“Rocky is the boss, Fiddler’s never lost…”

Warning: exploring the bonus features on the BFI’s new Children’s Film Foundation box set can lead to an untreatable case of Chiffy Kids earworm. A single episode of this glorious, sun-drenched 1976 serial is included, and – for the last six weeks – its highly infectious theme tune has steadfastly refused to shift from my brain. The Chiffy Kids are, in the words of the song itself, here to stay.

It’s been worth it, though. The BFI’s fourth Bumper Box Set of vintage CFF films boasts nine hour-long features, all redolent of packed-out Saturday morning screenings down the local Odeon or – in my case – the weekly after-school “Film Club” in our freezing school hall. And, as ever, it’s a release masterminded by BFI Blu-ray and DVD producer Vic Pratt. Not only is Vic the man behind over a decade’s worth of CFF releases, he’s also a prime mover behind the BFI’s Flipside range of decidedly strange – and often long-forgotten – British films.

It’s always a delight to catch up with Vic. So, on a quiet Thursday morning in May, we settled down with mugs of tea to discuss automated Y-front dispensers, ZX81 rampacks and the “post-psychedelic splurge” of early 1970s CFF…

Here’s how the conversation went…

Bob: Is it fair to say that Children’s Film Foundation films were almost a gateway into genuine horror films for a lot of kids? Even though it’s not especially frightening, I still count A Ghost Of A Chance as being the first scary film I ever really watched. I think I was six when I saw it at my school’s Film Club, and it genuinely disturbed me.

Vic: Well, you know about my experience with Mr Horatio Knibbles? I actually recount it in the booklet for this box set. It’s quite close to your experience of sitting on the floor at school watching CFF films, but this was at the Camber Sands Pontins. My dad plonked me down in the ballroom and left me there, and just a few minutes of that film scared the pants off me. They had to call my dad back, and he apologetically took me back to our chalet. They were glad to get me off their hands!

It’s a safe scare, though. CFF films are like those weird Public Information Films from the Central Office of Information. You carry them with you. They provide high watermarks of your childhood that you really treasure later in life. A frisson of excitement that’s hard to match when you’re an adult. 

Is there a tipping point for the CFF when it comes to weirdness? This box set feels like a good barometer – the 1950s films are very much about everyday things. The Dog and the Diamonds is about kids not wanting to lose their pets, Blow Your Own Trumpet has a teenage boy simply wanting to join his local brass band. But from the late 1960s onwards, it all goes a bit crazy – there are suddenly ghosts, UFOs and time travellers everywhere.

There’s a post-psychedelic splurge! You definitely get an abundance of aliens and strange creatures. The first fruits of that are Mr Horatio Knibbles and Blinker’s Spy Spotter, which is on this new set. On previous sets we’ve had Kadoyng – about an alien with a big thing sticking out of his head – and The Sea Children. The films from that period have a sense of eco-awareness, too. The CFF were way ahead of the curve in that department. All these modern, liberal hippy ethics start oozing into their films, something that maybe wasn’t so apparent in the early days.

You do still have some weird things in those earliest films, though. Just prior to them becoming the CFF, they were called the CEF – Children’s Entertainment Films. This was [CFF chief executive] Mary Field’s first experiment, founded in the 1940s. They made a film called The Dragon of Pendragon Castle, about a baby dragon that walks out of the sea – it’s rather like a Sea Devil, from Doctor Who! It sits in the basement of a house, working their central heating. So this crazy stuff was already happening, but then yeah… it suddenly becomes really ultra-weird, and everyone is in tie-dye and tank tops and flares. And, as we head into the 1970s, everything becomes very luridly-coloured and psychedelic.

Let’s go pick out a few highlights from this new set. The Dog and the Diamonds, from 1953, might confound a few preconceptions about the early CFF. That first wave of films can often be very middle class, with children messing around on ponies and speaking like minor members of the Royal Family. But The Dog and the Diamonds is steeped in post-war grime. The kids are literally filthy. And they’re under threat of having their pets rounded up by the council rent collector, who openly tells them he’ll have the animals put to sleep.

