Obscurity can offer rewards to the adventurous; I was completely unaware of this untypical film from the Hammer imprint circa 1973. Not horror at all, this is a spin-off from a Tv show, Man at The Top, which featured characters from the play and film Room at the Top and Life at the Top. Room at the Top was one of the fore-runners of kitchen sink drama and the ‘angry young men’ of the 1960’s, but multiple spin-offs took the franchise in a different direction, and Mike Vardy’s film is much less concerned with kitchen sinks that with the upper-classes; this is an Aga saga, with foxes, hounds, diaphanous negligees and plenty of “Dammit Marjorie’ dialogue through clenched teeth.
Co-written by John Junkin, Man at the Top sees anti-hero Joe Lampton (Kenneth Haigh) take a cushy executive role at a big Pharma company, only to find he’s been stitched up on the grounds of class. His predecessor blew his brains out in a public park, and with good reason; the company’s vaccine has not been property tested, and those seeking immunisation now face birth defects, a reflection on the Thalidomide scandal of the time. Much like Tom Cruise in The Firm, Lampton has to figure out how to save himself while not alerting his bosses to his growing suspicions that he’s the potential fall-guy that the whole scandal will be blamed on; insert your own Mike Pence comparison here.
Haigh is great as Lampton, an arriveste in the manner of Mick Travis in O Lucky Man, full of wide-boy insouciance, but also angry at the way that class division has thwarted his aspirations. He’s up against ideal foils in Harry Andrews as his boss, and Nanette Newman as one of his man conquests; her nude double is painfully obvious in the various sex scenes which producers presumably felt might draw an audience to the cinema to see a serious-minded film like this.
Man at the Top has been re-issued by Network Video, and with some reason; it’s a sharp, acerbic look at the darker side of business, and the vaccine conspiracy angle is uncomfortably prescient in 2020. With a swinging Roy Budd score to boot, this is worth exhuming if you like British films of the 1970’s; the public might not have turned out to see Man at the Top, but it’s well worth a look back in anger, or nostalgia for a time never known.
Is this a new record for number of comments on one of your reviews?.. Have you usurped Bookstooge’s throne this time?
Btw, 1973 was a great year for many reasons. 🤓 Now I have to seek out this film.
It’s 1973 in a nutshell!
84 for Man at The Top so far, but doesn’t top Friday’s 159 for Wild Mountain Thyme.
Unrelated, what does your statistics for 2020 look like?! I put a bet with Bookstooge that you probably went through over 700 movies. Amirite or amirite? 😀
A good question. I’d say you and Bookywookstooge are both right. I almost always watch two films a day, one at 8 and one at 11, quite consistently in lockdown. So easily watched 700 movies, but don’t post about them all; a mere 450+ actual posts last year. You urbothrite!
Excellent! You both owe me a years worth of thin crust Red Baron pepperoni pizzas!
It always comes down to me needing to give you some kind of junk food subsidy. How about a hot plate of steaming haggis?
A years supply?
How much haggis do you normally go through in a year?
So you WILL give me a years supply then?
Stop being a cheap barstard and give me all you got!
I’ve got pizza shops just waiting on me!
Your annual haggis consumption is zero, since it’s illegal in the US. I’ll pay for exactly that amount ie zero. No cash alternatives.
Wow, way to welsh on a bet!
Just for that, you are getting exactly zero bowls of me lucky charms.
buuuuuuurrrrrrrrrnnnnnnn
A slap in the coupon, that’s what you’ll be getting, Bunty, if there’s any more of your lip. I’ve got my own porridge anyway, so ram your cheap cereal!
There’s that Bunty fella again. Do I look like him or something? I’ve never seen him in my life I tell ya…
You have access to a mirror?
I look like me, not this Bunty guy. He sounds like a sharp fellow though. I bet he robs banks every week, doesn’t he?
Wouldn’t condone illegal activity. Bunty is like a faux term of endearment. Like Pal. Or Friendo in No Country for Old Men.
Thanks for explaining, Pal! Appreciate that.
I still don’t like buntcake though!
What is poundcake?
16 ounce cakes?
They do not cost a pound? Or are they made by pounding something? Van Haley had a song about them; what is so special about poundcakes?
Wasn’t Van Haley the girl who played the twins in the Parent Trap? I didn’t know she was a singer as well!
Van Haley Mills in Parent Trap, that’s right. Or Van Halen, the band!
They’re not the same? I could have sworn the band was a girly band….
Poodle perms. Manly sounds. Discussion of poundcake.
Yep, sounds like Van Hayley to me. I wonder why they didn’t do a band cameo in the parent trap?
I feel you are avoiding discussion of poundcake. Do you have any? Is it good? What kind of cake is it?
If I had poundcake, I wouldn’t be trying to get buntcake from you now, would I?
Besides, I’m in America. We only have dollar cakes, none of that furrin’ money.
So it’s expensive?
