School for Unclaimed Girls (1969)

Title	The Smashing Bird I Used to Know
Origin	UK, 1969
Genre	Drama: Women in prison
Director	Robert Hartford-Davis
Starring	Madeleine Hinde, Patrick Mower, Dennis Waterman, Maureen Lipman
Music	Bobby Richards
Blurb	Where the initiation rites are wrong... Very wrong!

Re-released under the export title which captures its essence rather better, this unusual piece of British exploitation from the tail end of the Sixties wastes no time getting into its swing. Nicki, 16, in an unsettled sleep, suffers her worst (and recurring) nightmare.

She's back at the fairground, aged just 9, taking her first ride on the merry-go-round. Scared, she calls to her father, who reaches for her and falls, his skull crushed beneath the hooves of a mechanical horse as its helpless rider Nicki screams, and her mother looks on in despair.

"I want to get off!" Nicki screamed...

...her father tried to reach her and fell.

What a thing to have on your conscience - all your life!

It seems a bizarre, not to say tasteless, way to kill someone off even written down baldly like that. But on the screen, painted in the wildest psychedelic sensations, it even rivals the hallucinogenic extremes of Italiana such as Fulci's Lizard in a Woman's Skin for lurid excess.

Nicki wakes, only to find herself back in a real life nightmare. She cannot hide from the sounds of her mother's passionate affair with sleazy toyboy Harry Spenton. A more unsatisfactory Daddy-substitute Nicki could not imagine.

So here we have the sense of guilt and the family conflict that will fuel the drama, summarised in one of the most fascinating, if bemusing, opening sequences you're ever likely to see. The title theme is terrific too, if somewhat incongruous, suggesting a slow resolute march towards destiny (with breaks for mellow reflection) rather than the uncertain future of a guilty and troubled schoolgirl on the brink of adulthood.

It's all the more frustrating then that we immediately move into a cringe-inducing sub-soap-opera breakfast-table spat between Nicki and her mother. Anyone familiar with the works of director Robert Hartford-Davis (The Fiend, Incense for the Damned) will be all too familiar with these extremes of unevenness in execution and tone.

Madeline Hinde stars as Nicki, and to be honest she can't really act. She's not truly beautiful either, but still cuts a handsome figure - her jaw looks likes it came off the front of a JCB! She has a strong enough screen presence to play the lead (despite an uncanny knack of changing her appearance entirely with each new camera angle). On the other hand, Renée Asherson as Mummy wouldn't even get a role on Crossroads based on this showing, and Patrick Mower's Spenton is an adequate but shallow and lazy characterisation.

Matters need to be brought to a head quickly if the audience is not to lose interest. A melancholy Nicki sets off to school in her smart uniform (complete with straw boater) but (this well-spoken girl suddenly realising she attends a comprehensive), she turns back at the gates to jump into the sportscar of boyfriend Peter (Dennis Waterman). He isn't the Lothario you might expect - he's quite a nice young man in fact, who works in an up-market antique shop for boss Geoffrey (a wonderfully slimy Derek Fowlds).

But now it's time for the infamous launderette scene (I am grinding my teeth as I write this). Spenton goes and spends an inordinate amount of screen time trying to talk Mummy into investing in a launderette. Perhaps I'm missing out on the context here and this is something that was "of its time". Was "launderette" a word forever on the lips of the "in-crowd" back then? Was ownership of such an establishment a key to membership of the "jet-set"? Whatever, there's way too much of it (and too much of Mower entirely for my liking - the film isn't about him, he is merely a catalyst). But to get to the salient point, wide-boy Spenton is trying to buy the launderette with Nicki's trust-fund money. Oh dear!

Morning, and Nicki feels angry and betrayed.

Playing truant in Dennis Waterman's sports car.

Bitch-slapping Patrick Mower, a bounder and a cad.

Meanwhile, Nicki is making the most of her day's bunking off. Peter drives her to Mummy's riding stables. She takes her horse Dandy out for a gallop on the downs, and the music accompanies her in a glorious explosion of joy. I could almost forget about the launderette business after this! But for Nicki, returning home to find herself alone with the importunate Spenton, this is the first she's heard about what is to happen with the money that was to see her through college. Furious, lashing out, there's a flash of a blade, and then...

This is the incident that puts Nicki in a remand home. It's another infuriating moment. The scene, just as it builds to a blood-soaked climax, suddenly wraps up and jumps forward to place Nicki in the office of psychiatrist Dr. Sands. On reflection it's a wonderfully-done transition, but for the first-time viewer simply baffling and frustrating.

