HOLIDAY FILMOGRAPHY PART 7 (1969 - 2011)

Charles Hawtrey, Betty Marsden and Terry Scott in Carry On Camping (1969)

1969:

Carry On Camping, Adder (RFD). Produced by Peter Rogers, Directed by Gerald Thomas. Cast: Sidney James, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques, Barbara Windsor. Comedy. Devon. Camping holiday.

What’s Good For The Goose, Tigon. Directed by Menahem Golan. Cast: Norman Wisdom, Sally Geeson. Comedy. Assistant bank manager falls for amorous teenager during seaside conference.

All At Sea, Anvil (CFF). Directed by Ken Fairbairn. Cast: Gary Smith, Steven Mallett, Stephen Childs, Norman Bird. Children. Boys on holiday cruise catch painting thief in Tangier.

1970:

And Soon The Darkness, ABPC (WPD). Directed by Robert Fuest. Cast: Pamela Franklin, Michelle Dotrice. Crime. France. Nurses on cycling holiday in France become involved with sexual murderer.

Pamela Franklin and Michele Dotrice in And Soon The Darkness (1970)

1971:

Carry On At Your Convenience, Peter Rogers Productions (RFD). Directed by Gerald Thomas. Cast: Sidney James, Kenneth Williams, Joan Sims. Comedy. Brighton sequence.

1972:

Carry On Abroad, Peter Rogers Productions (Fox-Rank). Directed by Gerald Thomas. Cast: Sidney James, Kenneth Williams, Barbara Windsor, Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques. Comedy. Package holiday to Mediterranean island.

1973:

The Best Pair Of Legs In The Business, Sunny/Anglo-EMI (MGM-EMI). Directed by Christopher Hodson. Cast: Reg Varney, Diana Coupland, Lee Montague. Comedy. Holiday camp comedian discovers his wife is having an affair with the owner.

That’ll Be The Day, Goodtimes/Anglo-EMI (MGM-EMI). Directed by Claude Whatham. Cast: David Essex, Ringo Starr. Musical. Seaside and holiday camp scenes.

The Sea Children, Pan (CFF). Directed by David Andrews. Cast: Earl Younger, Lesley Dunlop. Children. Malta. Holiday children discover strange world beneath sea.

Summer Holiday, Pacesetter. (CFF). Directed by Philip Leacock. Cast: Ivor Bowyer, Jill Gibbs. Children. Adventures on a school holiday.

Carry On Girls, Peter Rogers Productions (Fox-Rank). Directed by Gerald Thomas. Cast: Sidney James, Joan Sims, Barbara Windsor. Comedy. Brighton. Women’s Lib group tries to foil bathing beauty contest.

The dance class in Holiday On The Buses (1973)

Holiday On The Buses, Hammer (MGM-EMI). Directed by Bryan Izzard. Cast: Reg Varney, Bob Grant, Doris Hare, Wilfred Brambell. Comedy. Wales. Pontin’s at Prestatyn.

1974:

Swallows And Amazons, Theatre Projects (EMI). Directed by Claude Whatham. Cast: Virginia McKenna, Ronald Fraser. Children. 1929. Children on holiday in the Lake District play pirates.

1975:

Tommy, Stigwood (Hemdale). Directed by Ken Russell. Cast: Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed. Musical. Holiday camp sequence.

Carry On Behind, Peter Rogers Productions (Fox-Rank). Directed by Gerald Thomas. Cast: Elke Sommer, Kenneth Williams, Joan Sims, Jack Douglas, Windsor Davies. Comedy. Caravan park. Archaeologists cause trouble with their excavations behind a holiday camp.

1976:

The Likely Lads, Anglo-EMI. Directed by Michael Tuchner. Cast: Rodney Bewes, James Bolam, Brigit Forsyth. Comedy. Includes caravan holiday.

1977:

Are You Being Served? Anglo-EMI. Directed by Bob Kellett. Cast: John Inman, Mollie Sugden, Frank Thornton. Comedy. Department store personnel take a holiday in Spain.

Grace Bros. staff take off for Spain in Are You Being Served? (1977)

Confessions From A Holiday Camp, Swiftdown (Col). Directed by Norman Cohen. Cast: Robin Askwith, Anthony Booth, Doris Hare. Sex. Entertainment officer’s exploits at a holiday camp run by ex-prison officer.

