Britannia Hospital (UK, 1982)
Directed by Lindsay Anderson
Starring Leonard Rossiter, Graham Crowden, Joan Plowright, Malcolm McDowell

In the 1950s and 1960s Lindsay Anderson was hailed as a visionary, with If.... receiving the Palme d'Or and widespread critical acclaim. In the 1970s, he was regarded as intelligent but indulgent, with O Lucky Man! dividing critical opinion upon its release. By the 1980s, he was branded obsolete, with Britannia Hospital receiving the worst notices and lowest box office of his career. In hindsight that is a crying shame, since the film is both a return to form from O Lucky Man! and one of the most underrated films of the early-1980s.Britannia Hospital is the third and final instalment of the Mick Travis trilogy, coming nearly nine years after O Lucky Man!. Having been the centrepiece of the last two films, Travis (played by Malcolm McDowell) takes only a peripheral role here - he has risen from schoolboy revolutionary to coffee salesman and filmstar, only to wind up as a muckraking reporter with two stoned technicians. We can see through the trilogy a shift in semi-autobiographical emphasis from Anderson (If....) to McDowell (O Lucky Man!) and finally the nation as a whole.The film's biggest improvement on O Lucky Man! is the quality and integrity of its narrative. O Lucky Man! had so much to do, and so many stories to tell, that it ended up spreading itself too thin to achieve a knockout blow: it resembled pouring a pint of stout onto a very wide saucer. By confining itself to the events of a single day, in a single location, Britannia Hospital is more readily focussed. Even though it looks at many different groups of people, it succeeds as a microcosm of Britain in the same way that If.... did, and manages to be more universal even when it drifts into outright horror or fantasy.Britannia Hospital is also a very unusual and interesting mix of genres. It is on one level a farce, albeit one with a great deal more sophistication and ambition than the Carry On series or the work of Blake Edwards. On another level, it is a political drama, in which the organised and politicised working classes take on both the middle-class managers and the upper class establishment embodied by the private patients and 'HRH'. On a further level, it is a full-blooded horror movie which draws on the traditions of Hammer and grand guignol. Leonard Rossiter's snarling and repressed manager is in stark contrast to Graham Crowden's Rotwang-like mad scientist, in a performance reminiscent of Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood.Britannia Hospital is primarily a lament or requiem of modern Britain. By comparing the state of the nation to that of a hospital constantly facing a crisis, Anderson is lambasting both the old guard and the post-war governments which attempted to brush them aside. Where O Lucky Man! skirted around the notion of champagne socialists and the corruption of politicians and lawmakers, Britannia Hospital launches a vitriolic attack on all sides from all fronts, showing how much the post-war dream has been eroded by self-interest and misjudgement on the part of everyone.In light of Anderson's life-long association with the British Left, you would expect such a thesis to treat the treat union movement with a certain amount of sympathy. But Anderson is merciless, almost to the point of bitterness, in pointing out the duplicity of the union movement with regard to the aims of the people it claims to defend. The film begins with an absurdist vignette of an old man with hypothermia. The ambulance drivers barter their way past the picket line, only for the manto be left on a stretcher in the corridor because both the nurses and porters have clocked off for the night. As Rossiter's name appears he breaths his last; through little more than pedantry and selfishness, the health service is prevented from doing the one thing it was set up to do.Britannia Hospital finds the public and the private co-existing uneasily in the new welfare state. The plight of ordinary patients, for whom the NHS is a matter of life or death, is contrasted with the attitudes of the VIP patients in the private ward, who demand to be treated like royalty. Their number includes a child-eating dictator (a further nod to O Lucky Man!) who has taken up residence in his own private ward. When the catering staff go on strike, matron is forced to offer the private patients oranges for breakfast; her efforts are met with anger, disgust and racial epithets, with one general remarking: "I didn't spend forty years in India to end up with a lot of wogs!".The Britain depicted in Britannia Hospital is a country which is deeply fractured, being torn apart by violence, injustice, inequality and the threat of revolution. But again, Anderson doesn't just fall into the trap of making propaganda, turning out his own private Battleship Potemkin. He characterises Britain as a nation about to turn its back not merely on socialism and the achievements of the welfare state, but on idealism and intelligence as a whole in favour of the simplicity of brute force and tribal warfare. The riot scenes are kinetic and frightening, but they also have a heart-breaking quality, summed up by an image of a protester offering a riot policeman a flower, only to get her head smashed in with his baton.The film also has very little time for the media, with both sets of film crews coming in for a lot of stick. Mick's technicians (one of whom is played by Mark Hamill) are portrayed as sensationalist and lazy: while Mick is crawling around the hospital sticking his neck out to get the footage, they get stoned and laugh themselves stupid watching documentaries about battery hens. The BBC fare no better, coming over as sycophants who fabricate events around Dr. Millar to inflate his ego and make him feel more like a God.Despite Anderson's depression about this state of affairs, the film manages to tackle these pertinent and vital political issues without ever slipping into self-pity. Anderson's sense of righteous anger at what is unfolding is matched by fear on his part for the future of the country his loves, and by a feeling of pathos on the part of the characters. The humour is satirically vainglorious - for instance on the soundtrack, where Alan Price plays 'Rule Britannia' very slowly for maximum irony.There is a comparison between Britannia Hospital and the work of Pink Floyd around the same period, namely The Wall, the subsequent film helmed by Alan Parker, and The Final Cut which was accompanied by a 20-minute short. Britannia Hospital itself shares certain features with The Fletcher Memorial Home: it is a bastion for a bygone age based upon privilege and order, which has since been eroded and rendered all-but-obsolete. Running through all these projects is a theme of missed chances and regret, which will echo through the plight of future generations.Britannia Hospital is also an attack on positivism, showing the march of scientific progress continuing at the expense of mankind. One of the core themes of modernist art is Man feeling lost in a world which is constantly evolving, and which He at best struggles and at worst fails to control. In this case we have Dr. Millar, up to his old tricks again, as the maverick private pioneer being sponsored by (but not controlled by) the state.Where O Lucky Man! felt in places like The Island of Dr. Moreau, the horror elements of Britannia Hospital are a retuning of Frankenstein. It takes a story about humans trying to live forever, leaves in Mary Shelley's warnings about the dangers of progress, and adds disturbing allegories for social engineering. What begins with Travis finding foetuses in jars or freezers full of limbs culminates in a terrifying sequence where his head is grafted onto Millar's monster - it comes to life, only to attack its creator and disintegrate. The gore in these scenes is worthy of anything in Sweeney Todd or Lucio Fulci, coming virtually out of nowhere and being terrifying gruesome.But by far the highlight of Britannia Hospital is its final scene. With a cross-section of society gathered, from royalty to revolutionaries, Millar gives a passionate speech about humanity's need to reinvent itself and the inherent injustices of the status quo. He concludes by revealing 'Genesis', a giant brain which begins to recite from Hamlet before repeating the line 'How like a God'. It's a wonderfully judged paean complimented by creepy special effects and Crowden as his absolute best.There are flaws with Britannia Hospital. Some of the broader, more farcical comedy doesn't work, such as the clichéd sequence of Travis crawling out of the mass of people. And its sexual politics have not dated all that well: the random sex scene with the nurse feels jarring and unnecessary. But as both a plea for intelligence in a time of crisis and a savage social satire, it still holds up both on its own and as a fine conclusion to the trilogy. It's a twisted tale of compassion and caustic humour, and remains a hidden gem of British cinema.

