Sweet Hostage (1975)

An escaped mental patient takes on the role of teacher, friend and lover to his illiterate teenage captive. An adaptation of Nathaniel Benchley's novel `Welcome to Xanadu'.

The Permissive Society (1975) DVD Box Set

One of Mike Leigh's most tender and sympathetically-observed plays, 'The Permissive Society' is often neglected even by Leigh's admirers, arguably because it is a short piece videotaped entirely in the studio. This early in his career, Leigh's use of improvisation in developing the script was used as a marker of honesty and originality: upon transmission, BBC2's announcer misleadingly described it as an unscripted play.

Even within such a short production, Leigh shifts audience empathy through developments in characterisation. Les comes across at first as a loutish slob; his girlfriend Carol is disgusted by his eating habits and some of his coarse, childish behaviour. Their date starts at his family's flat, with forced conversation and awkward silences which are interrupted by Les's sister Yvonne - who is preparing for a date of her own. Les's behaviour is paralleled with animal characteristics, bodily functions and physicality: there are references to pigs, frogs and their spawn, false pregnancy which Les jokingly attributes to wind, ugliness, death, eating and swallowing, which is described - through a discussion of parestalsis - as a muscular reflex. This interrogation of the human dichotomy between emotion and physicality also mirrors the issue of sex, which is constantly present even though it is rarely discussed directly.

We gradually learn that Les's behaviour masks his genuine nervousness because he has never previously had a girlfriend. As in much of Leigh's work, Les's awkwardness, and Yvonne's troubled attempts at relationships, demonstrate the struggles people have to articulate their feelings and their needs. Les's inarticulacy and the extent to which his childishness has become a marker of innocence are encapsulated in a tender moment in which he sings 'Leaning on a Lamp Post'. Only in someone else's words can Les tell Carol that he is nervously waiting for this certain little lady to pass by. That these words come from an earlier era of filmmaking - Noel Gay's words, made famous by George Formby - emphasises the point that inarticulacy is often exacerbated by the modern media, in which 'sex is everywhere' and through which commodified images displace and debase language and feeling.

'The Permissive Society' is just one of the highlights from the strand Second City Firsts (1973-78), a logical extension of BBC Birmingham's output within Play for Today (1970-84) and a direct off-shoot from Thirty Minute Theatre (1965-73) which was intended to provide a dedicated national outlet for regional talent, settings and ideas.

The Wrong Move (1975)

Aiming to be a writer, Wilhelm leaves mother and girlfriend in his home town of Glückstadt in the flat far north of Germany and sets out for Bonn. Changing trains at Hamburg, he is struck by a beautiful actress, Therese, and obtains her phone number. In his compartment are an older man Laertes, who mostly communicates by blowing a mouth organ, and a young female acrobat called Mignon, who is mute. The pair have no money, so Wilhelm pays their fare and puts them up in his cheap hotel, where Therese joins them. Bernhard, an awkward Austrian who wants to be a poet, befriends the four. He says he has a rich uncle with a castle on a peak overlooking the Rhine, but when the five turn up it is the wrong place. The owner welcomes them however, because their arrival stopped him shooting himself, and says they can stay as long as they like.

But tensions grow, for Wilhelm is not giving Therese the affection she wants, while Mignon signals her availability to him. Laertes, feeling guilt but not repentant, disgusts Wilhelm by revealing some of his role in the Holocaust. Then the owner of castle hangs himself, upon which the five leave hastily. Bernhard goes off while Therese takes the other three to her small flat in Frankfurt, where the tensions grow worse. Leaving on his own, Wilhelm completes his symbolic journey by reaching one of the most southerly, highest and emptiest points in Germany, the summit of the Zugspitze.

(1975) Just Another Saturday (BBC Play for Today)

Just Another Saturday is a Play For Today (BBC) about the Orange walk culture transmitted 7 November 1975 on BBC1. It was directed by John Mackenzie and stars Jon Morrison and Billy Connolly.
The film won the Prix Italia for Best Drama.

John looks forward with nervous excitement to the annual Orange order march in Glasgow, in which he will lead his local Orange Lodge band as mace-swinger. However, as the day progresses he begins to become disillusioned with the day and his colleagues, as he witnesses their growing drunkenness and unwarranted violence against Catholic homes on the march's route. Events of the day lead him to question his involvement with the band, which also threatens his own safety.

(1975) Against the Crowd: Murrain

Murrain tells the tale of a farming community led by Farmer Beeley (Bernard Lee aka 'M' from James Bond) in the throes of a supposed murrain caused by local loner - and suspected witch - Mrs Clemson (Una Brandon Jones).

