“Easy Rider” has a lot to answer for man cos’ after the film came out man we all started calling each other man, man. It was like, freaky, you dig man? Great soundtrack and a surprise cameo from record producer Phil Spector stuffing copious amounts of marching powder up his nose. Wonder whatever happened to him?
I bought the soundtrack album early on and I must have got hold of an early pressing because my copy has sound effects and dialogue from the film, all of which went missing when it was subsequently released on a different label.
Two Westerns that could not have been more different in tone and style even if they’d tried, “Butch Cassidy” ending on a freeze-frame of the doomed duo about to meet their maker at the hands of the Bolivian army. On the other hand, “The Wild Bunch” had no such reservations vis-à-vis depicting the gory demise of the main protagonists, director Sam Peckinpah composing a masterful ballet of death at the end of the movie which, to my mind anyway, still impresses over fifty years later. By the way I’ve had to use an image of “The Wild Bunch” poster from my own collection in place of the one on the net owned and copyrighted by Alamy who seem intent on buying up every single photograph ever taken. Blood-sucking bastards.
A couple of years before the release of “Battle of Britain” I cycled out to Manston airfield with some school friends and we passed a long row of Spitfires and Messerschmitt’s which I later found out were en-route to Spain where they shot a lot of the aerial sequences for the film. I wished I’d taken a photograph because whenever I tell anyone about what I saw that day they just laugh and reckon I must have dropped some LSD, what with it being the sixties and that. Talking of which, Stanley Kubrick must have partaken of an acid trip or two when shooting “2001”. I saw the film in the cinema twice, once when it finally arrived in Margate at the Plaza cinema approximately eighteen months after its original release and again in 1978 on a huge 70mm screen in London. I’ve watched it a few times since and I still have absolutely no idea what it’s all about. It looks good though.
This double-bill looked pretty good too. Both films featured actor John Richardson, quite possibly the luckiest man to ever grace the silver screen. He not only starred opposite Ursula Andress AND Raquel Welch, he also married actress Martine Beswick. This poster was actually given away free at the time of release to anyone who cared to write in to Hammer Studios and request a copy. You’d be lucky to buy one in good condition for less than £350 these days. This is an image of the one I purchased a few years ago, purely for its resale value only of course.
You might think it strange to feature a poster for a film made in 1965 in a blog post devoted to the year 1970. I’m showing it here because when, on my first day at college, the film and TV production students got to watch “The Ipcress File” whilst I was forced to take a maths test instead, I belatedly realised I’d signed up for the wrong course. My bad. Such a bore. Still, the government paid.
Just one new TV show to mention from 1970, “UFO” being the first live-action TV series from Gerry Anderson who by now had obviously decided to change direction from puppets with strings attached to using real-life actors instead. I believe it has a cult following of some kind to this day but it didn’t really catch on with me. I was starting to leave a lot of my earlier interests behind and take up a few new ones, as illustrated in the image above. For those of you not in the know, the lady on the left is actress Wanda Ventham, proud mother of Benedict Cumberbatch. You see, it’s not always about me, is it?
It is really though.
Steve Mayhew 