1979:

That Summer, Film In General (Col). Directed by Harley Cockliss. Cast: Ray Winstone, Tony London. Drama. Torquay. Ex-Borstal boy enters swimming contest and is framed for burglary by Glasgow youths.

1980:

The Great British Striptease, Amaranth (Target). Directed by Doug Smith. Cast: Bernard Manning, Su Pollard. Sex. Blackpool. Sixteen women compete for £500 prize for best striptease act.

1985:

She’ll Be Wearing Pink Pyjamas, (Pink Pyjama Productions/Film Four (Virgin). Directed by john Goldschmidt. Cast: Julie Walters, Anthony Higgins. Comedy. Lake District. Assorted women on an Outward Bound course.

1987:

Wish You Were Here, Zenith/Working Title/Film Four (Palace). Directed by David Leland. Cast: Emily Lloyd, Tom Bell, Jesse Birdsall. Sex. Worthing, 1951.

1988:

A Summer Story, ITC (Warner). Directed by Piers Haggard. Cast: Imogen Stubbs, James Wilby. Romance. Dartmoor. Holidaymaker recalls his youthful affair with farmer’s niece.

1989:

Shirley Valentine, Gilbert/Russell/Paramount (UIP). Directed by Lewis Gilbert Screenplay (Play) Willy Russell. Cast: Pauline Collins, Tom Conti. Housewife flies to Greece for sexual adventure.

Tom Conti and Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine (1989)

1992:

Blame It On The Bellboy, Bellboy/Hollywood (Warner). Directed by Mark Herman.  Cast: Dudley Moore, Richard Griffiths, Patsy Kensit. Comedy. Venice.

Dirty Weekend, Scimitar (UIP). Directed by Michael Winner. Cast: Lia Williams, Rufus Sewell. Sex. Brighton.

1993:

Bhaji On The Beach, Umbi/Channel 4 (First Independent). Directed by Gurinder Chadha. Cast: Kim Vithana, Jimmy Harkishin, Lalita Ahmed, Shaheen Khan, Zohra Segal. Drama. Birmingham women take a day trip to Blackpool.

1996:

Small Time, Big Arty Productions/BFI. Directed by Shane Meadows. Cast: Mat Hand, Dena Smiles, Shane Meadows. Drama. Includes trip to Skegness.

Gallivant, Tall Stories/BFI/Channel 4/Arts Council of England. Directed by Andrew Kotting. Cast: Gladys Morris, Eden Kotting, Andrew Kotting. Travelogue. Semi-documentary journey taken by a family around the coastline of Britain.

1999:

Hotel Splendide, Filmfour/Toc Films/Renegade Films. Directed by Terence Gross. Cast: Toni Collette, Daniel Craig, Katrin Cartlidge. Drama. Crumbling spa hotel peopled by eccentrics.

Guest House Paradiso, Universal/House Films/Vision Video. Directed by Adrian Edmondson. Cast: Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Vincent Cassel, Bill Nighy, Fenella Fielding. Comedy. Voyeurs run seaside guest house adjacent to nuclear power station.

Paddy Considine dancing at Chapel St Leonards in A Room For Romeo Brass (1999)

A Room For Romeo Brass, Alliance Atlantis/BBC Films/Arts Council of England/Company Pictures/Big Arty Productions. Directed by Shane meadows. Cast: Andrew Shim, Ben Marshall, Paddy Considine. Drama. Includes day trip to Chapel St Leonards.

2000:

Last Resort, BBC Films. Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Cast: Dina Korzun, Paddy Considine, Artiom Strelnikov, Lindsey Honey. Drama. Margate. Muscovite asylum seekers are held at seaside resort.

Dina Korzun at the Dreamland Amusement Park, Margate, in Last Resort (2000)

Some Voices, Filmfour/British Screen/Dragon Pictures. Directed by Simon Cellan Jones. Cast: Daniel Craig, David Morrissey, Kelly MacDonald. Drama. Includes seaside excursion to Hastings.

