It’s a catholic body of work that can seamlessly incorporate 1) a magic marble that gives 1950s children unlimited access to toys from Bermondsey market, and 2) Michael Elphick threatening to brutally murder two errant schoolboys and leave their bodies on a remote Essex island. But the Children’s Film Foundation was never afraid to diversify, and the BFI’s latest collection of films from the CFF archive is testament to this laudable spirit of electicism. The Children’s Film Foundation Bumper Box Vol 6 is fresh on our shelves, and has been lovingly compiled – as ever – by BFI producer Vic Pratt, part of the team also responsible for the institute’s long-running Flipside series of rarely-seen British films.
It’s always a delight to catch up with Vic. On a balmy Spring morning, we linked up over Zoom for a genial chat about this latest box set.
Here’s how the conversation went:
Bob: I love the way you promote these CFF releases, Vic. It’s summed up by your opening line in the booklet: “Is the woe-filled modern world getting you down… again? Fear not, friend, for help is at hand”. We live in genuinely troubling times, so does it almost feel like a public duty to give people little shards of light with things like the CFF box sets?
Vic: Yeah, totally. And these films are a reminder of the analogue world, right? They all revolve around objects and possessions and lived experiences. They’re about the fun you had outdoors with your friends. Not the virtual friendships you get through the internet, but a very tangible kind of experience. Which I have a suspicion we’re drifting away from – although I’m glad to see that kids now are discovering books and comics and records and watching things on discs again. So I’m hoping things will push back the other way.
But yeah, these are terrible times around the world, and my key philosophy is to bury your head in the sand! (Laughs). Watch some old films and remember the good old days.
I know of people who find genuine respite from their worries in watching these sets. I’m one of them.
We do get people writing in, saying “Please tell me there’ll be another set!”. Because every time we put one out, people seem to assume it’ll be the last one. But I’m really proud that we’ve kept on doing them. They have to be cost effective to make, which is why they’re on DVD rather than Blu-ray, and we have to able to do everything in-house. But they’re great fun for me – I love working on them.
What’s the selection process like for these sets? Do you have a permanently-evolving shortlist of films that you’d like to include?
Over the years, I’ve been watching as many CFF films as I can. But because the budget is small, a lot of the time I have to draw on films where there’s already a pre-existing master… and then, if there’s a meagre amount of money, I can spend it on getting some other films copied. So it’s a case of balancing “new” films that nobody has seen for decades with assets that we already hold in the vaults. It’s a bit of a juggling act, and you’re not always sure where it’ll get you.
This set actually took on a theme of its own – there’s a lot of travelling around the countryside in these films, and lots of examples of obsolete transportation! Which wasn’t something I’d thought about, but I love it.
Which leads us neatly into the earliest film on the set, Mystery on Bird Island, from 1954.
A very early one!
It’s about smugglers stealing birds’ eggs from the uninhabited Channel Island of Burhou. Which I assumed was fictional… but it’s not, it’s real, and the CFF actually filmed there. It looks amazing.
I had to look it up as well. That film has some great travelogue footage. And it’s a reminder that the CFF were very careful in those early days – they’d faced some criticism, with people asking “Is this stuff really healthy for our kids?”. We see these films now as being wholesome and white-bread, but in the 1950s the CFF was seen as a dangerously radical liberal learning tool. There was, genuinely, some trepidation: there had been a big flap about horror comics, and lots of teachers and educationalists were sharpening their knives. So the CFF took careful steps to balance the entertainment with a bit of education, and as a result we get some really nice shots of those islands, together with early glimpses of eco-consciousness. Which is something we see repeated throughout the CFF’s canon: there are often villains trying to steal birds’ eggs, or messing with the balance of the natural world. And it’s down to the kids to deal with them, because the adults are usually a bit too slow.
You’ll also notice in this film that the councillors are all having a booze-up before they go to their session at the Civic Hall. And you think “Wow, really? It’s not even mid-day!”
Just taking the edge off, Vic…
But they haven’t even had breakfast!
I also love the ease with which the kids in this film organise a huge street demonstration – complete with a marching band, and enormous placards reading ‘PROTECTION FOR PUFFINS’!
I know, if only all demonstrations could be that much fun! They’ve turned it into a celebration, it’s great.
