Susannah York

The Shout

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Charles shouts

There’s nothing wrong with The Shout that a different screenplay wouldn’t fix. In front of and behind the camera it’s brilliant. But further back than that, at the conceptual stage, there’s not much beyond a spectacularly tedious allegory about something or other. Into the marriage of John Hurt’s Anthony and Susannah York’s Rachel comes a stranger, a domineering man dressed in black whose shout, he says, can rip universes apart, pulp souls, burst brains, and so on. But is Charles Crossley (Alan Bates) just a lunatic, as he appears to be? We have after all first met him at an asylum watching a very English cricket match overseen by a chief medical officer … Read more

X, Y & Zee aka Zee and Co.

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Zee and Robert get close

Once Elizabeth Taylor realised she wasn’t going to be starring in Cleopatra, or anything like it, any more, she set off on a mad career jag that saw her playing a succession of weirdos, harpies, harridans, drunks and foul-mouthed vixens. If that sounds like something you’d like to see, X, Y & Zee, or Zee and Co., could be the thing for you. As an added bonus you get Michael Caine in one of his best “shouting” roles. It’s “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” all the way through here. Made in 1972 but mainlining the back end of 1960s London, it’s Taylor and Caine as a married couple who’ve … Read more

The Gigolos

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Sacha Tarter and Trevor Sather in The Gigolos

The first feature by TV director Richard Bracewell lifts the stone on male gigolos in Money London, avoiding clichĂ© to deliver a jagged yet humorous portrait of male/male rather than male/female relations. In seemingly aimless, freeform style we follow Sacha and Trevor, as they drop into one pre-arranged hook-up after another. Sacha is the gigolo, Trevor his aide. The cast is interesting and for two different reasons. For starters we have Sacha and Trevor, who are played by Sacha Tarter and Trevor Sather, the guys who wrote the film along with Bracewell, though much if not all of their dialogue is improvised. Next to these relative unknowns are their female clients, played by … Read more