Yes, again you’ve got a moment in time. It’s about the experiment in communal living that would balloon in the 1960s. The building of council tower blocks on the sites where all the bombs had been dropped. And you’ve got the kind of people Ray Davies would sing about, all being displaced from their old slums into these new flats. They’ve got modern decor now, but they’ve brought their aspidistras with them… and the old lady who runs the pet shop looks like she’s from some Edwardian drama. It’s an amazing snapshot, with genuine grubbiness. It’s a Peter Rogers film, and he was incredibly good at that kind of democratic, proletarian film-making: something that he’d expand upon with the Carry Ons.

Then there’s The Stolen Airliner, from 1955. Directed by Don Sharp, who I know from his later work on quite a lot of Hammer Horror films. Was this actually his first film?

I think he’d done a few bits and pieces before then, but yeah – he was another great director who worked for the CFF on more than one occasion. He brings a real slickness to that film. Sometimes I wonder whether the music really fits the action… there’s a dramatic scene where the kids are being chased around the aircraft, and the music is twiddling around like they’re having a nice Sunday afternoon stroll! I suspect they were slightly concerned that kids would be scared, so added some rather jovial music. There’s a real sense of sense of responsibility put upon the kids in that film: reading the map, jumping out of the plane… and they got over the budgetary limitations by having this wonderful animated scene of the kids coming down with parachutes. Because I have to tell you, Bob… they didn’t really jump out of that plane.

Another illusion shattered. And I guess it’s another film that’s very reflective of its time – on this occasion, the earliest rumblings of the Cold War. Revolutions in distant countries, and spies at large in Good Old Blighty. There’s almost a whiff of James Bond.

Yeah, there are a few CFF films that really embody that feeling. It makes me think of those British B-Movies of that period – we’re heading into the era of the Edgar Wallace films, and I think The Stolen Airliner is as close as you’d get to a kids’ version of that. The foreign spies are carried over from the story papers and the comics of the time.

The Big Catch, from 1968, is a really interesting film. We’ve talked the different types of children in CFF films – the grubby working class kids versus the middle class swots – and that contrast is essentially the premise of The Big Catch. It’s about the friction that arises from kids from different backgrounds being placed together in a tiny Scottish fishing village. 

And again, it’s very progressive. It wasn’t like they brought in a load of outsiders to make that film, they built the shoot into the community and used lots of local people. It was a very communal film-making experience, where a Scottish crew turned this little village into a film set for a few weeks. It wasn’t some Sassenach attempt to put on funny hats and sporrans, it’s a proper Scottish film.

Yes, I guess they could have shot it around the Isle Of Wight…  

Totally! I was talking to Douglas Weir, the technical producer on this set, who’s a Scot himself. He’s a big fan of that film, because it’s such a rough and rugged depiction of the terrain on that side of Scotland.

Blinker’s Spy Spotter, from 1972, is this box set’s headlong plunge into that whole world of 1970s weirdness. It’s the very strange tale of a boy inventor whose dad has created a revolutionary “Crystal X”, much coveted by a bungling mob of crooks! You mention in the box set booklet that it’s hard to watch this film without being reminded of Jon Pertwee-era Doctor Who. The dad dresses like Sherlock Holmes and drives a sprightly yellow roadster to his work at a secret research laboratory…

Yes, imagine if you shot 1970s Doctor Who with even less money! The car is just like Bessie, isn’t it? But it’s a lovely bit of film-making, and Bernard Bresslaw, as the head crook, is a vision in his red braces and brown suit. And if we’re talking James Bond connections, Milton Reid is in there, too – a Bond villain in big 1970s glasses! And I love Blinker himself, with his freshly-folded Y-fronts popping out of an automated drawer every morning.  

Blinker has the bedroom every kid wanted in the 1970s. 

Exactly! I don’t think I can have seen this film back then, because if I had… I would have said “Wow! I’m going to turn my bedroom into an emporium of inventions!”

They really let themselves go in this film. Hiding the secret formula from the laboratory inside a football? It’s inspired stuff. And they didn’t give a darn about the implausibility of having massive piles of cardboard boxes in the middle of nowhere, just so crooks could knock them over and fall into them. And people get soaked, as usual! Every nasty adult has to get a good soaking at some point in a CFF film. You need a bath or a stream for them to fall into – these films wouldn’t be the same without it. Blinker’s Spy Spotter has everything that would have done it for me as a kid.

But one question, Vic… what exactly is Crystal X? 

