1971-1980

Cream in My Coffee is a television drama by Dennis Potter, broadcast on ITV on 2 November 1980 as the last in a loosely connected trilogy of plays exploring language and betrayal. A juxtaposition between youth and old age, the play combines a non-linear narrative with the use of popular music to heighten dramatic tension, a feature of much of Potter’s work. Cream in My Coffee was awarded the Prix Italia for best drama in 1981 and Peggy Ashcroft gained a BAFTA Best Actress award in 1981. The play’s title is taken from the popular song “You’re the Cream in My Coffee”, from the 1929 Broadway musical Hold Everything!Read More »

Mark Cunliffe:
“You don’t know how low I was, how down. Everything was like it was raining all the time. The way the rain sort of glints all dull like on the slates. On the roof”

In 1978, tired of and frustrated by not having the power over the BBC’s drama department Dennis Potter went some way to realise his dream of being a writer with total control over his work by forming the independent production company Pennies From Heaven (or PFH) Ltd with producer Kennith Trodd and his agent Judy Daish. Two years later, the companies independent nature came to fruition thanks to a deal with BBC rival, LWT to produce six new plays by Potter along with three other plays comprising of two from Salford socialist Jim Allen and one writer/performer Ken Campbell.Read More »

This offbeat John Wayne vehicle casts the Duke as Detective Jim Brannigan, an Irish-American detective at large in London. After the requisite culture-clash routines, it’s down to business as Brannigan teams with Scotland Yard official Commander Swann (Richard Attenborough) to corral a crook who has absconded to England to avoid extradition. Judy Geeson co-stars as Jennifer Thatcher, a cute lady constable who spends most over her time fending off Brannigan’s inbred chauvinism. Brannigan was co-written by Christopher Trumbo, the son of former blacklistee Dalton Trumbo.Read More »

A teenage boy is having his first sexual problems. Although his father tries to remedy the situation, it is his aunt who really takes care of business.Read More »

Synopsis:
WHATEVER YOU WANT THEY’VE GOT… AND BUCKTOWN IS WHERE YOU’LL FIND IT!

Duke Johnson visits a small Southern town, intent on burying his brother. After the funeral, he learns that he must stay for 60 days, for the estate to be processed. A few locals convince Duke to reopen his late brother’s nightclub, and soon the local redneck policemen are intimidating Duke with threats of violence. Duke refuses to pay the bribes they demand, so then he and his lady friend Aretha are threatened and attacked by the crooked cops. Rather than take them on himself, Duke calls on his old pal Roy. Roy brings a few buddies to Bucktown, and they bring justice to the small town. With the redneck cops out of the way, Duke lets his guard down. Then the situation gets out of hand again. Finally, Duke must settle the score himself.Read More »

Synopsis:
Udo Kier is without a doubt the sickliest of vampires in any director’s interpretation of the Bram Stoker tale. Count Dracula knows that if he fails to drink a required amount of pure virgin’s [pronounced “wirgin’s”] blood, it’s time to move into a permanent coffin. His assistant (Renfield?) suggests that the Count and he pick up his coffin and take a road trip to Italy, where families are known to be particularly religious, and therefore should be an excellent place to search for a virgin bride. They do, only to encounter a family with not one, but FOUR virgins, ready for marriage. The Count discovers one-by-one that the girls are not as pure as they say they are, meanwhile a handsome servant/Communist begins to observe strange behaviour from the girls who do spend the night with the Count. It’s a race for Dracula to discover who’s the real virgin, before he either dies from malnourishment or from the wooden stake of the Communist!Read More »

Synopsis:
Three horror anthology stories of tormented women. In the first story, Julie Eldridge is a sexually-repressed college teacher who is blackmailed by one of her students for a past indiscretion in which she played an unwilling part. But the student is unaware that Julie plots to turn the tables on him the first chance she gets. In the second story, Millicent Larimore is a plain-looking, almost reclusive woman who lives with her amoral twin sister Therese whom delights in tormenting her. However, only their doctor who visits from time to time knows the real thing behind the scene. In the final story, Amelia in a solo horror story monologue is a mother-dominated woman who buys an African Zuni fetish doll for her latest boyfriend in which the doll comes to life and terrorizes her in her own apartment.Read More »

When the teenage orphan Justine arrives in a convent, she befriends Alucarda, who was raised since she was a baby by the nuns. They become best friends and stay together most of the time. When they meet a gypsy on the forest, he is indeed Satan and possesses the teenagers. Soon the convent is turned upside-down affecting the lives of Alucarda, Justine, the nuns and Father Lázaro. The skeptic Dr. Oszek will also witness a showdown between good and evil affecting his beliefs.Read More »

Quote:
Dr. Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood) is an art history professor and collector who finances his hobby by performing the odd sanction (assassination) for an obscure government bureau. He is forced to take a case where he must find out which of the members of a mountain climbing team is the Russian killer he has been given as a target by joining an expedition to climb the treacherous Eiger.Read More »