Kevin and Perry Go Large, Icon/Tiger Aspect Pictures/Fragile Films. Directed by Ed Bye. Cast: Harry Enfield, Kathy Burke, Rhys Ifans. Comedy. Teenage boys become star DJs and lose virginity on holiday in Ibiza.

2001:

The Martins, Icon Entertainment International/Tiger Aspect Pictures/Icon Productions/Isle of Man Film Commission. Directed by Tony Grounds. Cast: Lee Evans, Kathy Burke. Comedy. Man robs wealthy couple of holiday tickets and takes his family to the Isle of Man.

Arthur’s Dyke, Evolution Films/Quirky Films. Directed by Gerry Poulson. Cast: Pauline Quirke, Brian Conley, Dennis Waterman. Comedy. Walking holiday on English-Welsh border.

2006:

London To Brighton, LTB Films/UK Film Council/Steel Mill Pictures/Wellington Films. Directed by Paul Andrew Williams. Cast: Lorraine Stanley, Johnny Harris, Georgia Groome. Drama. Prostitute and child flee to Brighton to escape gangster.

Venus, Channel 4/UK Film Council/Venus Pictures/Free range Films. Directed by Roger Mitchell. Cast: Peter O’Toole, Jodie Whittaker. Drama. Includes journey to Whitstable beach.

2008:

Somers Town, Tomboy Films/Mother Vision/Big Arty Productions. Directed by Shane Meadows. Cast: Thomas Turgoose, Piotr Jagiello. Drama. Two boys dream of holiday to Paris on Eurostar.

2010:

Brighton Rock, BBC Films, Kudos Film and Television. Directed by Rowan Joffe. Cast: Helen Mirren, John Hurt. Crime. Brighton, 1964. (Filmed at Brighton and Eastbourne).

Never Let Me Go, Film 4, DNA Films. Directed by Mark Romanek. Cast: Keira Knightly. Drama. Includes seaside scenes at Clevedon and Holkham Beach.

2011:

The Inbetweeners Movie, Film 4/Young Bwark. Directed by Ben Palmer. Cast: Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison, Joe Thomas. Comedy. Group of youths on sexual adventure to Crete.

The Inbetweeners Movie (2011)

Bibliography:

Gifford, (2001), Catalogue of British Film

BFI Database

IMDb

HOLIDAY FILMOGRAPHY PART 3 (1914 - 1930)

A baby in the luggage rack of a crowded train en route to Blackpool in Hindle Wakes (1927)

1914:

Oh What a Day! Hepworth, Directed by (Hay Plumb). Comedy. Holiday husband loses ticket and hides in trunk.

Winky Goes Camping, Bamforth (YSA) Directed by Cecil Birch. Cast: Reggie Switz. Comedy.

Fun on the Sands at Blackpool, AKA Fun at the Seaside, Blackpool Town Hall (KTC). Cast: August, September, E Hannaford, E Alrag. Comedy. Family’s misadventures at Blackpool beach and funfair.

1915:

The Painted Lady Betty. Hepworth. Directed by Frank Wilson. Cast: Tom Powers, Alma Taylor, Chrissie White. Romance. Lyme Regis.

Oh My! Bamforth (YCC) Directed by Cecil Birth. Cast: Reggie Switz. Comedy. Hotel porter causes confusion by exchanging room numbers.

Winky (Reggie Switz - on the right) and friends in Sharps and Flats (1915)

Winky's letter to his wife in Sharps and Flats (1915)

Adulterous draft-dodger Winky! Sharps and Flats (1915)

Sharps and Flats. Bamforth (YCC) Directed by Cecil Birth. Cast: Reggie Switz. Comedy. Winky avoids enlisting for the army and goes on a camping holiday with young floozies.

Pimple’s Holiday. Picadilly (Browne). Directed by Fred Evans. Cast: Joe Evans, Fred Evans. Comedy. Two men meet their wives on holiday at the Karsino.

Bertie’s Holiday. Moonshine (YCC). Cast: Bertie Wright. Comedy. Yokel dons clothes of his dude double.

Nipper’s Busy Holiday. Reissue: 1919, His Busy Holiday. (Globe) John Bull (Davidson). Cast: S Reginald, Lupino Lane. Comedy.

