More on Scottish films

Following my previous post regarding the Bill Douglas trilogy and St Andrew's Day, I should mention that I did at least celebrate the day in a film-related manner.

I took a trip to the GFT to see THE ST KILDA TAPES, a compilation of archive footage and new material relating to the remote Scottish island, put together with a new score (performed live at the event) by David Allison.

The archive footage (featuring the excellent ST KILDA: BRITAIN'S LONELIEST ISLE and some marvellous footage of emigrants sailing from Glasgow to North America) was terrific, and was enhanced by interviews with a man who actually lived there as a boy before its evacuation in 1930.

The newer material didn't go down quite as well in comparison - the time-lapse photography of Edinburgh was great but not altogether relevant, and some of it really looked like a student project. Some people left before the end and while I wouldn't go that far, it's fair to say that the newer material certainly wasn't as interesting and didn't really sit with the rest of the films - it would be better served as part of an entirely different project. Full marks for the live music though.

Still talking of things Scottish, I should point out that the Scottish anthology film collection THE NEW TEN COMMANDMENTS, which premiered in Edinburgh this year, is doing the rounds this month, including another screening at Filmhouse in Edinburgh on the 14th, but if you can't wait that long or are just too lazy, it's on BBC Scotland this Sunday.

The Filmhouse will also be having another screening of TROUBLE SLEEPING (this weekend), which is also showing elsewhere this month.

Finally, since I covered the BFI's DVD release of THE BILL DOUGLAS TRILOGY, I should also mention another must-own DVD purchase for fans of Scottish film.

It was released last year so I should really have mentioned it before now, but there is a 4-disc DVD collection (also available separately) called THE PETER MCDOUGALL COLLECTION. Quite appropriate that I should mention it now however, since he picked up a Scottish BAFTA last month for his work. This DVD release probably did its bit to help I suspect.

While technically made for TV, I guess I can still call these films since most of them were made in the heyday of BBC's one-off drama slot PLAY FOR TODAY and were as good as anything in the cinema.

The four dramas included are JUST ANOTHER SATURDAY (the best of the bunch, in which Jon Morrison plays a young lad leading an Orange march who suddenly sees the dark side of Scotland's sectarian problem - it also features an early dramatic performance by Billy Connolly); THE ELEPHANT'S GRAVEYARD, another excellent show in which Morrison is joined by Billy Connolly once more as they play two men dodging off work and talking about their lives; JUST A BOY'S GAME, a tale of Scottish gangsters and family ties featuring a superb performance by singer Frankie Miller; and the only one of the bunch that isn't from PLAY FOR TODAY, the more recent DOWN AMONG THE BIG BOYS (once more featuring Connolly) which tells of a promising young policeman marrying the daughter of a gangster. It's slightly more lightweight than the rest but still enjoyable.

On the one hand, watching these dramas make you despair about modern TV. Once upon a time a guy from the shipyards with no experience could end up writing some of the BBC's most acclaimed dramas; now the only way he'd get such acclaim is if he was ballroom dancing or some such pish.

On the other hand though, at least we had a time when television drama, particularly of the regional variety, was this strong. The films included are all terrific stuff and a bonus disc also includes interviews with Morrison and McDougall himself. It's full of interesting information, including the revelation that the main marching action in the brilliant JUST ANOTHER SATURDAY had to be filmed in Edinburgh (pretending to be Glasgow) because the sectarian problem in the west was so bad that they weren't allowed to film it in Glasgow.

At least since it took me so long to tell you about this release you should be able to get it really cheap in a sale now. Just be sure and do pick it up.

Nuns, Dubliners and the apocalypse

As promised, here's a brief summary of the films I took in at the National Film Theatre while I was on my Morricone-related trip to London.

I arrived on Thursday, just in time to catch a screening of madcap Japanese classic SCHOOL OF THE HOLY BEAST. While the Italians probably dominated the so-called "nunsploitation" genre, this effort is one of the finest. For those of you wondering what the hell these films are, they're trashy movies that are best summed up as nuns behaving badly. Imagine women-in-prison films, but more blasphemous. What do you mean you've never seen a women-in-prison film?

