Chantage à la drogue

No, It's not about strange people, well, at least not entirely. 'Strange' is the surname of the young man who has just joined London's Metropolitan Police and become a 'bobby'. That was back in the days when there were really police on the streets. Nowadays one never sees them, because they are too busy filling in forms and having, one presumes, endless cups of tea. In fact, one wonders what they really are doing in the privacy of their own police stations (the few stations that are left). Constable Strange is played by a young Michael York (25 when he shot the film), who is always smiling and jolly. Meanwhile, the 'Met' as the Metropolitan Police is called today under its Commissioner Hunt has had to get rid of large numbers of corrupt officers who were employed by gangsters. Too sleazy for words. But back then they were all straight, or so we are to believe. Michael gets in trouble because he meets an irresistibly charming girl who is a 'free spirit' (sixties-style) who just happens to be, uh oh, two weeks short of being 16 and hence 'jailbait'. She is played by Susan George, aged 17 when she shot this, who had been acting in films since the age of 11. During the sixties and seventies, Susan George was considered very hot and very cute. After that she continued acting and became a grown up. She certainly has irrepressible energy in this film, and simply will not take no for an answer from Michael York. So he succumbs to her charms and, unknown to both of them, her crazy rich aunt and uncle with whom she lives in a large house in Hampstead have secretly filmed their lovemaking, because they are kinky and enjoy making and selling porno films. This quickly comes to the hands of a police sergeant in the Met, and York becomes a blackmail victim. The sergeant is played implacably by Jeremy Kemp, with enormous intensity, He is obsessed with catching and jailing a notorious criminal named not Hunt but Quince, who used to be a policeman and went crooked, and who has two identical twin sons who are psychopathic killers. So it is all very desperate. The story is based on a novel by Bernard Toms, who only had this one work filmed. The director was David Greene, whom I knew at that time. I visited the set of his previous film in this same year, which is now called SEBASTIAN (1968) but was originally called MISTER SEBASTIAN, starring Dirk Bogarde and Susannah York. David had only just made his way into features from television, and was considered a hot new director then, though he was already 46 years old. I still have a call sheet from that visit. David's direction early in this film is pretty rough, with too many extreme closeups, and edited in that jumpy style which was then fashionable. After the story really gets going and moves past the 'establishing the situation' stage (which goes on for too long), the film settles down and becomes more watchable, so it is worth sticking with it. Only in the sixties, I suppose, could such a film be considered 'normal'. Yes, things were pretty crazy back then. It was 'crazy London', which did more than just frantically swing.

I think the judge sums it up, because of PC Strange's behaviour, all other police will have to work ten times harder to compensate.

True words, but alas the film tends to trivialise the events leading up to P C Strange's planting of evidence on "known" criminals. We see him being dragged into trouble by way of jail bait Susan George, who gets her kit off in a pretty unerotic way during the film.

Nowadays the main crime would not have been the planting of evidence so much as the statutory rape.

A better motivation for planting evidence would be the sheer frustration of seeing career criminals getting away with crime time and again. It would be more interesting than the plot actually used in this film.

David Greene's assured direction makes this offbeat police thriller as notable as his first British film, The Shuttered Room, the previous year. Here he uses another fine jazz-score to counterpoint a sordid story (naïve rookie constable Michael York caught up in corruption in the London Metropolitan Police by detective Jeremy Kemp) with the same strange, almost dreamy quality.

By now, the anti-establishment Sixties was souring towards authority (compare the cynicism towards the police with, say, 1961's Jigsaw). But although initially Greene's telephoto camera-work gives the film a documentary feel, he proceeds to visualise Swinging London in almost David Hockney-like pictorial compositions (the shadow of a helicopter across the old Battersea power station, Susan George's kinky bedroom), all of which add to an unsettling air of unreality.

An oddity, but an original and arresting one.

This is a kind of interesting movie about British police corruption. It involves a well-intentioned but corrupt police detective who is squaring off against another, truly corrupt police detective, who is in league with the criminals and not above murder. The only honest cop meanwhile is a naive rookie patrolman named "Peter Strange" (well-played by Michael York, the same year he was "Tybalt" in Zefferelli's "Romeo and Juliet"). "Strange", however, is unable to resist a young, nubile Susan George (and, really, what mortal man could?). The then 18-year-old George plays 15-year-old "Fred", who really puts the "bait" in "jailbait". Her liberal-minded aunt and uncle actually let the pair rendezvous in her house, but that's because they are filming the whole thing for their own sinister purposes. Confronted by blackmail, the honest cop "Strange" eventually becomes a lot less honest and quickly gets mired in the corruption and intrigue.

The British director David Greene made a series of interesting movies in Britain in the late 60's including this, "I Start Counting" (with Jenny Agutter), and perhaps his most famous one, "The Shuttered Room" (with American Carole Lynley). Like another talented Brit director John Moxley, Greene eventually ended up making comparatively lame American TV movies like "Vacation in Hell" in the 70's, but he showed a lot of promise in his early work. Michael York did go on to somewhat of a career, most famously starring in the 70's version of "The Island of Dr. Moreau" with Burt Lancaster, but he definitely deserved more of one. I don't want to talk too much about Susan George because I'll start drooling all over my keyboard again, but she perhaps achieved the most fame of anyone involved with this movie, appearing most notably in the controversial films "Straw Dogs" and "Mandingo". She was not a great actress perhaps, but then nobody ever really seemed to mind. . .

This is another British film that badly needs a legitimate DVD release. (I saw it on a bootleg that had obviously been ported off a PAL VHS tape onto an NTHS DVD so it was moving at 25 fps in a 24 fps format, making for some awkward viewing). You'd think they'd release this legitimately in Britain at least. I would recommend this, but good luck finding a decent copy.

Great 1968 film which I have very much wanted to view over the years and it is very hard to obtain and when I was in England, I was able to view this film and enjoyed it greatly. Michael York, (Peter Strange) played the role as a London policeman who is being arrested in the opening scenes of this movie and then it flashes back to when he first joined the force. Detective Pierce, (Jeremy Kemp) is a detective who likes Peter Strange because he is a cop who goes strictly by the books. It is not too long when Peter meets up with a hot to trot Fred March, (Susan George) who is under the age of 16 years until one more month and she is out to seduce the apple of her eye, Peter. Peter meets her family who live in a big mansion and they immediately take a liking to him and this paves the way for Peter & Fred to make very warm and passionate love with plenty of nudity by Susan George. Susan was just starting out in films and this is one of her early films which I am glad I was able to view in Europe. If you like Susan George, don't miss this one; the other film I want to see her in is: "Neat With Black Stockings", 1968. Enjoy.