The next film on the set is One Wish Too Many, from 1956, and it’s a touching glimpse into the austerity that kids were dealing with during that period. The two children in this film find a magic marble that can grant them anything they desire – and they use it to give themselves a couple of small toys from the local market. They can ask for literally anything in the world, but that’s all they want.
I always remember my old man saying that, after the war, he didn’t eat a chocolate bar again until 1954. So the little things that you’d never had absolutely became the things that dreams were made of, and I really like the smallness of those desires. We’re so greedy these days, we want everything now, but the kids in this film just want these little toys, and it’s lovely.
And isn’t it a nice bit of animation, seeing the marble rolling about by itself? And the old lady forced to stagger backwards across the street? There’s real imagination at play here. And it was all shot round Bermondsey, which was still war-torn at that point, it had been completely blitzed. So we get all these lovely shots of places around the docks that had been absolutely decimated by the war.
It’s our first step into the uncanny on this set, and it crackles throughout with a sense of real weirdness. There’s a scene where the children use the marble to freeze time, which normally means actors attempting to stand completely motionless – with very unconvincing results! There’s always somebody blinking or shaking or wobbling their finger. But in this film, it’s done to perfection. Did they take still pictures of the cast, then blow them up into huge backdrops for the kids to act in front of?
Yes, that’s it. Ingenious, isn’t it?
It’s really impressive. That scene feels like something from The Twilight Zone – but The Twilight Zone was still three years away.
Totally. They had no money to work with, so they had to be really inventive. But if life gives you a lemon, make some lemonade! So they got out there and filmed these great shots in the street, and the very fact that they didn’t have the budget turned Bermondsey into this kind of fantasy space. It really does tie into our childhood dreams, where your bunker was just a blanket thrown over a couple of chairs.
Despite the lack of budget, there are some pretty impressive stunts at the end, including a swinging crane and a runaway steamroller.
Yeah, they did great things with very little money. And again, with outmoded forms of transport – those kind of things reappear all the way through the CFF canon, over and over again in different variations.
I’m always amazed by the technical knowledge that CFF kids seem to have, too. In our next film, The Cat Gang, a small boy’s suspicions about another gang of smugglers are raised by one of the villains wanting a battery for his car. “Most modern cars have 12 volt batteries, so why does he want a 6 volt battery?”. He’s about eight…
Yes! It’s from 1958, when – if you were a kid reading Eagle comic – you’d be seeing pull-out spreads of “the airliner” with cross-sections of all the engines. There was a real childish fascination for all that stuff in the 1950s. The kids in CFF films are often able to drive cars – their dad will say [wags finger] “You can’t go on the roads, you know”, but there’s always a farm somewhere nearby. They’ve got this instinctive wisdom that the adults seem to have left behind.
And The Cat Gang is one of my favourites. I was too young to have seen it the first time around, but I love it now. If you like old cars, this is the film for you.
Rockets from the Dunes takes us into the 1960s, and has some more stunning location work – this time all filmed around the village of Croyde, in Devon.
And I believe the village hall from the film is still there! Chris Witty, who is in this film, sent me a recent photo of himself standing outside it, and it looks exactly the same. Although they might have ripped out the asbestos by now. It’s amazing – these places weren’t build to last, but they’ve been made to last.
It’s an interesting film from a cultural point of view. It’s about local kids wanting to race their sandyachts across the beach, but falling foul of impending Army manoeuvres. And, for most of the film, the Army are the villains of the piece – the young soldiers themselves are pretty rude and aggressive towards the kids. Is this the end of the age of deference?
I think it might be! Heading into the 1960s, Mary Field – the first head of CFF – had just left, and things were starting to veer towards a more liberal and less deferential space. The kids got hairier and more diverse, their backgrounds were a little broader, and there was a slight sense of subversion lurking beneath the surface. There’d been a bit of activism in the earlier films, but now things started to head much more in that direction.
Rocket from the Dunes has a little cameo from Hilary Mason, too – who I instantly recognised as the psychic from Don’t Look Now.
I watched that and thought “I know her”! The faces that you see turning up in these films give us a real journey through British cinema.
Which takes us neatly to Davey Jones’ Locker, from 1965. Filmed around Comino, a Maltese island, with a bunch of wannabe divers led by a pre-fame Susan George. Playing the improbably-named Susan Haddock! Somebody was taking the mickey, surely?
