SKINFLICKER

(originally posted at the 'Shite and Sound' closed Facebook group, 2016)

SKINFLICKER (1972)

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Now we all love a bit of found footage, right? Ah, I see you're all stifling yawns and sidling away. Well let's book seats on that movie time machine once again and transport you back to an era when the concept was brimming with experimentation and daring. Although using those terms in relation to a BFI-backed political project may also require a reverse shift through the decades to give validation to any commentary.

Penned by Mr. Controversy himself, Howard Brenton (of 'The Romans In Britain' and 'Dead Head' infamy), and directed by Tony Bicat (later to work mainly in telly - you may recall his odd TV play 'Star Trap' for London Weekend from the late 80s), SKINFLICKER is a pioneering example of the POV/first person format. Unlike most of the films adopting the style today, it seems to give its technical detail some measure of authenticity - it's clearly displayed that the terrorist trio at the centre of the story have an 8mm colour camera, that they have hired a professional with 16mm black and white gear and some experience to assist their aims, and not only is the right camera used at the correct time, it also appears that there are credible reasons for every single shot to be taken and that one of the group is always holding the camera. You'd expect these to be the primary, basic considerations behind any construction of a production of this nature, but as we all know standards have slipped.

Imagine if Dudley Moore had been a member of Baader-Meinhof. That's what we're confronted with here, as our freedom-fighting cell comprises a "schoolteacher", a "nurse", and a self-styled "Christmas card manufacturer/chrysanthemum debugger", the latter hyperactive contrast to his earnest partners-in-abduction being played by Henry Woolf as a sort of diminutive human Tigger. The group's aim is to kidnap a prominent politician, and to torture and hang him on camera, capturing a record of their anti-state crimes as they go. To this end they have employed a fellow traveller, 'Georgie', a self-confessed "dirty filmmaker" who at least brings a steady hand and a knowledge of framing and set-up to the proceedings, skills which doubtless came in handy during his grubby alternative line of work. The 16mm footage dominates the 41 minute running time, with the amateurs let loose mainly on filming the long, silent drive to the country mansion dwelling owned by their target and the brutal and ruthless doing-in of the minister's spouse and young son on the lawn.

SKINFLICKER apes Peter Bogdanovich's TARGETS in comparing cheap horror thrills with disturbing real-world atrocity, as the gang arrives back at their dingy breeze-blocked hideout with their prey completely wrapped in bandages. As they begin to unwind his bonds and tend to the ghastly, bloody wound they've inflicted on his forehead, Georgie (William Hoyland) burbles on about 'Terror Of The Egyptian Mummy', a fabricated entertainment he's been to see at his local flea pit that week ("you don't mind it being a load of old tat, do you, a horror film?"), also commenting quizzically "you used ketchup on him, for effect?".

SKINFLICKER's message is inevitably but probably purposely muddled - Jan Dawson's contemporary review in the Monthly Film Bulletin criticised it for leaving viewers "as voyeurs to an act of violence, yet cheated of the context which would enable us, if not to judge them, then at least to understand the act of our own voyeurism". I'm more than happy with Bicat and Brenton's ambiguity myself, since it speaks volumes. As does their clever editing of the 'money shots'; Georgie would be appalled, but the killing of the M.P.'s family, the grim hanging of this pontificating figure, and the climactic destruction of the kidnappers via their own hand are all obscured by jump cuts, reel ends, or the fact that the camera may need to be left unmanned in order for mayhem to take place. Much symbolism abounds - the removal of the politician's dentures seems to render him speechless as well as literally toothless, yet with a rope around his neck he manages to find a voice worthy of the hustings (Dawson suggests this may be the imaginary point of view of his abductors, which makes some sense); the initial invasion of his property takes place amid garden greenery as he plays cricket with his son, an anticipatory scarring of the English ideal put forward by John Major two decades hence; and as the bandages unravel, Georgie is so incredulous at the identity of the selected victim ("but - ee's famous! A real nob!") that he is driven to remark "he really is there? This isn't some nightmare?", Brenton beautifully reminding us that despite the verite approach, his work has all been staged for the cameras every bit as much as the grisly efforts of the determined and vicious protestors he has invented for this fiction.

SKINFLICKER is presented to us as a Government training film, using 'actual' footage from the deadly episode, now headed by a stern yet calm narration (John Martin, sounding not unlike Iain Duncan Smith!) and a series of white-on-red caption cards - 'Shock', 'Revulsion', 'Despair', 'Deviants', 'Animals', 'Danger', 'Search', 'Contain', 'Destroy'. The effect of which all anticipates the participatory aspect of the stunning 'Test' sequence from Alan J. Pakula's paranoid classic THE PARALLAX VIEW from a couple of years later.

SKINFLICKER has been rarely seen since the seventies but was shown by the BFI in Brooklyn in November 2012 and has played in other international centres. It is currently available as a BFI Player rental selection online.