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Reviews
Steptoe and Son Ride Again (1973)
A worthy sequel to both the series and the earlier film
I watched it again last night as it was broadcast on BBC2. I hadn't seen it for quite a while although the earlier film was on a few months ago. They never fail to make me laugh. Whether some of the comedy is lost in time and translation - both the series and the films possess a good deal of London humour, west London in particular - I don't know but there are a good many gems to be found in the film.
Diana Dors' character makes only a brief appearance near the start of the film. It's when she pulls Harold onto her bed after offering him both her dead husband's clothes (and then herself!), that it's revealed that her old man is only freshly deceased beside them! The return trip from York put paid to poor old Hercules the horse. Two hundred miles and three days on the road would tire any horse so a replacement is needed. Unfortunately Harold gets conned at Southall (horse) market and Frankie Barrett - brilliantly played with menace by Henry Woolfe - fleeces him for his cash and sells him a blind greyhound instead! Barrett fleeces him again later in the film but I won't spoil it. Let's just say his embezzlement became more ambitious!
Look out for the location shots of White City stadium. It was one of the biggest stadiums in the UK, was built for the London Olympics of 1908 and hosted all manner of sports including speedway, greyhounds and rugby league (in the 1930s, being the home of the short-lived London Highfield) before being torn down in the mid-1980s. The site is now occupied by the massive extension to BBC Television Centre. The local tube station is still called White City.
The 39 Steps (1935)
Superb
This is proof - if ever it were really needed - that age doesn't really affect a film's quality. If anyone needs to see some of Hitchcock's finest moments, this should be among them.
Playing fast and loose somewhat with John Buchan's (1916) novel, Hitchcock nevertheless directs a fast-moving, riveting story of political intrigue and paranoia with some truly hair-raising scenes (the Forth rail bridge scene springs to mind).
Hitchcock makes his usual cameo appearances. Apart from the one noted here, he's also in one of the early scenes after Arabella Smith fires the pistol. The music hall audience panics and make for the egress, 'Hitch' being one of the crowd. He's also one of the detectives seeking Hannay after he leaves the train on the Forth bridge.
There are some really sparkling lines of dialogue: cold, hungry and tired after tramping across the moors in (what I suppose is Fife), Hannay encounters a crofter (played by John Laurie, later famous as Fraser in Dad's Army): Crofter (to Hannay who has asked him for a bed for the night): Can you sleep in a box bed?" Hannay: "I can try" Crofter: "Can you eat the herring?" Hannay: "I could eat half a dozen right now".
Once inside, the crofter's (much younger) wife asks Hannay the following, after hearing that he lives in London: "Is it true that the women in London are beautiful?" Hannay: "Some of them are but they wouldn't be if they stood next to you." My word, what a charmer!
In case you were wondering, the thirty-nine steps in the original book referred to the steps down to the sea at a secluded bay, the spy involved arranging to be extracted by a submarine when the tide had covered up to the thirty-ninth step from the top. This is not alluded to in the 1935 film version, other than to give a name to the network of spies involved. Hannay was a mining engineer and Arabella Smith in the book is a man! It's a short-ish film too, coming in at about an hour and a quarter. It's occasionally on British terrestrial telly and never fails to please. Why they tried to remake this (in 1953 and 1978) is anyone's guess as you can't improve on perfection.