1916:

Silas at the Seaside. Picadilly (Browne). Directed Joe Evans. Cast: Joe Evans. Comedy. Bumpkin is robbed and takes job as Bath chair attendant.

1917:

Pimple’s Motor Tour. Picadilly (Walturdaw). Directed Fred Evans, Joe Evans. Cast: Fred Evans. Comedy.

Curly’s Holiday, Tower. Producer, Director J. F. Carr. Cast: J. F. Carr. Comedy. Blackpool. (In conjunction with £5 prize for discovering ‘Curly’ in audience).

1918:

Hindle Wakes, Diamond Super (Royal). (Adapted from Stanley Houghton’s 1912 play). Directed by Maurice Elvey. Cast: Norman McKinnel, Colette O’Neil. Romance. Blackpool.

Miss Mischief, Midland Actors. Directed by Max Leder. Cast: Phyllis Lea, Dorothy Brame, Bruce Channing. Comedy. Blackpool.

1920:

Trotter on the Trot, Southend Films. Directed Tom Aitken. Cast: Arthur Lenville, Irene Tripod. Comedy. Southend. Henpeck tries to elude wife at seaside.

Down on the Farm, Empire Comedies (Film Sales). Directed by Maurice Sandground. Cast: Charles Stevens, Muriel Sothern. Comedy. Man and chorus girl spend holiday on health farm.

Three Men in a Boat. Artistic. Directed by Challis Sanderson. (Novel Jerome K Jerome). Cast: Lionelle Howard, Manning Haynes, Johnny Butt. Comedy. Boating holiday.

The Holiday Husband. Alliance (Shaftsbury). Directed by A. C. Hunter. Cast: Harry Welchman, Irma Royce. Drama.

1921:

Pins and Needles, Gliddon d’ Eyncourt Productions. Directed by John Gliddon. Cast: Francis Innys, Elizabeth Brandt. Comedy. Margate. Man on motor scooter follows girl and saves her from cad.

Four Men in a Van, Reissue: 1925 (United; cut) Direct Film Traders/Titan. Directed by/Script by Hugh Croise. S (novel) ‘R. Andom’ (We Three and Troddles). Cast: Manning Haynes, Donald Searle, Moore Marriott. Comedy. Episodic misadventures of friends on caravan holiday.

1922:

Keeping Man Interested, Quality Plays (Walturdaw). Directed by George A. Cooper. Cast: Sydney N. Folker, Joan McLean. Comedy. Couple change minds about separate holidays and mistake each other for burglars.

1925:

The Only Man, Retitled: The Leading Man. Directed by Harry B. Parkinson. Cast: Moore Marriott. Comedy. Canvey Island. Wife catches husband flirting in bathing beauty contest.

Milestone Melodies, (Series). Reciprocity. P. G. B. Samuelson. Directed by Alexander Butler. Musical picturisations of lyrics. ‘I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside’.

1926:

Walter’s Day Out, British Super Comedies. (Wardour). Directed by James B. Sloan. Cast: Walter Forde. Comedy.

Laughing at a Donald McGill postcard in Hindle Wakes (1927)

1927:

Hindle Wakes, USA: Fanny Hawthorne. (Adapted from Stanley Houghton’s 1912 play). Produced by Maurice Elvey, Victor Saville. Directed by Maurice Elvey. Cast: Estelle Brody, John Stuart. Romance. Blackpool.

1928:

Weekend Wives, BIP (Wardour). Directed by Harry Lachman. Cast: Monty Banks. Comedy. Deauville.

1929:

The Three Kings, British and Foreign films (Silent). Directed by Hans Steinhoff. Cast: Henry Edwards, Evelyn Holt, Warwick Ward. Drama. Blackpool. Clown loves young housekeeper and saves her from fire caused by jealous lion-tamer.

Atlantic, (Trilingual). Reissue: 1935. BIP (Wardour). Producer/Directed E. A. Dupont. Cast: Madeleine Carroll. Drama. Transatlantic passenger liner strikes iceberg and sinks.

The Hate Ship, (Bilingual). Directed by Norman Walker. Cast: Jameson Thomas, Jean Colin. Crime. Son of murdered Russian count invites suspects on revenge cruise.