The villagers fear of nature's dark, powerful forces are challenged by the science and reason of Alan Crich (David Simeon) - veterinarian officer who is both wonderfully coiffured and bespectacled.

Crich's science is struggling to identify the mysterious illness affecting the village pigs and inhabitants, so their imagination has run wild and they begin to seek answers in the realm of folklore. Admirably, in the face of a baying crowd, Crich stands his ground and calls for calm, but as the story unfolds, even he begins to have doubts.

(1975) The Rocky Horror Picture Show

In this cult classic, sweethearts Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon), stuck with a flat tire during a storm, discover the eerie mansion of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), a transvestite scientist. As their innocence is lost, Brad and Janet meet a houseful of wild characters, including a rocking biker (Meat Loaf) and a creepy butler (Richard O'Brien). Through elaborate dances and rock songs, Frank-N-Furter unveils his latest creation: a muscular man named "Rocky."

(1975) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

When Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) gets transferred for evaluation from a prison farm to a mental institution, he assumes it will be a less restrictive environment. But the martinet Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) runs the psychiatric ward with an iron fist, keeping her patients cowed through abuse, medication and sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. The battle of wills between the rebellious McMurphy and the inflexible Ratched soon affects all the ward's patients.

(1975) Monty Python and the Holy Grail

A comedic send-up of the grim circumstances of the Middle Ages as told through the story of King Arthur and framed by a modern-day murder investigation. When the mythical king of the Britons leads his knights on a quest for the Holy Grail, they face a wide array of horrors, including a persistent Black Knight, a three-headed giant, a cadre of shrubbery-challenged knights, the perilous Castle Anthrax, a killer rabbit, a house of virgins, and a handful of rude Frenchmen.

(1975) The Man Who Would Be King

Based on a short story by Rudyard Kipling, this adventure film follows the exploits of Peachy Carnehan (Michael Caine) and Danny Dravot (Sean Connery), English military officers stationed in India. Tired of life as soldiers, the two travel to the isolated land of Kafiristan, where they are ultimately embraced by the people and revered as rulers. After a series of misunderstandings, the natives come to believe that Dravot is a god, but he and Carnehan can't keep up their deception forever.

(1975) Love Thy Neighbour: Complete Series 6

(1975) Love Thy Neighbour: Complete Series 5

Love Thy Neighbour is a British sitcom, which was transmitted from 13 April 1972 until 22 January 1976, spanning seven series and fifty-four episodes. The series was produced by Thames Television for the ITV network.

The principal cast included Jack Smethurst, Rudolph Walker, Nina Baden-Semper and Kate Williams. In 1973, the series was adapted into a film of the same name, and a later sequel series was set in Australia.

(1975) Jaws

When a young woman is killed by a shark while skinny-dipping near the New England tourist town of Amity Island, police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) wants to close the beaches, but mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) overrules him, fearing that the loss of tourist revenue will cripple the town. Ichthyologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and grizzled ship captain Quint (Robert Shaw) offer to help Brody capture the killer beast, and the trio engage in an epic battle of man vs. nature.

(1975) Escape to Witch Mountain

Tony (Ike Eisenmann) and Tia Malone (Kim Richards) are two orphaned siblings with extraordinary psychic powers. When their abilities attract the attention of a cruel millionaire, Aristotle Bolt (Ray Milland), he kidnaps them with plans to exploit their powers for financial gain. Tony and Tia escape, and with the help of Jason O'Day (Eddie Albert), a bitter widower camping in a nearby Winnebago, they attempt to elude Bolt and begin to discover their otherworldly origins.

(1975) White Line Fever

An independent trucker (Jan-Michael Vincent) with a pregnant wife (Kay Lenz) fights cargo crooks and the big shot they work for.

(1975) Barry Lyndon

Based on the Victorian novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, Barry Lyndon tells the complex and subtle story of a sensitive, intelligent and ambitious man trapped in a society which has no use for him. Despite the obstacle of his Irish birth in relative poverty, Raymond Barry (Ryan O'Neal) manages by various stratagems and devices to become the wealthy but ill-respected Barry Lyndon. Fooled into leaving his home by the family of the girl he had hoped to marry, Barry becomes a soldier in the a war fought on the European Continent. His adventures teach him how to manipulate people, paving the way for his success. His crowning achievement as a social climber is his marriage to Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson), the beautiful and wealthy widow of an English ambassador to the courts of Europe. His stepson, whom he despises, becomes his nemesis. The slow pace given this film by director Stanley Kubrick is a deliberate evocation of the sensibility of the times and gives added force to the retelling of the novel. The film's lavish cinematography was highly acclaimed and it won Oscars for "Art Direction," "Costume Design" and "Musical Score," adapted by Leonard Rosenman from classical sources.

Directed By: Stanley Kubrick