some much needed images of Cybernauts to my Robots and Cyborgs scrapbook!

 

Now having reminded myself of this fact today, via the domino thought process set out above, I realised that thanks to modern technology, a man might still be able to continue a childhood hobby without even realising that that was what he was doing. The subject may be a little broader and exploratory in nature but might this blog not just be another scrapbook of sorts!

Food for thought.

 

 

Steve

Film Review Magazine - February (1973)

Talking of Phase IV and Lynne Frederick, as we were previously.  Here is a small feature called Shooting Now from the February 1973 edition of Film Review Magazine.

If you can squint your eyes enough to read the print (I may need glasses!) you'll find this article from the time of the film's production to be quite optimistic and positive - And contrary to how it was actually received upon its release the following year.

 

The images were copied from a rather wonderful tribute site to Lynne Frederick which can be found here http://lynne-frederick.com/february_73.html

Quite apart from an absolute wealth of images and material on the actress' acting career, it's lovely to find that someone else out there is doing their bit to represent a more balanced and honest account of the lady and her work than the perceived wisdom that she was simply a "gold digger" or a "professional wife"  Great work and a wonderful site.

Lynne Frederick - May she walk in Strange England forever


Steve

Phase IV - Lobby Cards (1974)

Phase IV is a film I saw numerous times in my youth but which then disappeared out of the public consciousness or at least the late night TV viewing schedules.  Its a  rather stunning piece of work that stayed with me and a generation of movie viewers that have now helped to label it a cult classic, rather than the box office failure of its 1974 cinematic release.

I'm not sure of the exact years that I watched it but it must have been post 1975 and I'm fairly certain I saw it two or three times before it left our screens for good.

By way of a few facts, its the one and only feature film directed by American graphic design and filmmaker Saul Bass and stars Nigel Davenport, Lynne Frederick and Michael Murphy.  Its an Anglo American venture with the interiors shot at Pinewood Studios in England and the exterior location filming taking place in Kenya,  Although in the film it self, the action is supposed to be taking place in the Arizona desert of the United States.

In content its a film about ants, very clever ants, and something I recently described to a friend as the; 2001 of eco-sci-fi thrillers, which is fairly accurate a description if your interpretation of the source of the ants' intelligence is the same as mine.  Its also that good a film in my opinion.

I say this not simply from nostalgia and childhood memory but from a recent viewing.  Having given up waiting for it to appear back on TV or the high street DVD suppliers, I recently tracked down a German copy which can be played without the sub titles and thus enjoyed in its original mother tongue.  In fact if I'm honest I think I enjoyed it even more as an adult.

What's left to say about Phase IV apart from the fact that I would really like a new cleaned up English release with the extended even more trippy original ending having been restored to the edit.

In between writing this, I've just gone off and ordered the old paperback tie-in of the movie because I've now reminded myself that its still on my wants list.

And finally, that the film stars, as you will have noticed in the names above, the rather lovely Lynne Frederick, who we have already featured in the coverage of The Amazing Mr Blunden and who we will be looking at again, as something of a reoccurring English Rose, that much like the films she features in, deserves far more praise and credit than they are currently afforded.


Steve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Pages 46, 61 & 62)

The Amazing Mr Blunden - Lobby Cards (1972)

The Amazing Mr Blunden is a 1972 mystery and ghost film directed by Lionel Jeffries and based on the novel The Ghosts by Antonia Barber.  Although not as well known as Jeffries' The Railway Children, the film was a family favourite, often appeared on television and especially during the Easter and Christmas holidays.

Underage drinking?  Not a bit of it.  This was how they time travelled in 1918. That's Jamie Allen (Garry Miller), and his sister Lucy (Lynne Frederick) who are on their way to save the children seen in the image above this one, from dying in a terrible house fire. Sara Latimer (Rosalyn Landor), and her younger brother, Georgie (Marc Granger) had used the same potion themselves to travel forward from 1818 to elicit their help and to pass on the secret of temporal travel.

The Amazing Mr Blunden is a genuine treat and really was a favourite with my family.  It came on quite regularly back in the day and always to a full sofa. And then it just sort of faded away to memory.  However, having purchased a cheap DVD copy recently, I'm pleased to say that it still holds up very well, in fact there were bits of it that delighted the adult me far more than had the distant child.

One final point to make for those of you that haven't seen it is that the film is actually in colour.  Don't be fooled by the monochromatic lobby cards


Steve