Bibliography:
Gifford, 2001, Catalogue of British Film

The Caravan Park and The Best Pair of Legs in the Business

Reg Varney as Sherry Sheridan in The Best Pair of Legs in the Business (1973)

Britain in the early 1970s was a place of moral panics, strikes and power cuts. Stuart Hall comments that 1972 was a year of ‘sustained and open class conflict of a kind unparalleled since the end of the war’ (1978: 293). Terry Staples also points out that the miner’s strike of 1973 had a direct influence on the film industry in early 1974 when the ‘restrictions on the non-domestic use of electrical power’ during the ‘three-day week’ meant that cinemas had to ‘reduce the number of shows they put on’ (1997: 229).

British cinema itself was heading for a crisis. Most of the debt-ridden Hollywood companies had withdrawn funding from British films at the end of the 1960s. Filmmakers had to resort to tried and tested formulas, such as movie spin-offs of TV sitcoms, or sex comedies, in order to sustain a living. Although Best Pair is not based on a sitcom, it is a film adaptation of a TV play, both of which star Reg Varney in the central role of Sherry Sheridan. During this period there were a number of films released which looked back nostalgically to the traditional British holiday such as Holiday On The Buses (1973), That’ll Be The Day (1973) and Carry On Girls (1973). However, Best Pair appears to evoke the mood of the time more successfully, exposing the holiday on a cheap caravan park for the dismal experience it could be.

A lot of the action in the film takes place at night. This darkness adds to the gloomy atmosphere. It’s as if the lights have literally been turned off – pre-empting the blackouts of the early 1970s. As the campsite’s only resident entertainer, Sherry attempts to construct some sense of community in the half-empty clubhouse of Greenside Caravan Park, by starting sing-a-longs such as ‘Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside’, but the merriment appears to be forced. The atmosphere is like the aftermath of a party where the guests have stayed too long – a hangover, perhaps from the affluence and optimism of the late 1950s and 1960s. It’s as if the decade before hasn’t lived up to its expectations, and the decade that has followed has seen both an economic and spiritual slump.

Sherry in the holiday camp club house

The caravan holiday in Britain had originally been a middle-class pursuit in the 1920s and 1930s, as part of the fashion to ‘get back to nature’, just as the original pioneer holiday camps had been. Camping in a Romany style van had been a rare novelty for Bohemian types who wanted to get away from it all, the whole point of the holiday (as Angeloglou, 1975: 49-50, explains) was to ‘rough it’, by digging your own toilet, cooking over an oil stove, and by looking after the horse, which most city folk were not used to. The static caravan parks of the post-war era, however, had little to do with the origins of middle-class camping, instead providing a cheap alternative to the holiday camp, with cut-price accommodation. As Walton points out, the number of people taking caravan holidays at the end of the 1960s had more than doubled to 4.5 million in comparison to the 2 million who took a similar holiday in 1955, and ‘The coastline of Lindsey (Lincolnshire) saw caravan numbers increasing at 1,000 per year throughout the 1950s and 1960s from the 3,000 already present in 1950’ (2000: 43). The rows of static caravans were seen by some traditionalists to be an eyesore. In his 1974 poem, ‘Delectable Duchy’ Betjeman expresses a wish for them to be swept ‘out to sea’ by a ‘tidal wave’ (1974: 21).

The crisis of the central character in The Best Pair appears to embody the crisis of Britain at the time the film was made. As an entertainer who has just been dropped by his agent, Sherry’s future job prospects look very bleak. In one scene he announces his options as “the Labour Exchange, National Assistance, and very shortly the old-age pension”, and as a last resort, he pessimistically hopes for death. Sherry belongs, suddenly, to another era. He sings Flanagan and Allen songs and does a terrible drag act that allows him the freedom to fill his gags with innuendo, when in actual fact he disapproves of the sexual revolution – in one particular scene he decries the world as a ‘filthy, dirty’ place, after discovering that his wife is having an affair. Not only has Sherry been stripped of his masculinity, but he has also lost his authority as head of the household. His son, Alan, for whom he paid to have a private education and then go on to university, is now effectively middle class and Sherry feels threatened by this. Sherry believes that Alan is also ashamed of his father for ‘making a living by being a lady’, even though his act is ‘good enough for Royalty’, as Sherry points out.

