The Wolf in Man

Here's a belated Halloween entry, about the not outstanding but quite good for what it is Amicus horror film The Beast Must Die (1974), which despite some ropey plotting and unconvincing special effects has a few interesting edges to it.Since werewolves are already covered here it seemed worth a go.

The Beast Must Die is built around the central gimmick that the audience is asked to guess who the werewolf is amongst those gathered at a millionaire's country mansion. The film breaks a quarter of the way through and offers the audience a few moments to weigh up the evidence in each suspect werewolf favour. As such the film can basically be boiled down to an Agatha Christie plot plus werewolf, although the audience participation gimmick is actually pointless thinking it through: the film-makers are asking the audience to do nothing more than they will already be doing anyway.

Calvin Lockhart plays the lead role, a sportsman who has transformed his country mansion into a panopticon, in which himself and his security team can sit at the centre and monitor the activities of his house guests through a bank of CCTV screens. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, The Conversation came out in the same year, suggesting this was the right time for paranoiac surveillance culture to really get going in the public imagination leading on from Watergate. Unusually for a British horror film (or any film of this era and probably since) the hero is black, depicted as arrogant and ruthless but not stupid or malicious, and shown as far more successful (financially, socially, physically) than his white house guests. Newcliffe's wife Caroline (Marlene Clark) is also black and not depicted stereotypically. Influential here perhaps are the possibilities of casting American lead actors for distribution in the USA, and the influence of blaxploitation that partially encouraged the casting of black actors in well-rounded and non-stereotyped roles (again concerns here were more likely financial than egalitarian, the marketing of films based on the breakdown of 'the audience' into analysable demographics). In much of the promotional material however Peter Cushing is emphasised over Lockhart, again possibly not dubious as placing Cushing on a horror movie poster is smart money, but still. Although the tension between Newcliffe and his houseguests is never expressed verbally as racial in nature, the possibility is there, a sense of resentment at Newcliffe's success compounded with racism.

From a different angle however, The Beast Must Die is maybe perceptive in that in order to accommodate to the ruling capitalist class traits such as race can be de-emphasised when presenting the right attitude and accoutrements. To do the things you must do you don't need to be anybody in particular. Here the image of Newcliffe, sitting behind his screens monitoring life in the enclosed world of the mansion, drifts towards the horror-film reality of shoot-to-kill lists and air-conditioned huts in the Arabia Peninsula. Newcliffe is prepared to kill anyone of the depersonalised figures who walk across the camera's field of vision, to track and kill them in the most productive sense possible; the image marries up well with Harry Lime's declaration about the ease of bumping off the black dots far below, although as the army can tell you the dots can be even closer than that and still be easy to take out with a button push of the controller. Newcliffe does not even spend most of his time watching the screens, subcontracting to a team of hired surveillance experts who keep watch from their hidden room at the top of the house while below Newcliffe entertains his guests.

The plot of the film is essentially fluff. The guests wander around the house, there are a few interesting character details, some appearances from a deeply unconvincing werewolf (in some scenes it is literally a big dog wandering onto set), and there are some words of wisdom from Cushing about the rule of werewolves and silver that doesn't stay quite consistent through the film. Not to spoil the reveal, the film ends with Newcliffe deciding to commit suicide after being infected from a werewolf bite. Here some of the racialised resentment perhaps becomes more apparent as Newcliffe is made to die for the folly of his success. In order to win, Newcliffe has had to destroy his entire life, not just himself but what he has worked for and what he has held dear. 

Gumshoe (1971)

Stephen Frears' debut feature Gumshoe is something of an oddity in British cinema - caught somewhere between kitchen sink, 70s neo-noir and the genre reflexivity of the French New Wave. Albert Finney plays Eddie Ginley - mentally ill, unemployed, but playful and charismatic enough to live out his fantasy as a Chandleresque private eye. Against a backdrop of documentary-ish realism (rare that its Liverpool locations are actually what they say they are), he finds himself drawn deeper into the world of murder and drug trafficking. Through one character, we have glimpses of the following decades' epidemic levels of mental illness, the encroaching gun/drugs trade, welfare dependence, in-family class antagonism, racial conflict (its rarity on TV apparently due to Eddie's then-common racial insults), and the consolations of mass entertainment. It's as though Arthur Seaton, estranged from industry, community and family, has sunk into mental illness, and is now attempting to recover by switching genres. Or he may just be another deluded Scouse Quixote. 

As with many a disillusioned northern male, Eddie's main defence against mental illness is fantasy, largely manufactured by Hollywood. In his fractured, disappointed life, a sense of the cinematic gives him the continuity he craves. It's fitting that Eddie, when not acting as a private eye, moonlights as a nightclub entertainer at 'The Broadway'. Whether talking to the dole, his doctor, or sister-in-law (Beckett favourite Billie Whitelaw as a lost love), the mid-Atlantic showbiz schtick rarely lets up. Those who know him accept this as part of his illness. In the criminal underworld, it's regarded as serious (like entertainment, a world where bullshit is the highest truth). 'Thriller' music (composed by Andrew Llloyd Weber!) jarringly intrudes on the environment in a manner that would make Jean-Luc Godard proud. As with Godard's Paris, or the Newcastle of Get Carter, noir photography doesn't work too hard against the natural murk of the location. It's a film of wistful regret, but holds back from reassuring nostalgia. The uneasy blend of comedy, tragedy and thriller may be why this film usually gets short shrift in considerations of Frears' ouvre. If we were to apply any 'auteurism' to his films, it's the sense of disillusion and quiet desperation shared by almost all his lead characters, not least in their pursuit of a 'game' (from Bloody Kids to the bloody Queen!). He can bounce between genres, classes, nations and centuries with such ease because the discontents of 'playing the game' can be applied to almost all situations. As for Finney, it's notable how he swung from the post-war grime of Nottingham, to the mid-Atlantic technicolour of Tom Jones and Audrey Hepburn, and back down with a graceful bump to the mean streets of Toxteth. Never as graspingly ambitious as Caine or Connery - but far more talented - he has successfully avoided institutionalisation.  

What Gumshoe captures brilliantly is the distinct peculiarity of Liverpool. Even as '2nd City of Empire' it was hardly in line with the traditional industries of northern England. By the 70s, it occupied a space that was in many ways a foretaste of the north to come. Long before Billy Elliot and The Full Monty, Liverpool attempted to transcend declining industry and its miseries through sentiments of entertainment and pop success - the gloss on an insecure service economy. Eventually branded as 'culture', it was of a piece with the self-negating idolatory of Cool Britannia. As a once-thriving port, Liverpool's early proximity to American pop culture is widely documented. Less so is the strange sense of dislocation from mainstream England this arguably led to. In the 21st century this dislocation is far more mainstream. Following WW2, American pop culture promised escape, glamour and pizzazz to a restless working class. The 70s was when America led the way to social fracture, ideological confusion and neoliberal aggression. It wasn't that Liverpool 'fell behind'. Maybe it was just waiting for the rest of the country to catch up.