[Laughs] Presumably she’s no relation to Captain Haddock? We’ve got Anthony Bate in this as well, a very upstanding character actor, very stern and no-nonsense. We were talking about the CFF getting a bit anti-establishment, but this one perhaps re-emphasises that we still have to trust the people in charge.
Also… I was never very good at swimming at school, so watching this film fills me with the slight twinge of dread I got from heading into the deep end! The kids in this are all saying “We wanna go diving”, but it looks far too scary to me. I’d have stayed in the hotel.
I was staggered to read in your booklet notes that they did all their own underwater stunts. The cast were chosen for their swimming abilities, and they all went on a crash course in skindiving.
I couldn’t believe that, either. And when I see Anthony Bate snapping out his orders, I can just about believe that they did what he told them! There’s some lovely, lush underwater photography in this film – and that amazing 1960s library music as well. Even if you’re not into physical activity like me, you can still appreciate the undersea scenes. They reminded me of my old Viewmaster reels, with the fish of the world swimming past in all their glowing colours.
The CFF always seems rather reactive to popular trends of the time. Is it possible with this film that somebody had seen Hans and Lotte Hass on TV and thought “We could have a go at that…”
Absolutely, yeah. They’ve got a bigger budget for this one, too. It was very unusual for the CFF to film abroard, but they could do it if they agreed to plug, say, a certain shipping line or a hotel. So, just occasionally, you’ll get a story set in a certain resort or on a cruise ship.
There’s always at least one moment on these sets when I think “Oh my God, I remember that…”, and a long-buried memory from my childhood is rekindled. This time, it came during Davey Jones’ Locker…
Oh, really?
Yeah, it’s a tiny thing – the handwritten sign on the beach hut door. The one that actually says “Davey Jones’ Locker”. I hadn’t realised, but I saw this film when I was about seven, and it was the first time I’d ever heard the phrase itself. Certainly it was the first time I became aware of it referring to the bottom of the sea.
Oh, that’s cool. Wow. This film was actually hard to find for a while because it was spelt both ways in the records – “Davey” and “Davy”. It was a bit of a detective job. So where did you see it?
At school. There was a little after-school film club, and we often watched CFF films.
On 16mm?
I think so!
That’s all it takes – who needs a fancy projector or a screen? [Laughs] A square on a sheet, that’s what you need.
I don’t even think we had that. I think they were just projected straight onto the whitewashed wall next to the school dinner serving hatch.
Perfect. With a slightly stale smell coming from the kitchens?
There was no “slightly” about it, Vic…
Oh, even better. An overpoweringly stale smell coming from the kitchens!
Let’s move onto Lionheart, from 1969. Three children sheltering a fully-grown lion in their dad’s barn. It’s got no overtly uncanny elements at all, but it’s riddled with this strange hallucinogenic quality. The opening scenes, of Andrew opening his bedroom curtains to see a lion in the garden, could easily be a childhood dream.
Yes, that’s true. I guess they’re taking the idea of the almost mythical wild beast, and embedding it into the structure of a travelling circus. The lion has escaped, and as you say there’s a kind of weirdness about everything. The idea that these kids could actually hide a lion, then go down to the local shops to buy some meat for it. From Jimmy Edwards! It’s incredible stuff. There are some great character actors in this film, actually – Joe Brown and Irene Handl are both there, too.
It all seems to exist in this almost alternate universe version of the Home Counties. In that respect, it made me think oddly of Jon Pertwee-era Doctor Who. There’s even a troupe of hapless UNIT-style soldiers rampaging around the countryside.
It’s definitely a bit “Five rounds rapid!” They want to kill the lion, and again it’s the kids who have to be eco-conscious and protect the wildlife. It’s a thinly-veiled dig at the pretentiousness of the middle-classes, too. They’re all sitting around saying “I’d quite like a nice lionskin rug”.
Every single adult in this film seems to want the lion – who has done no harm to anyone – shot dead. Surely, even in 1969, there were such things as tranquilizer darts?
Exactly. Even the dad is saying “You won’t kill him with that, it’s not a big enough bullet”. Isn’t that amazing? Imagine having a father who just wants to discuss different bullet sizes with you. What kind of a father-son relationship is that?
