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Digital Exclusive SLEEPWALKER
1984, BFI Flipside, 48m 54s, £19.99, PAL DVD-2/BD-B By Lloyd Haynes
Pitched halfway between a
giallo-inflected horror film and a sharp social satire in the spirit of
Lindsay Anderson (BRITANNIA HOSPITAL), South African-born writer-director Saxon Logan’s third feature was almost immediately shelved in Britain (despite consid- erable acclaim at the Berlin Film Festival) when an audience of potential distributors failed to comprehend the film’s potent mix- ture of gore and politics. As a re- sult, SLEEPWALKER remained unseen in public for 14 years. This dual format release from BFI Flipside is one of the most wel- come additions to their catalogue of rare and half-forgotten cult British films.
Husband and wife Angela (Joanna David) and Richard (Nickolas Grace, ROBIN OF SHER- WOOD) arrive during a violent thunderstorm at the run-down country home of Angela’s friends Marion (Heather Page) and Alex (played by acclaimed filmmaker Bill Douglas) for a typical English middle-class dinner party. From their first meeting the atmosphere is strained and unwelcoming: Ri- chard and Alex take an open dis- like to one another, which increases after the foursome are forced to eat at a nearby restau- rant when the kitchen window is shattered, ruining the meal that Marion has been preparing. As brother and sister, Marion and Alex’s relationship is already fraught with difficulties—she’s a struggling writer who considers Alex to be her inferior—and these tensions become alarmingly exag- gerated when the group sit down to their evening meal. Fuelled by
too much wine, Marion is scorn- ful of Alex’s writing abilities (“He’s not a writer, he’s a translator... I think”) and then humiliates him further by revealing that he once attempted to strangle her while sleepwalking (an incident framed as a bad dream early in the film). However, the conversation be- longs to the grotesque Richard. An arch-capitalist businessman, he is a truly repugnant character— sneering, snobbish, homophobic and obsessed with monetary gain (“Money, massive unemployment, marvelous!”).
Saxon Logan and his co-writ- ers John Varnom and Michael Keenan excel in using Richard as a mouthpiece for all that was rot- ten in Britain under Margaret Thatcher’s leadership, with the rise in the number of people out of work (“Sucking the blood out of the system... If you can’t go to work, go to Hell,” he sneers), the attempted dismantling of the trade unions by the government and privatization of public ser- vices, all of which were often met with compliance by the English bourgeoisie. Even Alex, a social- ist, doesn’t get off lightly: after Richard has embarrassed him yet again by describing him as “meat-eater that can’t bear the blood” he has to stagger outside to vomit. It’s when the group re- turn to the house that the situa- tion becomes unbearable, for all concerned. Angela, the most submissive and sympathetic character, is appalled at her husband’s drunken flirtation with Marion, but finds it much easier to turn a blind eye rather than confront it (again, a reference to the middle-classes’ passivity during Britain’s lurch towards the Right in the 1980s). But af- ter lights-out, the film dispenses with the satire and enters the
65-A Video Watchdog 179 Digital Exclusive
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nightmare territory of Dario Argento and Mario Bava, with the house invaded by a mad killer.
Shot over five days for a mere £40,000, the film is anchored by splendid performances (Bill Dou- glas is especially good in a rare acting role). Paying homage to Hammer, Argento, Bava and
James Whale’s THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932), SLEEPWALKER benefits enormously from Nicho- las Beeks-Sanders’ striking cam- erawork and skilful use of color and expressionistic lighting. Also noteworthy is a delightful set of cameos from veteran character
actors Fulton Mackay (NOTH- ING BUT THE NIGHT), Michael Medwin (O LUCKY MAN!) and
Raymond Huntley (Hammer’s THE MUMMY) in the restaurant scene.
Equally striking, if very differ- ent in tone and execution, is
Rodney Giesler’s THE INSOM- NIAC (1971, 44m 52s), one of three films included as bonus material. Morris Perry—a familiar face on British television, usually in villainous or authoritarian roles in the likes of THE AVENGERS, DOCTOR WHO, THE PROFES- SIONALS and THE SWEENEY— stars as a man living with his wife and children in a dreary London tower block whose difficulty sleep- ing sees him cross over into a fan- tasy world of sparkling sunshine and beautiful green meadows (in fact he draws back the bedroom curtains to reveal the same scen- ery his kids dream of escaping to). Encountering a tuxedoed gent (Simon Merrick) on a country road who requires a lift, his passenger invites him to a nearby mock Tu- dor mansion where a party is in full swing. His casual attire clashes horribly with that of the other guests (all of whom are
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