Cine wanderer: social disorder on the South Bank

For this month’s column, the cinematic trip is local to S&S: the concrete wonders that surround BFI Southbank in London. Made during the twilight years of Hammer Film Productions – before the brand’s resurrection during the 2000s – Straight on till Morning (1972) is a work of transition and transformation, spotlighting the beauty and terror that come with the crumbling of idealistic fantasies.

Directed by Peter Collinson, the psychological horror thriller is a part of the popular ‘women in peril’ tradition, in which female characters are ruthlessly stalked and murdered by men. Freshly arrived from Liverpool with a head full of fairytale reveries, the plain and gawky Brenda (Rita Tushingham) has only one goal in mind: to find a Prince Charming who will give her a baby.

Her prince, however, turns out to be a serial murderer in the body of an Adonis. With his soft, wavy blond locks and piercing blue eyes, Peter (Shane Briant) has the sheepish handsomeness of David Hemmings, but his angelic good looks also carry a hint of the grotesque. An already jaded gigolo who targets middle-aged socialites, he feasts on both their adoration and their cash, which he keeps carelessly in a kitchen drawer. When boredom seeps in, he stabs his conquest to death before embarking on the next hunt.

Blood-soaked deeds aside, Straight on till Morning can also be read as an urban horror tale, capturing the dying days of fun-loving 1960s London. The opening titles unfold like an ominous twist on the kooky cartoon credits in Smashing Time (1967), which also stars Tushingham as a northerner heading to the swinging capital in search of adventure.

In Collinson’s film, however, as Brenda makes her way through the crowded streets while a jazzy score hums along, the seemingly typical set-up has a cynical undertone. Emerging from Earl’s Court tube station, Brenda bumps into Peter in front of a newsagent, the contents of her brown paper bag spilling pitifully on the ground. While their accidental brush is hardly glamorous, the conversations that float out of the shop are even grimmer. A long-winded chat about overdue rent between a tenant and his landlord reveals the economic anxiety that pervades the city, undercutting its swinging image.

In Brenda’s next stop, at a job centre, her hopeful expression is juxtaposed with others’ weariness, driving home the financial precarity of urban living. When she finally gets some work, wrapping parcels at a hippie fashion boutique, the location, so central to the cult of music and fashion during the 1960s, also loses its sheen. Whizzing past the racks of colourful frocks and miniskirts, the film takes us instead to a dingy back room and the monotony of Brenda’s thankless daily tasks. It seems as if she has bought her ticket to ride in Swinging London a tad too late. The party has stopped and all that is left are dirty glasses in the sink.

In parting the kaleidoscopic curtain of youth culture, the film probes the tension between an alluring surface and what lies underneath. Peter’s murderous impulses arise out of a disdain for beautiful women, as well as their worship of his own beauty. Due to this strange and rather misogynistic contradiction, Peter is drawn to Brenda because of her “ugliness”, which he equates to a kind of moral purity. In visual terms, Brenda’s mousiness is a cruel source of filmic spectacle. As the character stumbles her way through various social humiliations, the camera seems to delight in gazing closely at her unmade-up face, which so often contorts into unsightly expressions of pain.

This focus on Brenda’s plainness brings to mind Melanie Williams’ astute chapter on Tushingham’s image in Female Stars of British Cinema. While the actress embodies the vivacious spirit of 1960s youth culture, Williams also notes how the contemporary press scrutinised her looks, highlighting her supposed lack of attractiveness with sheer bewilderment. And yet she is also the object of desire in Richard Lester’s The Knack… and How to Get It (1965). By contrast, in Straight on till Morning, Tushingham is no longer the girl who has the knack. This is a London where unconventionality and idiosyncrasy have ceased to flourish.

As the relationship between Peter and Brenda unfolds like a retreat into a fantasy Neverland – he even calls her Wendy – it is fitting that the encounter that finally glues them together takes place on an out-of-this-world ground: the South Bank. Having endured yet another romantic rejection, Brenda roams along the imposing pathways outside the Hayward Gallery at dead of night. Seen in an extreme wide shot, her small frame is a stick figure alongside the imposing structure. Her listless wandering is accompanied by the softly sung theme song, which sounds like a rueful lullaby, adding a giallo touch to the foreboding scene. High above, on the walkway between Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Royal Festival Hall, Peter casts his gaze on Brenda like a master puppeteer ready to pull her strings.

The steely starkness of the London tableaux, drained of colours, feels like a descendant of A Clockwork Orange (1971), where brutalist architecture and social disorder intertwine. Compared to the agitated editing found throughout the film, the stillness of this moment makes for an eerie reprieve, signifying not only the downward spiral path that the characters will soon take, as Brenda meets her fate, but also a city on the cusp of change.