Brian Mitchell & Joseph Nixon’s thoroughly scurrilous Brighton column

What Was That?

As I child I saw a film on television that made an impression on me that has lasted to this day, but for the life of me I cannot remember its title.

A seminal British movie – a remarkable example both of the British ‘New Wave’ and the so-called Kitchen Sink movement – it was directed by the then youthful Bryan Forbes to a screenplay by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, adapted from a novel by Mary Hayley Bell (wife to the actor John Mills and mother to the child actor Hayley Mills, who happens to star in the film) and with a sublime score by the late, lamented Sir Malcolm Arnold.

The plot, so far as I recall, concerns three children growing up on a remote Yorkshire farm who discover hiding out in their barn an escaped convict (the charismatic Alan Bates), whom they, in their naïveté, mistake for Jesus Christ. This is a much-loved film (in the ’90s it was even transformed unsympathetically by Andrew Lloyd-Webber into a West-End musical), but whenever I describe it to anyone they look blankly at me and fall silent. Please, please, please can you help?

Yours desperately,
Alice Wetherby, Hangleton

Dear Alice,
always happy to oblige. The film you describe is, of course, National Lampoon’s European Vacation.
Please keep those letters coming in!
Mike X

What’s Not On: Films

MULTIPLEX
Live action movie adaptation of a strip cartoon only known in North America (U)
10.00, 12.00, 2.00, 4.00, 6.00

M Night Shyamalan continues his shocking, desperate, distressing donward spiral (12A)
10.00, 12.00, 2.00, 4.00, 6.00, 8.00, 10.00

Blitheringly preposterous street dance caper in which urban teenagers must boogie in order to save an orphanage from closing down or something (15)
10.00, 12.00, 2.00, 4.00, 6.00, 8.00, 10.00

Extended reissue of a recent film that was too long anyway (15)
12.00, 2.00, 4.00, 6.00

Another Jennifer Aniston romcom. Why? Honestly, why? (12A)
10.00, 12.00, 2.00, 4.00, 6.00, 8.00, 10.00

DUKE OF LANCASTER’S
Japanese horror flick that’ll have you vomitting out of your eyes (18)
2.00, 4.00, 6.00

Lottery-funded British effort you’d genuinely rather die than see again (15)
2.00, 4.00, 6.00

Standard indie fare in which a disillusioned thirtysomething bloke moves back to his hometown and… yawn, where was I? Oh yes, moves back to his hometown and meets this kooky waitress played by Zoey wotserface and… no sorry I’m losing the will to live (15)
2.00, 4.00, 6.00

Lars Von Trier films the first revolting thing to randomly come into his head (again) (18)
2.00, 4.00, 6.00

The Adventures Of Pluto Nash (12A) being shown by mistake, presumably.
2.00, 4.00, 6.00

In&Out

SPECIAL ‘PUNCHLINES TO ‘80S OFF-COLOUR JOKES’ EDITION

In
• Patrick Fitzwilliam and William Fitzpatrick
• A frog in a blender
• Ethiopian murder
• Throw your washing in
• You only get four fingers in a Kit Kat

Out
• Ben Dover and Phil McCrack
• A nun with a spear through her head
• Ethiopian mass murder
• Not as surprised as the Invisible Man was
• A start