Offbeat

This fabulous book is all about the films that don’t get invited to dinner when they’re celebrating British Cinema. Well, they might be invited, but if they are they’ll have to sit at a separate table, and if Brief Encounter or The Third Man or the collected works of Powell and Pressburger talk to them, it’ll only be to ask them to pass the salt.

Before we go any further, I should point out that I like and admire (and in the case of P & P, venerate) Brief Encounter and The Third Man. And all the other classics from Kind Hearts and Coronets to The 39 Steps, The Wicker Man, A Hard Day’s Night, and on and on. May they play forever.

But my viewing life wouldn’t have been half as much fun without The Squeeze, I Start Counting, Bronco Bullfrog, The Appointment, Jigsaw and Charlie Bubbles. Not to mention that whole string of tough thrillers Stanley Baker made in the 50s and 60s: A Prize of Arms, Hell Drivers, Hell Is A City. Yet when the British Film Institute, or Time magazine, or Empire start compiling their lists of the greats, these are the ones that – often, although not always – never get mentioned.

There’s a lot I don’t like in here too, but I’m not going to list them because, as Hollywood director Joe Dante once said, “Every film is someone’s favourite,” and the whole point of this book is to put the spotlight back on a lot of really good forgotten work. The fact that I can’t take **** ******’* films is neither here nor there.

So if you’re as much as a film fan as I am, and you like any of the films I’ve listed in paragraph 3, this is a book you'll have a blast with.