It does feel sometimes as though CFF films operate in the same world as 1960s and ‘70s British comics. That weird, heightened version of the everyday British childhood.
Which comics did you read?
Oh, loads of them. The Beano. The Dandy. Whizzer and Chips, Whoopee, Nutty, Buster, Cheekly Weekly.
Any serious adventure strips?
Not so much, but I can see the link between those and CFF films. But even comics like The Beano seemed to share the CFF sensibility. It’s like a parallel universe British childhood: “Whackings” from teachers wearing mortar boards and “slap-up feasts” of mashed potato with sausages stuck all the way up the sides.
Yeah, it’s like an enclosed universe where none of these things invite comment or raise eyebrows. It’s quite normal that escaped lions should be roaming around the countryside, isn’t it? Nobody ever says “this is a bloody bizarre thing to happen”, they just casually decide how best to hide the lion before it’s taken back to the circus.
Then it’s just “Right, get it on the back of the truck, cheerio!”.
We’ve talked before about the CFF canon being an alternate British history of British film, but sometimes it feels like it’s actually an alternate history of British life.
It’s definitely a parallel universe, where finding a magic marble is just as likely as two crooks keeping you prisoner all night. They’re just different kinds of magic. As the kids would say these days, it’s a strange journey.
The weirdness is compounded on Smokey Joe’s Revenge, the next film on the set. Here, we find Gareth Thomas from Blake’s 7 playing a cheery neighbourhood policeman who casually tells the kids how to get away with riding an enormous, sentient traction engine around their village.
That’s actually a film that I saw the first time around, and it’s top drawer stuff. If you’re of our generation of CFF kids, it ticks all the boxes. I actually saw that one in my school hall. Our teachers would rent these already quite knackered 16mm prints from a company called Filmbank, and they’d screen them the day before half term.
One of them was Smokey Joe’s Revenge, and I loved it. It has yet another outmoded form of transport, then it heads into this surreal space where the engine starts laughing – “Ho Ho ho” – and talking to the little girl in the film. There’s a lot of slapstick, some grumpy adult characters, and the engine ultimately destroying the village fete. The local vicar has his stall demolished, everyone has ice cream cones stuck to their heads, and all the kids are riding Chopper bikes and running around in flared trousers. That film is the sweet spot for me, and it’s exactly how I remember it. It’s brilliant.
And it was written by Patricia Latham, a name I’ve seen a lot on these CFF sets.
Yes, there are certain CFF names that crop up again and again, perhaps because it was actually quite difficult to get the tone of these films exactly right. Patricia Latham was one of the handful of writers who could do it every time. There are lots of CFF films that I’m trying to get out there, and sometimes I have to take a punt – I’ve never seen them, they’re only on film masters, and I think “OK, if I’m going to blow the budget and get this transferred, it had better not be a crap one!” But if I see Patricia Latham’s name on there, I know it’s not going to be a piece of rubbish. It’s going to have a certain polish.
The film on this set that really speaks to me is the next one – Black Island, from 1978. Two mismatched teenagers abscond from a school trip, row across the lake to a seemingly deserted island, and find themselves held captive there by two escaped convicts. It reminded me a lot of The Hostages on the previous box set, which I also loved.
It’s very much in that same gritty area. It reminds you that these films weren’t always just about frivolous things – there’s a real dark edge sometimes. Everyone in Black Island is a bit incompetent, none of them are particularly good at anything. Often in CFF films, the kids at least are really clever, but in this one everyone’s a bit of a duffer and nobody really knows what they’re doing. The teacher loses the kids in the countryside, the kids don’t know what to do, and the crooks can’t handle their own freedom. It’s really peculiar.
It reminded me of those ill-fated field trips on Grange Hill, when Roland Browning would inevitably find himself lost or injured in the middle of nowhere. I spent the whole film thinking about that, and then Mike Savage – who played Roland Browning’s dad – suddenly turned up playing a policeman.
Isn’t it brilliant when that kind of thing happens?
Can we show some respect for Michael Elphick in this film, too? He gives a great performance.
Yes, he’s terrific. He’s so sinister, and I like the fact that he was allowed to be so hard-edged. Just as with The Hostages, they don’t try to coat the film in sugar. There’s a real darkness there, and Elphick absolutely looks and behaves like a violent criminal.
