This week Chris Deacy is joined in the studio by Oliver Double to discuss the films; Dead of Night, The Wicker Man, Get Out, and Saint Maud.
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00:00 [Music]
00:13 Hello and welcome to Kent Film Club.
00:15 I'm Chris Deesey and each week I'll be joined by a guest from Kent to dive deep into the
00:19 impact certain films have had on their life.
00:22 Each guest will reflect on the films which have meant the most to them over the years.
00:27 And every week there will be a Kent Film Trivia where we quiz you at home about a film that
00:31 has a connection to the county.
00:34 And now let me introduce you to my guest for this week.
00:37 He is a former professional comedian and current compare for Funny Rabbit Comedy Club as well
00:43 as the head of the School of Arts at the University of Kent.
00:46 He is of course Oliver Double.
00:49 Great to have you on the programme Ollie.
00:50 I love the of course thing.
00:53 Of course, who else could it be?
00:54 Funny Rabbit, School of Arts professional comedian, you're in a very narrow clientele.
01:00 Great to have you on.
01:01 Now I don't know your selections but I can see you've gone for horror.
01:04 I've gone for horror, solid horror all the way through.
01:07 Why have you gone for this?
01:08 Well Dead of Night was a film that I first saw when I was about ten years old and I saw
01:14 it at my friend Eddie's house and we watched it and then I thought it was time to go home.
01:19 Now it's a portmanteau film meaning there's a kind of framing structure and then there's
01:24 lots of small narratives within it.
01:26 There's quite a few horror films of a certain era that work on that structure and so what
01:31 happens is a guy arrives at a posh country house, very sort of English, very sort of
01:37 middle class, sort of very privileged.
01:39 He arrives at this house in the country and he starts getting really freaked out.
01:42 He's like, "I've dreamt of this place.
01:44 I've dreamt of it before.
01:45 I didn't know where I were but here I was and I know you and I've met you."
01:49 And he starts predicting things that are going to happen.
01:50 He says, "And then something terribly frightful happens and I don't know what it is."
01:54 And so that's the framing device and then they all start telling these stories of uncanny
01:58 things that have happened to them.
02:00 Anyway, so I was watching this film with my friend Eddie and we were quite into it and
02:04 then it was time to walk home and so I missed the end of the film and the end of the film
02:08 is the bit that it's remembered for and what happens is Michael Redgrave plays a ventriloquist
02:14 who has a kind of uncanny relationship with his dummy.
02:18 His dummy is a bully and a psychopath essentially and he's bullied by it and then in the end
02:24 he ends up sort of attempting murder, basically manipulated by the dummy.
02:29 And there's an amazing scene where he puts his hand over the dummy's mouth to shut the
02:34 dummy up, which of course doesn't make sense, does it?
02:37 Because he's the person who's making the voice come out of the dummy but nonetheless he puts
02:41 his hand over the dummy's mouth and when he takes his hand away there's little bite marks
02:44 on his hand.
02:45 Now I missed all of that because by the time I got home the film had finished.
02:49 So it was many years later that I finally saw the end of the film and it's so worth
02:54 watching.
02:55 And you just made me think as well because three decades later Anthony Hopkins was in
02:58 a relatively little known film called Magic, directed by Richard Attenborough, which follows
03:02 a similar kind of template.
03:04 So there's something about this sort of structure.
03:06 I mean horror, when it's done really well, you mentioned, I thought you were going to
03:09 say you were walking out, you were going home and suddenly you felt this chill.
03:12 You felt the bite mark on your arm, although it may have taken a few weeks before you actually
03:16 got to see the film again.
03:18 But there is something about horror, isn't there, that when it's done really well in
03:21 this context in a very stately English kind of way that kind of takes you somewhere that
03:26 you weren't expected to be led.
03:28 Yeah definitely and I think one of the things about Dead of Night is it's beautifully filmed.
03:31 It's multiple directors directing different bits and there's different tonal things.
