TASTING THE BITTER SWEET ROMANCE OF SHELAGH DELANEY

A TASTE OF HONEY directed by Tony Richardson (UK, 1961)

Shelagh Delaney’s unsentimental view of procreation puts the hearts and flowers romance of Valentine’s Day into proper perspective : “It’s chaotic – a bit of love, a bit of lust and there you are. We don’t ask for life, we have it thrust upon us”.

Lines like these help explain why A Taste of Honey retains its contemporary edge more than half a century after it was first performed.

London’s National Theatre are about to stage a new version to bring the play’s honest, down to earth characters to a new generation of theatre goers.

No prizes too for guessing why Delaney was such a formative influence on the young Steven Patrick Morrissey.

Labelling A Taste of Honey as a ‘kitchen sink realism’ might lead you expect a mundane and bleak drama. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a play (and movie) that fizzes with energy and humourously challenges popular preconceptions about so-called  ‘ordinary’ working class lives in Northern Britain.

BEST OF BRITISH CULT MOVIES: 10 – 1

Concluding my list of the fifty greatest British Cult Movies with my top ten of the most groundbreaking, mind expanding or just plain weird films. If I have left out, or down graded, your personal favourite feel free to comment or, better still, make your own list.

10. TRAINSPOTTING Danny Boyle (1996)

Irvine Welch’s superb novel was in sure hands for the transition to the big screen There’s a first rate cast which Boyle directs with real energy and dark humour to show the ups and downs of heroin addiction. Great music too, including Iggy’s Lust For Life and Underworld’s Born Slippy. The screenplay by John Hodge begins with one of the great ‘fuck the system’ monologues:
“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself.  Choose your future. Choose life”.

9. JUBILEE Derek Jarman (1977)
Made before the first wave of British punk had played itself out this movie is, like the music that inspired it, crude and anarchic. Don’t even begin to look for any plot as this is impressionistic, instinctive cinema that sets its own rules. Adam Ant appears before he became a dandy highwayman and Jordan as punk ‘anti-historian’ Amyl Nitrite.

BEST OF BRITISH CULT MOVIES: 20 – 11

Continuing my list of the fifty Greatest British Cult Movies, here is my selection from 20 -11:

 20. KES  Ken Loach (1969)

One the most remarkable screen performances by a child actor. David Bradley plays Billy Casper, a bright, scrawny 15-year-old kid who is frequently bullied at home and at school but finds an outlet for his frustrations by keeping a pet kestrel. Based on a novel by Barry Hines, it is a moving and brilliantly observed study of hope amid the drabness of  working class life in Northern Britain.

19. SHAUN OF THE DEAD  Edgar Wright (2004)

The definitive modern day zombie movie with a fine comedy duo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.  Good jokes about struggling to tell the real zombies from the ‘normal’ brain-dead citizens with plenty of surprisingly gory splatter effects.

BEST OF BRITISH CULT MOVIES: 30 – 21

Continuing my list of the fifty Greatest British Cult Movies, here is my selection from 30 -21:

30. THE BELLES OF ST TRINIAN’S Frank Launder (1954)

The first and best of the five movies in the series based on the cartoons of Ronald Searle. There are great comic turns by Alistair Sim (in two roles as headmistress and her scheming brother), Joyce Grenfell (as the games teacher) and George Cole (as Flash Harry). This, plus numerous assorted nubiles in gymslips – what’s not to like?

 29. GOLDFINGER Terence Young (1964)

You can’t have a list like this without a Bond movie and it has to be one with Sean Connery as 007. Goldfinger is my favourite because it has the best villains Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) and Oddjob (Harold Sakata) , great Bond girls Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) and Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) as well as having the usual  ridiculous action scenes.

BEST OF BRITISH CULT MOVIES: 50 – 41

Any best of list is personal and subjective so there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the fact that Nerve.Com’s list of the ‘Fifty Greatest Cult Movies of all time’ is so heavily slanted towards American films. The list does, however, ignore the world of cinema and misses the opportunity to celebrate cult directors like Alejandro Jodorowsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, Werner Herzog and Akiro Kurosawa. The lack of British entries is also unfortunate.

In order to prove that movies don’t begin and end in Hollywood or on the U.S. Indie circuit I have made a rival list of Fifty Greatest British Cult Movies.

As with the Nerve list, I have limited each director to one film.  With regard to what is, or is not, a ‘cult’ , this is another relative question but generally implies some manner of what a Rough Guide to Cult Fiction calls a “lengthy and irrational devotion”. My rule of thumb guide is that the movie must have either generated such obsessive adoration and/or has otherwise achieved some measure of healthy notoriety.

The list also contains films that have won mainstream acclaim as well as others which have been unjustly ignored by the public at large and so have a small but devoted audience.

Here is my selection from  50 -41:

50.  CARRY ON CLEO –  Gerald Thomas  (1964)

Bawdy, unsubtle and stuffed to the brim with cheap innuendos, the Carry On series are, for better or worse, a British institution. This is the tenth of 29 made between 1958 and 1978 with one ill-advised attempt at a revival (Carry On Columbus) in 1992  Cleo was marketed as the funniest film since 54bc. For me the choice of which Carry On to pick was between this and Carry On Screaming. What swung it was the memorable one-liner delivered by Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar; all together now  : “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”

49. FOUR LIONS Chris Morris (2010)

Cultdom and controversy often go hand in hand. Making a black comedy about Muslim terrorists operating from a London-based cell risks more than a few bad reviews. Comedian, Chris Morris is never one to be shy away from ruffling a few feathers and, while his debut film is not laugh out loud funny it merits inclusion here for its courage and obvious integrity.

48. MURDER, SHE SAID George Pollock (1961)

Forget the insipid TV series (Murder, She Wrote) this features an amateur sleuth of far greater substance. It brings to the screen the perfect personification of Miss Marple in the form of the peerless Margaret Rutherford. This is probably the best in a series based on Agatha Christie’s improbable heroine with a strong supporting cast . Utterly charming.