Very. Only the well connected or very rich can buy it. I mean, who can afford to pay a whole dollar for a cake?
I’d pay more to have a cake and eat it.
What kind of fantasy world do you live in? Who gets their cake AND eats it too? Not in this world, buster….
If I had a cake shop, I would not only have cakes, but I would also eat cakes, so I would be having my cake and eating it.
They allow you to do that in Scotland? Cake shops are some of the most highly regulated businesses here in the US. Hourly checkins, inventory spot checks, triplicate receipts…
But surely you would not be barred from eating the same cakes that you sell?
ha, that’s what you’d think, wouldn’t you? But those bureaucrats…..
Two movies a day? I hope somebody’s paying you for this.
I hope somebody is. A small man with a big hat.
I wouldn’t be counting on getting any of *his* gold. He’ll trick you every time
So I hear…
Forgot about this having recently revisited Room and Life. Sounds rewarding all round.
I’ll save my DVD for you!
That trailer 😆 still, it represents 70’s England very well. Your interest in this era of British filmmaking is unique. Great fun read.
Thank you! I’m gathering from the stats that my interest in this subject is largely limited to myself, but I’m persevering!
If you enjoyed watching and writing about it. It was worth it.
That is correct, you can play in the other room while we consider the ‘fresh birds’ in this film. Just looking at the conversation above, all looks in the right order to me, not sure what all that dissent was about the other day, you and fraggle getting all worked up!
Ummm it’s still happening a little bit but I’m over it.
Is it, as Lonnie Gordon sang, happenin’ all over again?
Can’t talk now it’s chucky egg time. But as stated, I’m over it.
Ok, scrambled for me, two slices of toast, and a nice milky latte?
Enjoy the thought 😊
Now this is weird. Ol’10’s comment is posting as a standalone comment while I’m guessing it’s meant to be a reply to someone. But then everything Fraggle writes in response is properly nested.
I’m calling the feds!
Yay go me!
Yep, welcome back to the Lucky Charms side….
That’s where it’s happening!
Congratulations!
Yep. On a roll!
her nude double is painfully obvious
From that and the other comments, I take it she had a stunt double for her nude scenes and it was obvious it was another person?
Nude scenes means this is a pass for me.
Nope. Nanette Newman should never be nude, she is the queen of fairy liquid for heavens sakes!
Right, although if you watch the film, you feel that it’s technically impossible for her to remove her clothes. When she does, she’s got a different person’s body underneath, so that’s OK. Her dignity is intact, even if the viewer’s isn’t. Hands that do dishes.
Just nope. I am surprised she had herself so sullied, luckily the fairies came to save her.
Very nice woman in real life. Much more to her than punting washing up liquid, although it does wash twice as many dishes…
Yes she did seem lovely.
My friend went to Bryan Forbes’ house, and Nanette brought in tea and biscuits in her best Stepford Wives mode’ very disconcerting!
That was a mad movie! And I read that Golding was naffed off at Forbes for not using playboy type actresses which was more the point of the story than ‘nice ladies’. #metoo would have had a fit!
Goldman, yes. but Newman was great in that role, and the robot ladies needed to be more than just models. Paula Prentiss rocks in that film!
She does indeed. To have it Goldman’s way would have been a disservice to both sexes I think. Can’t remember who wrote the book, someone with a diseased broken heart I would surmise!
Ira Levin. Wrote Boys From Brazil and Rosemary’s Baby. And A Kiss Before Dying, a brilliant thriller.
Will put that one on my list.
One of the most thrilling books ever!
Nope, Nope, Nanette?
Now that’s quite a funny comment, but you’re still being sedated, so no solid foods for a bit, we need an empty stomach; no Lucky Charms for you!
I have my moments. And it was Oatmeal Crunch for breakfast this morning!
You could drop this whole L****haun thing right now, and we never speak of it again. You’re bigger than this, Alex, you don’t want to be know as ‘that Lep****aun blog’!
By this time next week leprechaun movies will be all but forgotten. Though I am hoping that you’ll give them a try sometime.
Nope. Nope Nopeitty Nope!
Oh boy, you’ve just achieved the brown belt 1st dan. Congratulations!
It’s the only language Alex understands!
We won’t write him off just yet, there’s still Critters 1-4 to consider, can’t just leave them without supervision.
Exactly.
Cor and blimey! Look at those fresh birds in the trailer!
Oh, dear, I didn’t watch the trailer all the way, do I need to take this down?
There’s nothing indecent. But the girls are called “fresh birds.” By the voiceover.
Actually, the trailer makes it look like it’s a comedy, which I take it it isn’t.
It’s not a comedy, although it’s dated enough at to cause mirth. VO’s were a bit different in these days, but I’ll let ‘fresh birds’ stay as representative of an era when boasting about the freshness of the birds was how you sold a movie to the public; nothing worse than the same old stale birds in yer movie.