03:35 There's a comedy ghost story based on a H.G. Wells story in the middle.
03:39 But there's lots of shadows, there's lots of stillness, the acting is beautiful, it's
03:43 very stylised.
03:45 And yeah, the first of the kind of framed stories is very slight.
03:51 It's a guy is in a motor racing accident, he's recovering in hospital and he suddenly
03:55 is aware that it's gone from night to full daylight.
03:58 He opens the curtains and down below there's a hearse and the guy who's driving the hearse,
04:04 a proper old hearse, horse driven, the undertaker or the guy driving the hearse, former top
04:10 hat and very smartly dressed, looks up at him and the camera closes in so he sees a
04:15 much closer view of the guy's face than he should be able to.
04:17 And the guy just says, "Just room for one inside, sir."
04:23 And he shuts the curtains and now it's night again.
04:25 And then a little bit later, this is a spoiler really, but a little bit later he goes and
04:29 he's about to get on a bus and the guy who was driving the hearse is the same guy and
04:33 he goes, "Just room for one inside, sir."
04:35 And he decides not to get on it and then the bus goes off the edge of a cliff and everybody
04:38 dies.
04:39 That's the story.
04:40 But the way it's done is so eerie and creepy and weird.
04:43 And I think the stylised, elegant way that shadows and light is used and like they're
04:48 very clipped, old-fashioned, posh accents and the old-fashioned cognac, all of that
04:53 helped to make it uncanny.
04:55 And if you watch this again, and of course it's the first time obviously you don't
04:58 know where this is going, but when you watch it again and you sort of, you know the trick
05:02 as it were, is part of the process actually knowing how it gets to that point?
05:06 So in other words, does it bear repeated viewings?
05:08 Yeah, it does.
05:09 I mean I watched it again last night for the first time in probably ten years and it was
05:14 marvellous and I noticed things about it I'd never noticed before.
05:17 So the guy, when he's in the hospital ward, the nurse who's treating him, who he's
05:21 sort of flirting with, comes into the framing narrative and it's his wife.
05:25 So they obviously married after that story supposedly took place.
05:30 So little things like that, but also the cast is amazing.
05:33 There's some really classic English actors, Googie Withers for example, but also in the
05:40 Ventriloquist story there's a singer called Elizabeth Welsh, right, who's a black singer.
05:45 Somebody who's not really well remembered, I suppose we tend to forget people of colour
05:50 in our history and quite wrongly she was an amazing talent.
05:53 And she's great in the film, she plays the boss of the nightclub, Shea Booler, and she's
05:57 sort of freaked out as the Ventriloquist goes more and more method with his dummy.
06:04 She's just marvellous and to see this kind of English film with all these very white
06:09 sort of clipped speaking English people and then there's a beautiful black woman who's
06:15 an incredibly talented singer and actor is right there in the centre of the most famous
06:21 scene in the film.
06:22 It's brilliant.
06:23 Yeah, brilliant counterpoint.
06:24 Time now Ollie to move on to your second chosen film and there's a bit of a thread here isn't
06:29 there?
06:30 The Wicker Man.
06:31 Oh right, so The Wicker Man.
06:32 I first saw on a series called Movie Drone, fronted by Alex Cox.
06:37 And I knew it was about cult films, I didn't know a lot about cult films, but I knew about
06:40 Alex Cox so I thought I'll give this a try.
06:43 And when he described it in the introduction it was a sort of folk horror, I'd never heard
06:46 of that.
06:47 And it's a remote Scottish island or something, I was like oh it doesn't sound very good,
06:51 it doesn't sound like The Thing or something which was a horror film I'd seen quite recently
06:55 and really enjoyed.
06:56 But in fact, I loved all of that stuff and I actually loved the folk horror genre.
07:00 And years later I realised maybe why it had such an impact on me.
07:05 So the little scenes where they go into little shops and it's a little Scottish lady going
07:08 "Oh hello sir, have you come in for some sweets?" or whatever.