 

Sherry in drag

Sherry is a monarchist. His ‘idea of England’ as Stuart Hall refers to, is an imperial one, with ‘a commitment to what Britain has shown herself to be capable of, historically…rooted in ‘feelings about the flag, the Royal Family and the Empire’ (1978: 147). The film was made at a time when the Royal Family was relatively free from scandal, and it could be argued that the strong Royalist sentiments of the time were a reaction again to the crisis of the period. Princess Anne’s wedding was celebrated in the year of the film’s release, and the Jubilee came four years later. These celebrations were part of a trend of nostalgia, as Britain desperately looked back to the Coronation; a time when it was coming out of a period of austerity and rationing and was looking forward to better times.

Sherry constructs part of his national identity around his monarchist values, and name-drops the Queen at any given opportunity, his brief meeting with her, being the highpoint of his career, and a boost to what little ego he has left. He stretches the story, however, beyond credibility, telling two young campers that his Royal command performance was by special request from her Majesty, and that his job at the caravan park is merely a ‘paid holiday’. Later, we get a glimpse of a photograph of the occasion. The Queen is greeting a group of entertainers after their performance, but Sherry is on the back row, and not in close proximity to the monarch, which puts paid to his later claim that he’s shaken hands with her.

The argument that ensues is triggered by Sherry’s not knowing the proper way to eat cake during middle-class ‘tea’. The vicar’s Georgian silver tea service, handed down from his grandmother is a symbol of inherited wealth. Mary expresses her admiration for it – she sees it as a symbol of ‘family’, whereas, Sherry is intimidated by it. He tries to go one better by saying that he has eaten off gold plates with the Queen. The claim is so ludicrous that no one believes him for a minute, and the lie is further compounded by Sherry’s saying that it happened first at Buckingham Palace, then Windsor Castle. Sherry wrongly believes that an association with Royalty gives him ‘class’, not realising that those who do have class might not necessarily give a damn whether he has met the monarch or not. He also attempts to speak of his relationship with the Queen in ‘show business’ terms by saying she has ‘warmth and star quality’. This is an attempt by Sherry to exclude the vicar and underline his allegiance to the Queen, and in turn demonstrate her supposed loyalty to entertainers.

The Garden Party

Sherry’s façade then slips. He stops speaking in Received Pronunciation, throws down his pastry fork and eats the cake with his hands, much to the disgust of everyone else. By trying to break their pretence by disregarding the rituals of eating with a fork, plate and napkin, he reduces eating to its most basic function and makes it grotesque. He then also admits to his working class status by arguing that he has ‘slaved himself into the ground to make a gentleman’ of Alan. When his lie about having eaten with the Sovereign fails to convince, he desperately claims that he has ‘shaken hands with her’. Even this is a lie, and one which his wife refuses to back him up on. The bitterness of Sherry, and his lack of identity is fore-grounded in a scene which could have come as light relief, set as it is in an English country garden, away from the bleak and depressing campsite. The setting, however, throws Sherry’s inadequacies into relief. He doesn’t fit in with the middle-class traditions of the past, and without the support of his family, and uncertain job prospects, his future is uncertain too.

If earlier depictions of the holiday camp in films such as Sam Small Leaves Town (1937) and Holiday Camp (1947) attempt to construct an ideal working class community in the pre- and post- war, in The Best Pair community falls apart, prefiguring an emergent pessimism, expressed in the crisis of the three-day week.

Bibliography:

Angeloglou, Maggie, 1975, Looking Back at Holidays (1900-1939), EP Publishing

Betjeman, John 1974, A Nip in the Air, London: John Murray

Hall, Stuart, Critcher, Chas, Jefferson, Tony, Clarke, John, Roberts, Brian, 1978, Policing the Crisis, Mugging, the State, and Law and Order, London: Macmillan

Staples, Terry, 1997, All Pals Together, The Story of Children’s Cinema, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Walton, John K., 2000, The British Seaside, Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century, Manchester: Manchester University Press

The Phantom Ride: Then and Now

The phantom ride was a popular genre or filming technique of silent cinema. For the production of these films a camera was attached to the front of a train or other vehicle in order to capture the excitement of speed and motion. These early films usually only ran for a minute or less and often appeared as a fairground or theatrical attraction. For example, the early film pioneer R. W. Paul made a film entitled On a Runaway Motor Car Through Piccadilly Circus (1899) ‘which showed the view from a car ‘speeding’ through the streets’, probably created by ‘under-cranking’ the camera during filming (Chanan, 1980: 286).

