Truly, Madly, Cheaply!: British B Movies

One evening I watched three documentaries on British film history: a standard cut and paste job on Rank called The Golden Gong, but it was not without some interesting tidbits.A sleazy and smart ass exploitation of film personality scandals in the 3os era called Shepperton Babylon that tells us little that is really useful about the background of that major studio.And then, ironically, a much much better documentary by the same Matthew Sweet who was involved with the Shepperton one, this time on British B movies.The program is well organized into categories showing which kinds of genres were popular at which time and for what reasons and makes a convincing argument that the viewer, if he or she can get ahold of some of these rarities, will get a more unvarnished and realistic idea of what England was like in the years between the 193os and 197os than in the more well known prestige pictures.There are an impressive number of fleeting clips from films you not only are unlikely to have seen but also may not even have heard of, though several films are discussed at greater length. I recommend watching this.

Written and hosted by Matthew Sweet and ranging from the quota quickies of the 30s to the exploitation flicks of the 70s. In between we visit wartime comedies, the 50s youth market, and Hammer in the 60s. There are oddball one-offs like 1952's Private Information, in which none other than Jill Esmond (Mrs. Olivier #1) plays a woman who crusades against the leaky sewer pipes in her council house.

It runs 89 minutes and is loaded with clips, many from films I've never heard of. Sweet welcomes several veterans from the B movie era, and these are my favorite bits. He chats with Patricia Laffan as they watch her film Devil Girl from Mars (1954). Nicky Henson giggles as he watches himself in Psychomania (1973) riding a motorcycle through a wall and confronting some kind of giant demon frog.

It's lots of fun if you like these old films, and I do.