07:11 And all that's brilliant, again it's a brilliant sort of contrast really with the uncanny events
07:16 of the film to have this very kind of cosy rural setting.
07:20 I think the reason that it really went in powerfully and I didn't find this out until
07:24 quite recently is that a lot of those scenes were filmed in South West Scotland.
07:28 And the film came out I think in '73.
07:31 Now in the early '70s we went to the same bit of South West Scotland for four years
07:36 on the road.
07:37 And bear in mind I was a small child, that was like we'd be going there my whole life
07:40 sort of thing.
07:42 And some of the scenes were filmed in places we used to visit regularly.
07:46 In fact they were filmed in the sort of autumn and we often had our holiday sort of August
07:52 time.
07:53 So we would have been there within weeks of those filming happening.
07:56 So that world that it's set in is one that I knew.
07:59 And so to have that world and then also the other thing that I love about that film is
08:03 in a way the goody as it were, the Presbyterian cot is actually the baddy.
08:11 To be fair he is murdered in a wicker man but to appease the pagan gods.
08:16 But the pagan lifestyle as it's presented is not monstrous.
08:21 It's utopian in a way.
08:23 I mean albeit you have to see these things through the lens of the time it was made.
08:29 I mean you could look at it and say well it's utopian for the male characters more than
08:32 the female characters for example.
08:35 But clearly that's how it's sort of being framed within the film.
08:38 But of course they remade this in 2006 with Nicolas Cage and the brilliant Ellen Burstyn.
08:44 She's no stranger to horror but this was horrific I think in a completely different way.
08:48 Nicolas Cage on the bicycle.
08:49 I don't know if you've seen that.
08:51 I have.
08:52 It's sort of dreadful isn't it.
08:55 I mean one of the things about it is despite what I said about the wicker man probably
09:01 isn't brilliant in terms of its sexual politics.
09:04 I mean look they're pagans.
09:06 They respect the goddess right.
09:07 So there's a kind of thing there that's about, albeit through a very male lens, that's celebrating
09:13 femininity.
09:14 Whereas the Nicolas Cage wicker man is so misogynistic.
09:18 You know I won't say the word he uses but he uses a derogatory term for women for no
09:22 reason and it's a matriarchal version isn't it in that version of the film.
09:29 I actually saw it at a Kent cinema so there you are.
09:32 I stayed awake but kind of wish I had fallen asleep.
09:35 But go back to the original because I mean this has entered folklore which ironically
09:39 considering it's pagan themes.
09:41 But there is something at the end of course because we were talking about the ventriloquist
09:44 dummy, we were talking about the horror in a different British context with Dead of Night.
09:49 But in this film at the end of course it's shocking just the note on which it ends about
09:54 you know the whole representation of good versus evil and sacrifice.
09:57 Yeah so what happens is that Sergeant Howey gets tricked into going to where they want
10:03 him to be and he gets led, he gets put into a robe and led into a giant wicker man and
10:11 then he's burnt because the crops failed the previous year and they need to appease the
10:15 gods and he's singing Christian hymns and the Lord's my shepherd and all of this stuff
10:23 as the flames lick up around him and there's the bleating of the goats and the clucking
10:27 of the chickens who are also in the wicker man as part of the sacrifice and there around
10:33 him singing summer is a coming in which is a beautiful folk tune.
10:37 It's one that's well worth listening to around this time of year.
10:40 You know the first of May get a recording of Summer is a Coming in and listen to it.
10:44 It's a beautiful old folk song and of course we associate that with sort of Morrisman and
10:49 things like that and just the juxtaposition of British folk ritual and the cosiness of
10:58 the village and the English pub and you know corduroy wearing accountants pretending to
11:02 be folk dancers or whatever and then that juxtaposed with burning someone alive and
11:08 then the sun going down as well that's the other thing and the beer and the sound of
11:12 the sea coming in and the foam of the beer which was also part of the sacrifice you know
11:16 lapping up on the shore.
