SATURDAY NIGHT OUT

 

I'm currently reading BEASTS IN THE CELLAR: THE EXPLOITATION FILM CAREER OF TONY TENSER, written by John Hamilton. The book takes a deep, insightful dive into the movies produced by British showman-impresario Tony Tenser. Tenser made a number of provocative genre films during the 1960s-early 70s that are now regarded as cult classics. Tenser wasn't interested in gaining critical plaudits or mainstream respect--his specialty was making movies that got attention and drew audiences. 

SATURDAY NIGHT OUT (1964) was one of the films Tenser made in partnership with Michael Klinger for their Compton production company. The story--five sailors and one passenger looking for excitement during a night in London while their ship is docked there--has all sorts of exploitative possibilities, but the movie looks quite tame today. The London presented in SATURDAY NIGHT OUT is a black & white, dreary, unfriendly, working-class place, and none of the men on shore leave experience what they expect (except for one of the sailors who literally has a girl in every port, and who happens to spend the entire night with her in bed). The intertwined stories of the men have an air of sadness, loneliness, and frustration about them--there's no sense of a mod Swinging London here. 

SATURDAY NIGHT OUT is actually more notable for its cast than anything else. The various ladies that the men meet in the film are played by such actresses as Heather Sears (from Hammer's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA), Erika Remberg (CIRCUS OF HORRORS), Francesca Annis (Polanski's MACBETH), Vera Day (QUATERMASS II), Toni Gilpin (THE GORGON), and Margaret Nolan (GOLDFINGER). Martine Beswicke is in this film too, even though you barely get a glimpse of her, and on the male side there's Bernard Lee (the original "M" of the James Bond films) and Nigel Green (ZULU). The pop group The Searchers also show up to perform a couple of numbers, although their appearance seems forced into the proceedings. 

The women who get the most screen time are Heather Sears as a kooky chatterbox who falls for one of the sailors, and Francesca Annis (who I'll always think of as Agatha Christie's Tuppence in the British PARTNERS IN CRIME TV series) as a vulnerable orphan who forms a bond with the youngest and most innocent of the men on leave. 

SATURDAY NIGHT OUT was directed by Robert Hartford-Davies, who at times tries to bring a documentary-like tone to the various happenings. The movie was written by brothers Donald and Derek Ford, and they and Hartford-Davies would work with Tony Tenser numerous times. According to John Hamilton, the movie didn't make as much of a splash as Compton's other "slice of life" melodramas, and one can understand why after viewing it. None of the characters are particularly interesting or charismatic, and the men on leave seem far too willing to walk right into trouble (or just too naive to begin with). SATURDAY NIGHT OUT is very much a product of its time, but it does rate attention from film geeks and fans of 1960s British genre cinema.