Rating:
Verdict: A twisted triumph

Wake Wood (UK/Ireland, 2011)
Directed by David Keating
Starring Aiden Gillen, Eva Birthistle, Timothy Spall, Ella Connelly

The revival of the Hammer brand is a cause for triumph and tribulation amongst horror fans. Nostalgia notwithstanding, the rebirth of Hammer in and of itself indicates some kind of bright future for British horror filmmaking. But with this there is the risk that the new output cannot live up to the past, either in quality or in the precise, easy-to-identify trademarks which made the originals so endearing.Whatever the merits of Let Me In, the Hammer-backed remake of Let The Right One In, it lacked the essential visual and structural qualities which we associate with Hammer: the slightly creaky, strikingly-coloured blend of Hollywood studio convention and European grand guignol, delivered in a distinctively British way via several buckets of blood. But there is no such trepidation with Wake Wood, which is Hammer through and through.The stable name may be from another era, but Wake Wood feels like a product of the 21st century. This is not the output of a single studio, churning out films like a factory, but a series of smaller, more disparate production companies who can use the brand to get the distribution they deserve. The opening credits of Wake Wood list more than a dozen companies before we reach the title, a sign of how thinly spread the funding is and the price we have to pay nowadays for interesting low-budget films.In terms of its place in horror, Wake Wood prominently references a number of films and texts which are held in high regard. The central story about a couple grieving for their dead daughter is a clear nod to Don't Look Now, as is the mention of red in the girl's vision and the images of her wandering the woods in the (yellow) raincoat. An d there are huge hints of The Wicker Man in this couple's status as outsiders chancing upon a 'pagan' community. It's as though the film was written by someone who saw both films on a double bill, forgot that they were two separate entities and wrote their own version of what they perceived to be a single story.Outside of these prominent references, the film also tips its hat to W. W. Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw and Stephen King's Cujo in the more graphic scenes with the dog. But although it's situated deep in a particular area of horror, Wake Wood does gradually gain its own identity. As the various genre elements begin to play out, they afford the director a chance to experiment while having the security of knowing the outcome.

