It’s perhaps a measure of how London-centric our society is that if you were to mention playwright Bill Naughton to anyone then those who had heard of him at least would tell you that he wrote Alfie, the 1963 stageplay about a cockney Casanova that has been twice made into […]
British
Expresso Bongo (1959) Cliff Richard in pre-swinging London Rock N’ Roll Musical (Review)
Let us imagine the pitch: a hotshot young writer and a director whose career spans groundbreaking horror, gritty drama and sexploitation decide to make a musical. But not just any musical – this would be a musical powered by stage performances, rather than the familiar contrivance of people bursting into […]
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961): perfectly pitched 1960s British apocalypse movie (Review)
Given the recent unseasonably warm spell and the continuing discourse on global Warming, Val Guest’s 1961 sci-fi drama The Day the Earth caught fire takes on an eerily prescient quality. First Guest and Wolf Mankowitz’s London suffers an unseasonably warm spell, then cripplingly thick heat fog which segued its way […]