I would explain it to you, but you wouldn’t understand the intricacies of the chemical formulae.  

I guess you’ve probably signed the Official Secrets Act as well.  

That’s right. I’d like to tell you, but I’m afraid I can’t.

The Flying Sorcerer, from 1974, is good knockabout fun. Not for the only time in a CFF film, it essentially has time travel being invented by a bloke in a shed. In a quiet corner of his local airfield. It’s the most British scientific breakthrough imaginable.

Ha ha! And, talking about Britishness, what really appeals to me about this film… peanut butter plays a big part. At almost exactly the moment it first arrived in this country. It was an incredibly exotic thing to spread on your sandwiches! Peanut butter didn’t go on toast in those days, it went on thick white bread. You spread it around on your Mothers Pride.

As a kid, it was something I’d only heard of through watching Charlie Brown cartoons. He had it in his sandwiches at school.  

Wasn’t it weird? It suddenly became a thing! My mum brought home a jar of peanut butter, and it was a really big deal. Something the Americans had! It was up there with us discovering broccoli. And muesli. Things we just didn’t have in those days.

And don’t forget, Harry Booth – who wrote and directed The Flying Sorcerer – also directed two On The Buses films. And there are numerous scenes in The Flying Sorcerer when Bob Todd’s character feels quite similar to Inspector Blakey. It’s almost like the airfield becomes the bus depot! “What are you doin’? I’ll get you…” (shakes fist). I hope you enjoyed seeing him trying to escape from the dragon, with the dragon crawling slowly along on ball bearings. Its little feet are rolling around, but it’s not getting anywhere very quickly.  

Again, another illusion shattered. I thought that was CGI.

Ha ha! It’s better than CGI.

This might be the geekiest question I’ve ever asked anyone, but the young hero of The Flying Sorcerer is played by an actor called Kim Burfield. Do you know if he’s the brother of Cheryl Burfield, from Timeslip?

Oh my God. I fear you may have shown yourself to be the geekiest of all. I hadn’t drawn that connection, but I now salute you as King Nerd.

And I shall wear that crown with pride. If either of us find the answer, let’s make a vow to let the other know.

Absolutely, and we’ll put it in the booklet for the reissue!  

You mentioned earlier that, when it came to eco-awareness, the CFF were always ahead of the curve. And Mr Selkie, from 1978, is an incredible example of that. We’re currently deluged with news stories about sewage and pollution being pumped into our rivers and oceans. And this 45-year-old film feels sadly and relevant… it’s about a sea-lion that assumes human form to complain about his undersea home being destroyed in exactly this way.

Yeah, it’s a bit sad, isn’t it? You need a young kid like Greta Thunberg to point out things that adults are turning a blind eye to… and it was just the same in 1978. It’s a very prescient film, and when Mr Selkie projects shots of dying animals from the end of his umbrella, it’s pretty strong stuff.

That scene really took me aback.

Me too. It’s a really effective piece of eco-propaganda that made me think “Why aren’t we paying attention?”

Zara Nutley from Mind Your Language is running the council in that film, too. And don’t forget Samantha Weysom is also the little girl in The Appointment, the Lindsey Vickers film.

Oh, of course! I watched The Appointment a few months ago when you released it as part of the Flipside range. But I never made that connection at all.

Everything is connected! There’s Molly Weir as well, of course: Hazel McWitch from Rentaghost. She’s really good in Mr Selkie. I interviewed John Tully, the writer, who also wrote One Hour to Zero and The Man From Nowhere for the CFF. And he said that, with Mr Selkie, there were lots of wrangles on set about the script. It had to be rewritten lots of times until they were happy with it – and he said he still wasn’t happy. But I think it’s a real cracker, that film.

Let’s talk about the concluding film on the set, Gabrielle and the Doodleman. It’s from 1984, and it’s absolutely bizarre – but brilliant. Gabrielle is a bereaved, disabled little girl obsessed with playing computer games on her BBC Micro, and she attracts the attention of a group of mythological beings in a mystical realm, who make it their mission to improve her lot in life. The bungling “Doodleman” – played by Matthew Kelly – is despatched to her house via the Space Invaders-style game she is playing.

It’s a good example of how the CFF built the upheaval of new technology into their films. Although the first shock is seeing a CFF film shot on tape…

Yeah, it looks like a 1980s Children’s BBC programme. 