That said, the first 45 minutes are very slow-burning and deeply generic. This is the section of the film which most reflects the modesty of the production. The visuals are washed-out with very standard camerawork and simple editing, and there isn't a great deal in the dialogue to pull you in. As with a lot of genre filmmaking, there is some pleasure to be had from seeing all the pieces fit together. But by the time we have reached the halfway mark, we begin to feel like something's missing.For a film situated so strongly in the more emotive, 'lost child' end of horror, Wake Wood has a surprising amount of gore. There are pockets of blood and guts throughout the running time, with some being designed to shock and others being used to contextualise the events - for instance, Patrick's work as a veterinarian which leads him to befriend and work for Arthur. The most memorable example involves one of Arthur's farm assistants being crushed to death by the back end of a bull as it is being moved into a metal pen.As well as testing the audience's mettle, the gory parts of Wake Wood convey one of the main ideas of the film. The cycle of birth, life and death (and re-birth) is presented as one with immense agony at both ends and a chance for happiness or peace in-between. Both the cow calves and the resurrected version of Alice emerge from highly painful births - the former requires a Caesarian section on the cow, the latter a corpse being mangled and crushed, like Burke and Hare without the jokes.After the initial agony of childbirth, whether personal or by proxy, the time shared by Alice and her parents is one of sheer joy. In contrast to the macabre and gruesome ceremony which brings Alice into the world, these scenes are shot in almost glaring sunlight with permanent smiles on the parents' faces. It's a moment of immense catharsis for Patrick and Louise, albeit one which slowly returns to grief and then fear as Alice's fate begins to unfold.At the centre of Wake Wood is the story of a couple struggling to come to terms with grief and being unable to let go of their daughter on a spiritual level. The film uses the language of horror - blood, guts, pagan rituals and strange goings-on in woods - to approach the issue of grief in a manner which feels a great deal more honest, brutal and genuine than any number of more mainstream, 'sensible' films. Compare this film to Rabbit Hole, in which all the grief feels choreographed and sanitised, and it's easy to see which approach is more effective at cutting to the emotional heart.

This asset is confirmed in the performances of Aiden Gillen and Eva Birthistle, which are very naturalistic and feel genuine even in the most absurd moments of the film. Birthistle has something of Julie Christie's torment about her performance, refusing to constantly break down and having some kind of relationship with her child which stretches beyond the boundaries of this world. Gillen, on the other hand, has Donald Sutherland's stubbornness, having a desire to move on and occupy himself (with cows instead of churches) while also wanting to do what is best for his wife.The supporting performances, however, are more of a mixed bag. Timothy Spall brings much in the way of presence as Arthur, but his Irish accent comes and goes as he drifts back into his natural brogue. The elderly locals who oversee the ceremony are given small speaking parts, but these mostly end up like the women with the second sight in Don't Look Now: there's no awkward clutching of chests, but some of their comments border on the ridiculous. And the scenes of the pagan ritual are both creepy and a little bit snigger-inducing: fans of Hot Fuzz will almost expect the characters to start mumbling about "the greater good".The final third of the film, in which Alice's return to the grave goes horribly wrong, is where Wake Wood finally gets into its stride and starts to deliver the nail-biting thrills that we had been hankering for. The film takes the ending of Don't Look Now and marries it to the opening of Hallowe'en, so the symbol of the parent's grief is not only a murderous force but a seemingly unstoppable one. This section is spoiled somewhat by Alice dragging her mother down to the grave with her, a la Sleepy Hollow - there is nothing the mother had done which would have made her deserve such a fate. But this is partially mitigated by the final scene involving Patrick reviving his dead wife, who is pregnant with a second child...Wake Wood is a modest but solidly made film which is destined for minor cult status. Despite being so deeply embedded in generic conventions, it manages to take on its own identity through some decent performances and an overall feeling of unease generated by what unfolds. It isn't perfect, with all the shortcomings of a low budget being in plain sight. But as a self-contained, 90-minute horror film, it bodes well for the return of Hammer, and sets the bar in place for The Woman in Black.

Rating:
Verdict: A modest but effective cult movie