Diana Dors

Penny and the Pownall Case

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Jonathan menaces Penny with a gun

A Rank Organisation B movie coming in at only 47 minutes, Penny and the Pownall Case is interesting for all sorts of ancillary reasons, but interesting in its own right too. The ancillaries. An early role for Christopher Lee. An early role for Diana Dors, still brunette and not yet in “British Marilyn Monroe” mode (but then in 1948 Monroe herself was still on the starting blocks). The only film directed by the curiously named Slim Hand, who was more usually one of Rank’s production managers. The first British film scored by a woman, Elisabeth Lutyens (daughter of renowned architect Edwin). Lee referred to his time on the film as a “truly grisly … Read more

Deep End

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Susan licks a spoon

Jerzy Skolimowski, en route to America from his native Poland, stopped off in the UK in 1969 to make Deep End, a strange blend of farce with something much darker, a tale of stalking done almost as a sex comedy. It’s the story of an impressionable 15-year-old lad, Mike, who gets a job at a public baths – the sort that has both swimming and bathing, in “slipper baths” – and falls very hard for co-worker Susan, a young woman a few years older than him but way ahead of him in all the things that matter, most obviously sex. Mike is played by the pretty John Moulder-Brown, Susan by Jane Asher at her … Read more