When he tells the kids he’s going to kill them, you believe him.
You do.
I’m always a bit cynical when people talk about “hard man” actors because my default reaction is “Well you can’t be that hard – you went to drama school!” I’ve met a handful of genuine hard knocks in my time, and I don’t believe any of them went to RADA…
There’s definitely a difference between real-life hard men and blokes who act in EastEnders!
…but I’ll make an exception for Michael Elphick, who always convinces me that he could genuinely do you some damage. See also: Alan Lake.
Absolutely. And I’ll put in another word for Robin Askwith in The Hostages, who totally flips his customary cheeky-chappie persona on its head and plays a very convincing mean man, smashing up Mummy’s mirror.
I think that final phase of the CFF, from the very late 1970s to the mid-1980s, has become my favourite era. Before you started releasing these sets, I would almost certainly have plumped for the early 1970s films as the sweet spot, but that final wave actually has some brilliant, gritty pieces of drama.
It’s absolutely a golden period. It has a different feel, doesn’t it? There was a creeping cynicism coming in. Maybe the political realities of the funding process were becoming more apparent, and the CFF realised it was reaching the end of the line. Future governments weren’t going to be putting their backing behind the CFF for much longer.
Did the CFF maybe realise it had to compete with increasingly gritty children’s TV drama, too? Grange Hill started in 1978…
Totally that. TV meant that kids just weren’t going to see these films at the pictures any more. So in that final phase, CFF films were being dual-purposed for TV and for cinemas. And, as they came to the end of that era, they definitely filled them with some ambivalent and unusual double-edged themes.
Which brings us to the final feature on this set, Danger on Dartmoor. Written by Audrey Erskine Lindop, who also wrote one of my favourite Flipside Blu-ray releases: I Start Counting, from 1970.
Yeah, and they share some interesting dramatic points of contact. They both have a strong female lead investigating a tumbledown old house and having to come to terms with a threatening situation.
But Danger on Dartmoor is from 1980, so at least the kids have a pocket calculator to help them.
That was a key thing for me! It very much chimed with what was happening in my life around that time. Not long afterwards, I had a ZX81 computer with 1K of memory, and I still was holding onto the impossible dream of actually owning a ZX Spectrum. But before all of that, I had a Texas Instruments calculator. I remember sitting there on Christmas Day doing sums! We mentioned the small dreams that kids had during those times, but I really wanted that calculator. I remember looking at the glowing numbers thinking “This is great”.
And, at the end of the film, our main character Louise gives her calculator to escaped convict Barry Foster to help him pass the time in prison. He might be going down for a ten-year stretch, but at least he can amuse himself by tapping “5318008” into his calculator and turning it upside down.
[Laughs] We’ve got our second Blake’s 7 connection in that film as well…
Yes, David Jackson!
Almost by accident, there’s a Blake’s 7 theme to this set.
Do I also get bonus points for also spotting Ben Aris from Hi-De-Hi? He played Barry Stuart-Hargreaves’s replacement, Julian Dalrymple-Sykes.
Well in that case, it’s also a Hi-De-Hi themed set, because Leslie Dwyer is in Lionheart. Mr Partridge! He goes into a reverie about a circus he watched in 1925.
Can we talk about some of the short films on this set as well, please? It’s great to see another episode of The Chiffy Kids, the knockabout 1970s serial. This time, they’re trying repeatedly to set fire to an itinerant busker played by Alfie Bass.
I spent all the money I had on the short films on this set. All the features were films we already had, from various sources, so I was able to spend the few quid that was available on shorts that had never been released before.
And yes, isn’t it amazing what we were allowed to do as children in the 1970s? “Just chuck a bomb down his chimney, it’ll be alright!” But I like how it’s actually the girls that put on the commando make-up on and climb onto the roof with the incendiaries.
Meanwhile, your fascination with Peter Butterworth continues unabated. There’s another of his 1950s CFF slapstick shorts included on this set.
I love Peter Butterworth, and I’m doing my darndest to get every single one of his CFF shorts onto these sets. There are six of them, and I think we’ve put out four of them now. This is all in the absence of a Peter Butterworth box set – which would be my dream, but might not make perfect business sense! They’re great little films, he pretty much wrote them all himself, and he did all his own stunts too.