11:18 It's just an amazing thing.
11:19 I could watch that film any number of times I would not be bored.
11:22 It's an amazing film and also every time you see it you spot more things you spot more
11:26 aspects of the conspiracy.
11:27 Brilliant.
11:28 Well that's about all the time we have for this first half of the show.
11:32 However before we go to the break we have a Kent film trivia question for you at home.
11:37 Which film utilised location shots across Kent in Maidstone, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Shepherdswell,
11:43 Isle of Fannet and Margate?
11:45 Was it A) The Miner's Son, B) Empire of Light or was it C) Lobsters?
11:52 We'll reveal the answer right after this break.
11:54 Don't go away.
12:06 Hello and welcome back to Kent Film Club.
12:08 Just before the ad break we asked you at home a Kent film trivia question.
12:13 Which film utilised location shots across Kent in Maidstone, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Shepherdswell,
12:19 Isle of Fannet and Margate?
12:20 I asked was it A) The Miner's Son, B) Empire of Light or C) Lobsters?
12:26 And now I can reveal to you that the answer was in fact B) Empire of Light.
12:30 A focal location of the film was the actual Dreamland cinema in Margate, renamed the Empire
12:36 Cinema.
12:37 Did you get the answer right?
12:38 Well it is time now Oliver to move on to your next chosen film and we're back to horror
12:44 because you've chosen Get Out.
12:46 Get Out directed by Jordan Peele who is I think a remarkable talent.
12:52 We were talking before about how because my interest is in comedy primarily it's weird
12:57 that I've picked all horror but of course Jordan Peele is one of those people who makes
13:00 a link between the two.
13:01 He was part of Key and Peele, a sort of double act.
13:04 But I think Jordan Peele's horror work is extraordinary and Get Out is something that
13:08 my son introduced me to so my son is just coming up to 25 but we were talking about
13:13 it when he was just going off to university this film was quite new at that point and
13:17 in fact we went on a road trip to Lancaster where he studied and just to get him used
13:22 to the idea of going off to university and we went to the local record shop and I bought
13:27 him a copy of this on Blu-ray I think it was and I just think it's a remarkable film.
13:33 I think what it does is what some of the greatest horror films do and it uses a horrific if
13:40 you like metaphor for something very real which is the horrible effects of racism on
13:48 young black men particularly.
13:52 So for example the film starts with a black character walking through a white neighbourhood
13:56 and being freaked out.
13:58 Now of course that's reversing racist stereotypes because the racist stereotype is oh if I'm
14:03 a white person going through a black neighbourhood they're in danger right or that black people
14:06 pose a threat.
14:07 But of course anybody can pose a threat to anybody and in a racist society a white neighbourhood
14:11 could be a serious threat especially a kind of hoity toity one which it is.
14:15 I won't say what happens to that guy but he comes back into it later on but I think
14:19 the way that the white liberals ostensibly liberal characters the way they treat the
14:25 central character is just brilliant how it reveals the patronising nature of white people.
14:39 The way that white people can be very very patronising and rude to black people without
14:43 necessarily intending to.
14:44 Because I was just thinking that in relation to your first film there was that element
14:47 of counterpoint juxtaposition with the wicker man and here that flipping that kind of inversion
14:53 of expectations and stereotypes.
14:56 I'm a huge fan of Daniel Kaluuya as well.
14:58 I first caught up with him, I first became aware of him when he was in a BBC largely
15:04 forgotten series called The Fades, a very creepy series and he plays a character who's
15:08 the sort of best friend of the main character.
15:11 But one of the things that he does in that series which is amazing is there's a sort
15:14 of frame breaking thing at the end of every episode where he talks to the camera and he
15:17 was so good at it.
15:19 And why I think he's so brilliant in this film is because he manages to do so much even
15:25 when he's not speaking.
15:26 We get to see how weird and creepy it is to be surrounded by these people through his
15:32 eyes because of how he reacts with his face, with his eyes, the way he holds his body.