Totally! It’s the only one we’ve released so far that was shot in that way. This was pretty much the last call for the CFF. The money was running out, and I think they spent it all on the guest stars. It was a film specifically meant for TV… I don’t remember it, you don’t remember it, but I found it and just thought “Wow, we really need to release that”. It really captures the moment when the home computer was becoming the central object in our homes. And I also love the bit at the beginning, when Gabrielle is looking into the window of the video shop, and you see all the cassettes for rental! For folks of a certain age, like ourselves, that’s exactly how it was. That bit of glass between us and all the videos. You really liked this film, then?

I loved it. I get a massive buzz when films confound my expectations. I thought I was in for an hour of cheesy 1980s fun, and there’s definitely that element to it. But it also has a lot of depth. It’s about empowerment. There are a series of surreal dream sequences where Gabrielle gets to experience life without a wheelchair while her dad, who was at fault for the car accident that killed her mother, is now disabled instead. It’s extraordinary.

And there’s no happy-ever-after, is there? There’s no fix at the end – she doesn’t get out of her wheelchair, and she still has to live with her disability. It’s a powerful, adult message. There are no easy solutions.

And isn’t it a weird amalgam of stars, ideas and technology? To me, it really evokes the weird unease of the technological shift of that time. When we see Eric Sykes and Matthew Kelly running around inside a strange, red and black video wall… wow. At first, it reminds me of Escape Into Night, with those strange stones all surrounding the house. Then it reminds me of David Bowie’s video for ‘Ashes to Ashes’, which absolutely gave me the fear when I was a kid. The clown man walking along, in a negative red and white effect – God! And it also reminded me of the Doctor Who story, ‘Kinda’. That also had the kind of inverted video graphics that I found really scary. Video technology could be very disorientating and weird, and I think they used that very effectively in Gabrielle and the Doodleman.

They had zero money, but got a really good cast, too. Matthew Kelly, Gareth Hunt, Windsor Davies, Eric Sykes, Bob Todd, Josephine Tewson… and Lynsey De Paul! Maybe because she’d written the music, that strange song that Matthew Kelly sings, they asked her if she wanted to be in it?

It addresses one of the great concerns of the age, too – kids becoming obsessed with computer gaming. People are quick to criticise modern youngsters for spending too much time on their smartphones, but it’s not a new issue. For about five years of the 1980s, I was virtually surgically attached to a ZX Spectrum.

You and me both! Did you have a 16k or a 48k?

48k. But before that, I had a ZX81 with a 16k rampack.

Yes, the rampack! You had to be careful. If it wibbled, it could destroy the game. I used to Blu-tack mine onto the table, but it never really worked. 

But yeah, it’s weird how things come around, isn’t it? It’s been horror comics, then video nasties, then computer games, and now it’s smartphones or AI. “Oh my God! A computer can write, so the kids won’t learnt anything any more!” There’s always a cultural or technological bogeyman to frighten us all. For a while these things are seen as terrible threats, but then – when the establishment absorbs them and learns how to live with them – we realise they’re actually quite useful. But it takes a while for society to do that.

Was Gabrielle and the Doodleman a surprise to you as well, then?  

Yeah. What I usually go by is a catalogue, compiled by the CFF, of all the films they made – I like to browse through that. But they’d stopped updating it by about 1980, so after that there’s no really accurate list of what they actually produced. So I’m often kicking around databases on the net, or I’m even just in the vaults of the actual BFI archive, trying to find out exactly what’s in there. I was searching for anything with the CFF listed as the production company, and Gabrielle and the Doodleman just came up. It was a real discovery for me.

In each of these box sets, I’m trying to reflect the whole span of the CFF, and that major shift from the 1950s to the 1980s. How things changed during that period… but also how much stayed the same, because a lot did.  

Tucked away as an extra on this box set is a real hidden gem – an episode of a CFF series called The Chiffy Kids. It’s wonderful. It’s from 1976, and sees a gang of very hairy, flare-wearing kids camping on a farm and suspecting their youngest member has been eaten by Harry H Corbett. 

