– composed by Delia Derbyshire – is absent from the films and replaced by a racy, but rather ordinary, orchestral score). Terry Nation, the television writer who came up with the Daleks, had held on to the rights of his creation and was free to exploit his weaponised bollards with whomsoever he wanted. This is the reason the Daleks were also spun off into comic scripts that didn’t feature Doctor Who characters.
In order to part-finance the second film, Amicus struck a £50,000 deal with Quaker Oats. In spite of being levelled by Dalek death rays, London is completely riddled with product placement: the huge billboard posters prominently displayed in the film suggest that in the far-flung future, the British eat nothing but, – surprise, surprise – Quaker’s Sugar-Puffs.
The sets in both films are impressive, especially the post-Dalek-induced apocalypse scenes set in London. The Daleks – which, who knew cancelled, come in a variety of colours denoting rank – look twice as menacing in vivid colour. It’s only a shame the proposed Dalek flame-throwers were nixed at the last minute in case they gave kids nightmares – or the wrong sort of inspiration for their homemade versions. Instead the Daleks in both films fire deadly gas (actually carbon dioxide from fire extinguishers).
The distinctive flying saucer in which the Daleks travelled to London – their evil plan to remove the Earth’s core via a huge mine in, of course, the suburb of Shepperton – was dusted down and recycled three years later for the utterly terrible British sci-fi film The Body Stealers. That film starred Neil Connery – brother of Sean – and was probably responsible for his almost total screen obscurity since.
It has to be said, the Dalek films are far from classics – even the legend Peter Cushing delivers a ropey turn – but they do have a lot of charm and they don’t even approach the awfulness of the TV Doctor Who of the mid to late 1980s. However both films drive ‘true’ Doctor Who fans to despair because – they say – Peter Cushing is an imposter. And it’s true, the films took a lot of liberties with the Doctor Who legend.
If you weren’t familiar with the TV show in the 60s – if you were American, say – you’d be flummoxed by the backstory, so the producers understandably simplified it for the widest possible audience. What was unforgivable for fans, however, is that Peter Cushing played a dotty human grandad who was an inventor not a Time Lord and whose surname was, actually, ‘Who’. The true Doctor is extraterrestrial and nobody knows his name. The suffix ‘Who’ is applied by the people he encounters, as in ‘Who are you?’ That’s the reason why you never see Peter Cushing included in the canonical lineup. You could argue that this all seems a bit churlish – after all, this is Peter Cushing we’re talking about, one of the true greats of cult British films and also a cast member of the original Star Wars (and recently reanimated by CGI for Rogue One). However, there are some things in the universe you tinker with at your peril – and chief among them is the Doctor Who backstory!
ANY SIMILARITIES TO MARY POPPINS ARE PURELY COINCIDENTAL. HONEST!
An apprentice witch, a trio of cockney urchins and a cowardly spiv search for the missing component to a magic spell useful for thwarting the Nazi invasion of Britain. Not a recently released wartime MI5 file, unfortunately, but the plot of Disney’s ballsy, brash comedy-musical Bedknobs and Broomsticks, tipped at the time to become an absolute classic of the studio’s canon.
It had all the makings of one: a stellar cast that included Angela Lansbury, David Tomlinson, Roddy McDowall and Bruce Forsyth; a cracking set of songs by the Sherman Brothers; impressive special effects and animation sequences; classic baddies (in this case, the German Army); and orphans. It’s a lovely, light-hearted fantasy worthy of Christmas classic status. So why did it fail to make back its productions costs?
Partly, perhaps, because it was so similar to Mary Poppins that the two merged in the consciousness of audiences. It featured the same star – David Tomlinson, Disney’s go-to English twit; the same London setting; the same crew; similar themes (families are weird but they’re all we’ve got); and stylistically very similar songs because they were written by the same songwriting team. Standout number ‘Substitutiary Locomotion’ is basically a rewrite of ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’, and ‘Portobello Road’ could have been in either film and few would notice the difference. In fact, another of its showstoppers – ‘The Beautiful Briny’ – had been written for Mary Poppins but was dropped at the last moment. In Bedknobs it was simply revoiced for a frantic live action animated sequence that looked like a continuation of the one in… Mary Poppins.
The film was released in 1971, a week prior to the death of Roy Disney, who had been in charge of the magic castle since his brother Walt died in 1966.
That’s not to suggest that the film’s lack of success played a part in his death – it opened strongly and was five times Oscar-nominated – but Roy’s eye not being on the ball might explain why the film reached the theatres at an overindulgent (and hardly child-friendly) three hours long. A second release was cut to a more endurable two hours and then again to 90 minutes – with all but two of its songs excised.
Bedknobs was largely studio shot in California, including, sadly, the tremendous song and dance number ‘Portobello Road’. There were, however, significant location scenes filmed at Corfe Castle and the surrounding village in Dorset. The three child stars were Roy Snart, now a software manager in Basingstoke; Ian Weighill, now a train driver; and Cindy O’Callaghan, last seen in EastEnders as Andrea Price and now a child therapist.
‘My overriding memory is how well the three of us kids got on,’ says Cindy, sitting down for a cup of tea with Ian and Roy for the first time in nearly fifty years. ‘I don’t remember any of us, however young we were, being naughty. It was a really professional engagement and Angela sort of set the tone. We upped our game because of her, she was very much an inspiration for me.’ None of the kids could sing or dance when they were cast for an all-singing, all-dancing musical and Angela Lansbury’s motherly encouragement could only go so far. ‘Oh I was terrible, I was terrible then and an appalling singer now,’ groans Roy, shaking his head. Ian concurs: ‘I was a thirteen-year-old English boy, and I had to dance throughout the “Substitutiary Locomotion” song.’
During the animated sequence, the kids had no idea what was going on at all on what, to them, was a completely empty sound stage. ‘All we could do was listen to the crew,’ remembers Roy. ‘They’d shout out, “There’s a fish right next to you. Now talk to the fish!”’ The overall experience, though, they all agree, was magic. In one instance literally. ‘We did this one scene with the brass bed knob. We were all gathered around it and it turned pink, it was amazing.’ Cindy was equally impressed, ‘I remember! I still wonder how they did that, don’t you?’ Ray thinks he knows: ‘It’s easy, it’s just Disney magic, isn’t it?’
HEIL ZAT!
In Nazi Germany sport had one purpose, to strengthen the German people. But not all field games were acceptable to the Führer. Hitler thought the quintessentially British sport of cricket wasn’t butch enough for his Aryan master race.
There is, apparently, a churlish but somehow characteristically Adolf reason for this.
It’s reported that in 1923, having watched a team of British former prisoners of war play cricket and learnt from them the rules, Hitler raised a team to play against them. To his chagrin, Hitler lost. But what really incensed the would-be Führer was that he wasn’t allowed to change the rules of the game. Whatever; Hitler’s interest in cricket was short-lived. He may or may not have stormed off the pitch in a huff but he absolutely
