REVIEW: Severin serves up two docs on different auteurs
Photo: The Ghost of Peter Sellers was recently released by Severin Films. Photo courtesy of Severin Films / Provided with permission.
Often when one thinks of the cinematic offerings of Severin Films, horror and exploitation films immediately come to mind. One only has to look at the company’s current summer sale to see why these impressions rise to the surface. Titles available include Ferat Vampire, Dead Sleep, Night of the Sharks, Monster Shark and The Shark Hunter, among others.
But for those dedicated to Severin’s entire catalog, there are other joys to be had. This reviewer particularly likes the many documentaries that accompany the boutique label’s releases, whether they are small features on cast members and directors, or full-on documentary features that help contextualize a filmmaker or time period.
Two recent examples prove that Severin is as much a documentary company as it is a warehouse of fiction.
Severin recently released a trio of fictional films from Peter Medak. Among the titles are Negatives starring Glenda Jackson, Sparrows Can’t Sing (with Medak as assistant director) and The Odd Job with Monty Python’s Graham Chapman. The fourth release is the superb documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers, which details the story of the director’s failed attempt to make Ghost in the Noonday Sun, a pirate comedy starring Sellers and Spike Milligan.
The film, which is directed by Medak, showcases how the filmmaker is still troubled by the catastrophic shoot, which saw him dealing with a bevy of problems, including the difficulties of filming on open seas (let’s all take a lesson from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws) and the odd behavior of Sellers, a bonafide comedy star who found success with the Pink Panther films and Dr. Strangelove.
The Ghost of Peter Sellers feels like a cinematic cousin to Terry Gilliam’s Lost in La Mancha about the Brazil director’s attempts to make a film about Don Quixote, this one starring Johnny Depp. Ghost in the Noonday Sun was similarly ill-fated, but thankfully archival footage still exists. And the film actually did see a limited release in a sub-par version (one wishes Severin could have included the movie on the Blu-ray set).
Scenes of Sellers, Milligan and the cast are spliced together with modern sequences involving Medak investigating what went wrong. One of the most revealing scenes is when Medak visits Milligan’s agent in London; amazingly she still holds court in the same flat she had in the 1970s. There’s a touching moment when she reaches across the table, grasps Medak’s hand and tells him it’s OK. Clearly the debacle of the film has haunted the director for decades, and this documentary seems to be a chance for him to find peace and redemption.
Another recent Severin release is the mega box set Bloody Legend: The Complete Cliff Twemlow Collection, featuring all of the films from this renegade Manchester filmmaker, songwriter, bouncer and actor. One of the included films in the collection is Mancunian Man: The Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow, an extensive documentary on the life and legacy of this forgotten cinematic presence.
This reviewer was completely entranced by Twemlow’s story and how he found the funds and inspiration to make so many action and horror flicks, most of them B-movies that stressed martial arts and fistfights over narrative technique and pathos. Still, he found success, especially with G.B.H., an abbreviation that stands for grievous bodily harm.
The documentary, directed by Jake West, is an all-access pass to Twemlow’s life. There are scenes of his upbringing in Manchester, a factory town where the future filmmaker grew up in humble abodes. There are interviews with his former wife, his son and the many actors who were in the Twemlow circle, appearing in each of his films in the 1980s and 1990s. There are stories of movie shoots falling apart, creative choices to somehow finish the movies and the lengths Twemlow would go to see his creative vision realized. Interestingly, the film talks about the fact that Twemlow wasn’t as interested in releasing his films as he was in making them; this probably kept his cinematic profile unknown to many fans who otherwise would gobble up his action splatterfests.
Severin has the blood and guts of its fictional catalog, and fans are eating up every last bit of cinematic oddity during the company’s current summer sale. But these less-heralded but equally important documentaries allow dedicated viewers the chance to go deeper into why the fictional catalog matters so much. Medak and Twemlow couldn’t be more different, but their stories have some parallels and have now been preserved thanks to stellar Blu-ray sets.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Ghost of Peter Sellers and Bloody Legend: The Complete Cliff Twemlow Collection, featuring Mancunian Man: The Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow, are now available from Severin Films. Click here for more information.