Anyway, SCHOOL OF THE HOLY BEAST is basically a string of set pieces involving nuns doing various things that you really, really don't expect to see nuns doing - if that makes it sound sleazy, trashy, blasphemous or just plain wrong then, well, you're right, it's guilty on all counts.

However, in this particular case it's so beautifully shot and so completely over the top in its barking mad craziness you just can't help loving it. Well, when I say "you", I probably mean "I", really. It's on again at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh this weekend, just in case I've sold it to you.

On Friday, I took in THE DEAD, John Huston's last film as director and part of the lengthy retrospective dedicated to the great man that is currently playing at the NFT.

Adapted from a story taken from DUBLINERS by James Joyce (an appropriate choice given that Ireland was Huston's adopted home), the tale begins just before an annual dinner thrown for family and friends by three ladies in turn of the century Dublin, and ends a short while later in the bedroom of one of the couples attending.

It's not fast moving or eventful, but then Joyce was never a conventional writer so a conventional film probably wouldn't be appropriate. Regardless of whether you are reeled in by the evocation of old Dublin created by Huston or if you just think it's a dull series of scenes of people talking to each other, when we approach the finale and Angelica Huston tells her husband of the young Irishman who fell in love with her a long time ago, you'll be needing a couple of hankies at the ready.

On Saturday morning I attended the first session (there were four in all) of the United Nations film festival, a gathering of documentaries of varying lengths on serious subjects - after my recent write-up of the human rights film festival I attended you'd think I'd learn my lesson but no, I ended up just as depressed by this group of films.

While a lot of them were short films (some were just a minute long or less, clearly intended to used as TV spots) the main documentary in the session I attended concerned the sex traffic trade and followed one man's attempt to find his wife, who has been sold into slavery in Europe.

I could tell you that he finds her, alive, in the end and brings her home - but true as that may be, it gives the impression that the documentary has a happy ending. Unfortunately the return of his wife is just one small part of the bigger picture and every other part of the conclusion will make you angry, depressed or both.

The final event I attended was one of the annual MISSING BELIEVED WIPED events held by the BFI to showcase some of the lost television material that they have managed to locate and restore over the past year. While there was some comedy on offer, I opted for the thread entitled NUCLEAR THREATS, which consisted of an episode of sixties show OUT OF THE UNKNOWN (think TWILIGHT ZONE, but by the BBC) and THE CRUNCH, an episode of STUDIO 64 written by the legendary Nigel Kneale (of QUATERMASS fame), who died recently.

LEVEL 7, the episode of OUT OF THE UNKNOWN, was about a group of soldiers recruited to man an underground base in the UK in the event of a nuclear war, which of course soon breaks out. The usual pitfalls of old TV were in evidence (some stiff acting, a bit of woolly science and some outmoded views on certain issues) but all of these are overcome firstly by the tension created and secondly by the bleak and pessimistic view of an apocalyptic future, which is so filled with misery and hopelessness that any minor quibbles about dated TV productions are crushed in a tidal wave of despair. In other words, it's great!

Kneale's THE CRUNCH does what TV has always done best - take a limited number of characters in a very small location and then stir things up. In this story, a foreign dignitary from a (fictional) former British colony is holding the UK to ransom with a thermonuclear device in the heart of London, determined to retrieve what Britain has stolen from them (in terms of both assets and true independence).

Again there are some dated elements but they're minor, and with the exception of bit of mysticism towards the end that seems at odds with the rest of the piece, it's a remarkable drama that holds up surprisingly well, demonstrating exactly why Kneale was one of the fathers of intelligent television drama. Oh and it also featured British TV mainstay Peter Bowles as a young soldier and, in a very brief role, an extremely young Olivia Hussey. Just so you know.

Right, must dash - I'm off to see SWORD OF DOOM, a rather splendid old samurai movie. Bye for now.