Anyway, it isn't such a bad place for a remand home. Nicki could hardly have hoped for better if Mummy had bundled her off to boarding school, though the clientèle leave something to be desired. Never mind, bubbly up-the-duff Susan (Janina Faye) is nice, and dorm supervisor Miss Waldron (Colette O'Neil) seems stern but fair. Perhaps Nicki is as puzzled as we are by the presence of a young and strikingly pretty Lesley-Anne Down, but research reveals that her character Di attempted suicide (though I've yet to notice the slashed-wrist make-up she is alleged to sport).

The rec. room, new face Nicki, and Lesley-Anne Down with a guitar between her legs.

Maureen Lipman amuses Michelle Cook with a rude but incomprehensible anecdote.

Nearly time for lights out on Miss Waldron's floor - Nicki heads for the bathroom.

Will Nicki be able to look after herself in here? Luckily for her the other actresses were (so the gossip goes) selected by Hartford-Davis by a practical examination in shaggabilty rather than for their commanding physical prowess. In fact I reckon I could smash any one of these girls' faces in (provided I got the first blow in when she wasn't looking). And Nicki attracts the affections of dorm bully Sarah (Maureen Lipman), a lesbian partial to sapphic kisses after lights out. Lying beside Nicki in bed Sarah opens up and tells her story. It's a remarkable tour de force monologue by the young actress, and does a world of good for the film's otherwise slim pretentions towards serious drama.

Otherwise, banal dialogue and wooden acting render much of the time on Miss Waldron's floor clunkingly dull. But occasionally the screen bursts into life in an astounding orgy of excess. Now is a good time to take back any flippant remarks I may have made about the girls' fighting abilities. When one girl attacks another out of jealousy the results could not have been more sudden and devastating if one of them had stepped on a landmine on the way to the lavvy. It's an absolutely thermonuclear catfight, with even the next dorm joining in, bursting pillows and ripping tops everywhere. Watch out for Lesley-Anne Down in pink pyjamas getting stuck in like Minnie the Minx!

Regressing with Dr. Sands.

Post pillow-fight - doesn't seem quite so clever now does it?

Wistful - friendship with Sarah.

Let's return to the more serious side of the story. Being a remand home, not a borstal, the girls are here for assessment, protection and help. When Nicki first arrives she is practically catatonic. It falls upon psychiatrist Dr. Sands, Marnie style, to delve into her past and get her head straight again. Faith Brook is excellent as the sympathetic older woman, reminiscent of Lilli Palmer as Britt Ekland's shrink in Night Hair Child, or Maria Schell as the prison reformer in 99 Women. What with Nicki's guilt over her Daddy's death, and then the stabbing business with Spenton, the doctor really has her work cut out, but begins to make some progress. "I finally got a reaction" she says, putting it mildly. Blimey, "I finally brought on an absolute screaming frenzy of psychedelic recovered memory" would be nearer the mark!

So will Nicki stick it out with the help of Dr. Sands, and risk being sentenced to a spell in borstal? Or will she take up with rebellious Sarah and her plans to escape? This genre being clichéd as it is I don't think I need to answer that one. But can there ever be a truly happy ending for a girl as ill-starred as Nicki?

Judged objectively, this is a very solid B-feature effort. The cast is remarkable for the number of present and future TV stalwarts, the camerawork is expertly fluid and involving, and the photography often beautiful with an unusual pastel palette. Those with better taste than myself might say it was over-scored, but I found that the music by Bobby Richards really helped to drive the story along.

Not surprisingly given its origins the sleaze factor is low by the standards of just a few years later, but there's a sprinkling of nudity, and Valerie Wallace in particular has reason to regret the advent of slow-motion and freeze-frame. I get the feeling Hartford-Davis was too fond of his starlets to subject them to too much real degradation.

Smashing Bird is difficult to sum up. High-points of classic delirium punctuate stretches of leaden banality, its unevenness leaving one reeling in exasperated bewilderment. I wonder how it would have turned out if it had concentrated on the fairly creditable drama at its core rather than emphasising the exploitation angle. Probably too much sanity would have destroyed much of its eccentric charm. I've totally fallen in love with it, and it's near the top of my favourites of any genre.

Clip for download

The classic introductory sequence:

http://rapidshare.com/files/235895784/Intro-from-The-Smashing-Bird-I-Used-to-Know.avi
(3:41 minutes, 480 x 288, 16.9MB)

or the Smashing Bird Intro on Youtube (low quality)

Ratings

Quality: 7/10   Fun: 10/10

Review copy

Publisher	Slam Dunk Media
Format	DVD Region 2, PAL 4:3 (1.66:1 letterbox)
Certificate	18 (UK)
Image	Very good - clean, slightly soft, with attractive colours.