Of perhaps more interest here, however, is Paul’s film from the previous year, A Switchback Railway (1898), for which a camera was attached to the front of a rollercoaster. Barnes (1983) comments that ‘audiences in those days were not accustomed to such cinematic view-points [sic] and would have found the film much more thrilling than we do today’ (Barnes, 1983: 17-18). He goes on to say that it is ‘an interesting film and still entertains, but its appeal today is far different from that which was originally intended’ (Barnes, 1993: 18). It is a valid comment, but it could be argued that Barnes is considering the film in the context of it being a novelty and a contrast to the ‘complexities of modern-day cinema’ (Barnes, 1983: 18). What should be considered is that although the phantom ride disappeared as a subject matter in its own right, due to the ‘narrativization of cinema’ and longer running times, it became incorporated into the narrative as a momentary ‘attraction’ (Elsaesser, 1990: 60; 56).

As Charles Musser suggests, as early as 1899 phantom rides ‘became incorporated into the travel narrative, enabling the showman to literalize the traveller’s movement through time and space…G. A. Smith made a one-shot film of a couple kissing in a railway carriage – a gag which had comic-strip antecedents. He suggested that showmen insert Kiss in the Tunnel into the middle of a phantom ride, after the train had entered the tunnel’ (Elsaesser, 1990: 128).

In an echo of R. W. Paul’s ‘switchback’ film, an exciting rollercoaster ride scene appears in the Blackpool Pleasure Beach sequence in Hindle Wakes (1927). The camera shots cut between point of view (POV) shots from the front of the rollercoaster, and shots of the main protagonists Fanny Hawthorn (Estelle Brody) and Allan Jeffcote (John Stuart) reacting to the thrill of the ride. Other Pleasure Beach ride POV shots appear in Sing As We Go (1934) and the documentary Holiday (1957), again combined with reaction shots from the holidaymakers in order to construct a thrilled reaction from the cinema-going audience. 

 

 The Big Dipper sequence from Hindle Wakes (1927)

In later years, the phantom ride also reappeared elsewhere in a different guise. One such example was the ‘Cine 2000’ at Alton Towers theme park which attracted visitors between 1980 – 1992. This was a large dome-shaped cinema which the audience stood inside, immersed in POV shots being projected on the concave ceiling of the dome. As the author of the Alton Towers Almanac website comments:

The Cine 2000 was a must have attraction in the early eighties, with many other parks around the country also installing them at about the same time… The movie itself was made up of specially filmed scenes on roller coasters, racing cars, and such like. The idea worked well, and many times I can remember people falling over, as they completely lost their sense of balance while watching (Alton Towers Almanac).

Today, phantom rides also appear as a marketing tool on the Blackpool Pleasure Beach website and on the Pleasure Beach YouTube channel, which features POV videos from the front of the Pepsi Max Big One, Infusion, and Revolution rollercoaster rides, for instance. Similarly, there are numerous amateur videos uploaded on YouTube by thrill-seeking holidaymakers who have either filmed their POV of the rides, or else, turned their cameras onto themselves to capture their faces as they scream. The phantom ride may have faded as a cinema genre or subject, but these examples prove that it still lives on today in some form, with marketing teams and amateur filmmakers considering the POV shots from these rides as worthwhile content for sharing on the internet.

POVs from 'The Big One' from the Pleasure Beach YouTube channel

Bibliography & External Links:

Barnes, John, 1983, Pioneers of the British Film, London: Bishopsgate Press

Chanan, Michael, The Dream That Kicks, The Prehistory and Early Years of Cinema in Britain, 1980, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul

Elsaesser, Thomas, (eds) Early Cinema, Space, Frame, Narrative, (1990), London: BFI

www.towersalmanac.com/areas/rides.php?id=47

www.blackpoolpleasurebeach.com