There are a couple of series of that! Twelve episodes, two sets of six. I’ve been road-testing these short films on the box sets, because I’m trying to figure out the most economically viable way of releasing them. We’ve done short films in the past as their own releases – have you seen Masters of Venus? It’s great, but no-one bought it and it got deleted almost immediately. So I’m very much aware that the only way I can continue doing these sets is for them to pay for themselves, and they have to cost virtually nothing to make. That why we’re now releasing CFF films in these Bumper Box Sets. Customers… no, not customers! I mean the people who like to watch these films! They’re getting value for money, because we’re jamming the sets full of stuff, and that brings in enough to keep the releases going.

That’s why we don’t do CFF films on Blu-ray any more. The cost is just too high. So we have to compromise a bit on quality, but it means we can get them out there. There are hundreds of films still to be released, and The Chiffy Kids is a real case in point – when I flick through the CFF catalogues, there are all kinds of similar series. We’ve also an episode of Chimp-Mates on this disc, which I think is a corker. And there are other series we haven’t dipped into yet – things like Chico the Rainmaker, and a great one with Charlie Drake, called Professor Popper’s Problems. I’ve got my eye on that. It’s just working out the best way to release them… it could be that we devote a whole disc on a forthcoming set to a serial, and still keep the other two discs for features.

I mean, I was really happy to get those three short Peter Butterworth films on the last box set. He was a brilliant comedian, and there are more of those films. It’s just working out whether it’s better to spread the films out like that, or whether we just put them all out in one lump. It’s a tricky one.

Either way, it’s reassuring to know you’re already looking ahead to future box sets.

Yeah, I hope we do another box set sooner rather than later. We’re doing a lot of the technical work on these films in-house now, and that’s brought the cost down a bit.

And just looking at… gosh, sorry. I was going to use the word “legacy” there.

I talk about “customers” and you use the word “legacy”! What’s going on here?

I know! But I’ve interviewed the director Mark Jenkin a couple of times recently, about his film Enys Men. And he absolutely cites the CFF as a big influence on his work. He specifically mentioned The Mine and the Minotaur. That must be a heartwarming thing to hear?  

Yes! And are you aware we’ve actually put a CFF film on the Enys Men Blu-ray? The one he really wanted was Haunters of the Deep. It’s about the ghosts of Cornish miners being trapped underground. Watching it again, I was thinking… my God, not only is it quite clear Mark has been influenced by this, some of the shots are almost the same! A real homage. Mark showed that film as part of the season he curated at the South Bank recently. You’re a Doctor Who fan as well, aren’t you?

Hell, yeah.

Do you remember when Tom Baker was about to regenerate into Peter Davison, and there was a spooky character called The Watcher, dressed all in white? There are lots of shots in Haunters of the Deep that evoke those scenes in my mind, and when I checked they were both made within a year of each other. 

And while we’re here… you and your colleague Will Fowler are the prime movers behind the BFI’s Flipside releases, restoring and releasing long-forgotten – and often rather strange – British films. What can you tell us about the latest Flipside release?

It’s called The Haunting of Julia. Are you aware of this film, Bob?  

It’s a real lost film, isn’t it?  

Totally. It’s a Richard Loncraine film starring Mia Farrow and Tom Conti. Mia Farrow is a recently bereaved mother who blames herself for her daughter’s death. She starts seeing a ghostly girl as she tries to rebuild her life in a house in Holland Park, and she’s led into a spiral of psychological trauma. It’s really strange and spooky, and Mia Farrow is great – she has a real talent for portraying strong and independent woman who are stressed and harassed by outside circumstances. We did a launch show at the South Bank the other week.

It’s also our first Flipside released on Blu-ray and 4K HD, for the full cinematic experience. Both discs are in the same box though, so don’t worry if you’re slightly out of date, like me. It’s just future proofed! Even my dad can play it, I had to crank him up to buy a Blu-ray player. It’s a really good, forgotten film that went into underserved obscurity for many years. But thanks to a chap called Simon Fitzjohn, who chased after it for a long time,  it’s been restored, remastered and it’s now back out there again.

Huge thanks, as ever, to Vic for his time and enthusiasm.

The Children’s Film Foundation Bumper Box Vol 4 is available here:
https://shop.bfi.org.uk/children-s-film-foundation-bumper-box-vol-4-dvd.html

And Full Circle: The Haunting Of Julia is available here:
https://shop.bfi.org.uk/full-circle-the-haunting-of-julia-flipside-046-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray.html

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