15:40 He's so brilliant in it.
15:43 I can't think of… it's one of the greatest performances I've seen on film I think.
15:47 It's just because in a way what he manages to do is embody the things that the film's
15:54 talking about.
15:56 How it would be to be on your own in that weird environment full of patronising people.
16:02 Because it's got elements of things like the Stepford Wives in there.
16:05 It draws on horror but all the way through it.
16:07 It won various Oscar nominations, of course had an Oscar for its screenplay.
16:12 And I think that it was that wrong footedness because I went in thinking, okay I saw it
16:16 in Herne Bay actually and I thought, okay it's a horror film, it's probably just
16:20 going to tick all the right boxes.
16:22 And then I think about a week after I saw it, it was up for various BAFTAs and Oscars.
16:27 So it takes you somewhere because we've been looking at horror extensively in this
16:31 programme so far but this is one of the more recent horror films.
16:36 But it does something really quite different doesn't it?
16:39 Well I think one of the things about horror is you can associate it with visceral gore
16:44 and things like that.
16:45 And that can be good fun in Giorgio Romero's zombie films for example.
16:50 But even there there's a kind of social comment going on.
16:55 But I think that there's been some really amazing horror films that have come out in
16:59 the last few years where, yes they're in the horror genre but primarily they're
17:03 about characters and they're about us.
17:06 They're about how we live our lives.
17:08 And there's a twist put on that.
17:11 And that twist is both a hook for the audience.
17:15 It draws us in and makes us want to watch and want to find out.
17:19 But it also kind of shines light on the thing that it's about.
17:23 And I just think Get Out is just an amazing film.
17:26 And in fact when I saw it for the second time I was really amazed how short it is.
17:31 It's only about an hour and 40 minutes.
17:33 But it's so packed with characters and incidents and amazing scenes that you go,
17:39 'Well okay it's finished already.
17:41 That's amazing.'
17:42 It felt so long when I first watched it.
17:44 And for Jordan Peele as well, similar path maybe to M Night Shyamalan because there was
17:48 the weight of expectation with the second film, Us.
17:51 And then the third film of course also took you into a different sort of term.
17:55 A bit like M Night Shyamalan signs.
17:57 But do you think that Jordan Peele then is continuing to make really innovative films?
18:01 I really do.
18:02 I mean I've loved all of those films and I love the fact that they're all different
18:08 from one another.
18:09 I think if you'd just done a series of Get Out films I'm sure I'd have enjoyed that.
18:13 But I think seeing Us and it's a much more kind of complex idea really.
18:21 The idea that everybody has these sinister doppelgangers.
18:24 But again it's just so brilliantly played out.
18:28 And so I think as the films have kind of come out they've all been about interesting things
18:32 and they've played out in different ways and they've been tonally quite different.
18:37 And full of interest.
18:38 And I know that some people have found that a little bit disappointing.
18:41 But I want to be interested.
18:43 I want to be wrong footed.
18:44 Well we're going to move on to your next chosen film.
18:46 And you've gone for St. Ward.
18:48 Yes.
18:49 OK.
18:50 So I watched this when I had Covid just over a year ago.
18:54 I managed to duck Covid for a long time.
18:56 I thought I was immortal because I managed to be sort of around people who had it and
19:00 somehow not get it.
19:02 You know because I was with somebody and didn't realise they had Covid until they realised
19:06 and then it was too late.
19:07 But it wasn't because I didn't get it.
19:09 On this occasion I did and I was quite poorly for some time and I watched quite a lot of
19:12 telly and I watched quite a number of films.
19:15 And weirdly I don't find horror films unpleasant to watch when I'm ill.
19:21 I've done it quite a lot.
19:23 It sort of in a way you think it should because if you've got a fever or something you don't
19:28 want to be watching something really freaky.
19:30 I just have to say on the day that I got my Covid jab I watched The Exorcist and it was
19:34 the most perfect fit.
19:35 Yes.