He’s really, really good. He was such a gifted physical comedian. He drew on the greats like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but also on the new breed of comedians – people like Norman Wisdom. He was a very accomplished performer.
I was counting up, and since you started releasing CFF films in 2012, I think you’ve put out 72 full features over various discs and box sets.
That many? Going back to the discs with three films on them?
Yep.
Seventy-two. Wow.
So how much of a dent have you made on the whole CFF catalogue? Are there still plenty of films left to release?
I think there are about 200 features in total in the catalogue, and that includes short films and serials. I’ve been trying to crack open the CEF [Children’s Entertainment Films] too, the precursor to the CFF. One of their short films, Forest Pony, is on this set. The whole CEF catalogue has thirty or forty films, but they’re more costly to include because they haven’t been out of the vaults for years and they have to be transferred. So, every time, I have to plan ahead and see what we can afford.
But basically… if people keep buying these sets then we can keep doing them. And if people stop buying them, then we won’t be able to do any more. So it’s really great that you’re talking to me about these sets – you’re one of our staunchest supporters and I really do thank you for it.
It’s a total pleasure. I’m hugely grateful to you, too! So the crunch question – are you already working on the next CFF Bumper Box Set?
We’ve got to see how this one does first. The pre-orders are good, and after a couple of months we’ll know whether it’s sold well enough to start planning the next one. There’s certainly stuff that I’d like to include… and as usual, I invite anyone to suggest their favourite films to me. I really do listen, I really do make a list, and I really do try to get these films out there. The main issue is always cost. Films that are already available on some kind of tape in the archive are easier than films where we have to scan them from scratch. And serials can be tricky when it comes to money – I know a lot of people want [1974 CFF serial] The Boy With Two Heads, and I do too! It’s just awkward when there are lots of little film elements and the costs start to add up.
But please – ask me. Tell me what you want. I’m listening.
So you’ve absolutely put films on these box sets as a direct result of suggestions from the people who buy them?
Yes. Including on this set. Lots of people have asked for Davey Jones’ Locker and Black Island. I also heard from a Steam Engine Appreciation Society who were particularly keen on Smokey Joe’s Revenge. I think they wanted to show it at an event, and there wasn’t a master. But I was able to say “I can’t do it now, but if you wait a couple of years, we’ll put it out…”
It helps if the films are good, too. If people write in and request a rotten one, it may fall by the wayside [laughs]. I always check with my co-curator, Trevona Thompson. She’s a copper-botttomed quality check controller. If I show Trevona a film and she laughs, I know it’s going to be a good one.
But I absolutely want to share the wealth, and for everyone to feel they can suggest something to me.
And while we’re chatting – what’s happening on the BFI Flipside range? You have a new release out called Negatives, a film from 1968…
I think you’re going to dig this one, it’s really good. The director Peter Medak went onto all kinds of great things, but this was his first film. It’s a bit challenging at first, it doesn’t take any prisoners in terms of over-explaining itself, and you have to engage with it without necessarily being told how to feel about everything that’s happening.
But it’s a very immersive piece, very powerful, and it was made in a very 1960s style. And perhaps, in a sense, it dismantles the kind of the crazy stuff that people got up to during that period. It has a great cast – Glenda Jackson, Diane Cilento, Peter McEnery – and it’s pretty much a chamber piece, with just the three of them engaged in this strange sex game love triangle. It’s a film that says a lot about the male experience, and the inability of the man to open himself up to external emotional influences rather than centering himself on his own fantasies and obsessions. It’s very good, very strange, with a groovy soundtrack by Basil Kirchin. And it’s very much a Flipside: it’s never been seen much, it’s looks lovely because it’s all been restored, and we’re in touch with Peter Medak, who is very pleased that it’s finally available in the UK. It’s been a long time coming.
Huge thanks to Vic, as ever, for his time and boundless enthusiasm. The Children’s Film Foundation Bumper Box Volume 6 is available here:
https://shop.bfi.org.uk/children-s-film-foundation-bumper-box-vol-6-3-disc-dvd-set/
And Negatives is here:
https://shop.bfi.org.uk/negatives-flipside-053-blu-ray/
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