19:36 It was that element of delirium.
19:38 It's another amazing film The Exorcist.
19:40 And again that film, although it's a much older film, is really about, it's as much
19:44 about the sort of psychology of the characters as it is about demons and things.
19:49 But St Maud if you haven't seen it is about a very religious, profoundly religious carer
19:54 of a kind of ageing, very demanding sort of performer.
20:00 You know a sort of, you know, a very sort of, somebody who wants everything to be at
20:04 their beck and call.
20:05 And it's partly about the, and she's also terminally ill.
20:10 So you have, in a way your sympathies lie with both of them at different times of the
20:14 film.
20:15 But what's really important is that the carer, St Maud as it were, is not all she seems.
20:25 That's one thing that's important.
20:26 And also that she is so religious that she sees the world through, well we're not sure
20:33 if it's illusions or it's really happening and she can see it and nobody else can.
20:40 And again, I just think there's been some really, really remarkable horror films made
20:46 by women in the last decade and this is one of them.
20:49 And I'm struck actually of the very British element because Get Out obviously has a very,
20:54 you know, but also with British cast.
20:58 But also this has a Welsh element to it.
21:00 And the Wicker Man obviously Scottish.
21:02 So I mean, and the very English, proper English element of Dead of Night.
21:07 But in a way it's sort of the horror around the Celtic fringes.
21:10 Yeah, yeah, I suppose it is.
21:12 And I mean I think with, I won't say what it is, but something happens right at the
21:18 end of the film where it sort of, it flicks very quickly from what she's seeing in her
21:26 mind to what's actually happening.
21:28 And it's so shocking.
21:29 Even though it's not necessarily a total surprise, it's so shocking.
21:32 And it's there and gone in a very short space of time.
21:36 I mean there's very little that you'd associate with horror films in this film.
21:39 I mean there's not a lot of visceral splatter or something like that.
21:43 But up at the best horror in that sense is the psychology of it because in some of the
21:48 other films as well you mentioned the everyday element, the quotidian, the element of Wicker
21:52 Man and here because there's that sense of come on, have a night out.
21:56 You know, you're doing all this caring work so let your hair down, go out and have a nice
22:00 night out in town.
22:01 But when you see the end that you're referring to, you realise that actually in its own universe
22:06 it makes total sense.
22:07 Yeah, I think the everyday is really important and I really like juxtaposition.
22:11 I mean that's another thing that comedy and horror have in common is that you put two
22:16 things that don't quite fit together.
22:18 You know, an English country house and sort of horrible possession through demons or ghosts
22:25 or whatever it is.
22:26 I'm a big fan of the literature of John Wyndham because a lot of people like go well it's
22:31 alright except for it's too pot-starchy in English.
22:34 For me that's an inherent part of why it's great that the Triffids or whatever are juxtaposed
22:39 with these very proper sort of middle class characters or mid-witch.
22:42 Again, it's a rural, very English, kind of very middle class village where these aliens
22:49 take over the children or whatever or inseminate the women or whatever it is.
22:53 So yeah, I really like that juxtaposition and actually putting the uncanny next to the
22:59 everyday is probably the most unsettling thing because if you start in a fantastical world
23:06 then after the film finishes you can go well that couldn't happen because it's set in
23:10 Mordor or whatever.
23:11 Whereas if you start in somewhere that looks like Next Door or you start in the Scottish
23:17 place where you go on holiday every year then suddenly it's harder to push it away and
23:23 you can…you know, it's harder to separate the fantasy, the terrible fantasy from your
23:28 own experiences.
23:29 And that's of course where the joy is.
23:30 Yeah, well I love your choices Will.
23:32 Thank you Ollie.
23:33 And I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today.
23:36 Many thanks to Oliver Double for joining us and being such a brilliant guest.
23:40 And many thanks to you all for tuning in.
23:41 Be sure to come back and join us again at the same time next week.
23:45 Until then, that's all from us.
23:47 Goodbye.
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