The Tigon/Towers Black Beauty has been shown uncut in a
children’s TV slot on RTE. Even the mentions of the word ‘bastard’ are left
intact. It is despite its reputation as a children’s film, an exploitation
movie. Produced by two titans of the genre of Wardour Street, Harry Alan Towers
and Tigon’s Tony Tenser, there’s scenes of a young and slightly OTT Patrick
Mower sadistically laughing as he whips horses, and German import (thanks to
Towers) Uschi Glas (credited in typical euro-Anglicisation style as Ursula
Glass) in bondage, having been taken from the horse by a rope looping around
her and hanging her in the air before being kidnapped by rival circus men and
horse-nappers, fighting fat ladies who are told to lose weight for the circus
and a brief Mondo-like scene where a monkey fights a dog at a circus. Thanks to
Towers, there are anachronisms. Bearded hippy-ish men with ponytails which date
the film to 1971, a graveyard scene features 20th century graves and
one of those stylised Victorian funeral carriages that you only see at funerals
of old people and in Eastenders. Some of the outfits seem slightly out of place,
especially in an odd interlude where Beauty is abducted by the Muldoons, a band
of Irish gypsies in caravans who seem to exist in 1970s’ Ireland, and results
in a slapstick horse chase full of jumping over burning logs and gates and
name-calling ‘blithering idiots’ to the reuse of cheering scenes of Irish
travellers cheering, before the horse suddenly wanders into what is clearly the dustbowls of Spain, where
is he then shipped from Spain doubling as the English countryside to Spain
doubling as Spain, morphing into a bad
Spaghetti western with ill-handled dubbing and a circus that too seems modern,
before it is sold to John Nettleton from Yes, Prime Minister and Doctor Who:
Ghost Light who lives in Ireland/England and has as a bratty daughter, Maria
‘Mad Mrs. Towers’ Rohm herself, who apparently broke her leg while riding, and
is I think dubbed (I must ask Maria herself) and then her lover (spurned by the
racist frog-hating father) brings the horse into battle, makes it a war hero in
a violent but bloodless scene, then sold to one of the soldiers, then taken to
a coal yard where it encounters the story’s writer Anna Sewell played by
Margaret ‘Mrs. Whistler in Diamonds are Forever’ Lacey.
There seems to be about two different films being made, one
by Tenser and one by Towers. Mower comes across as a slightly crazed posh
hippie with his long hair and top hat, while Lester is just adequate. He’s little
to do than plead to keep his horse and ride horses. I hope that the children
who do catch this film will realise the charms of Towers and Tenser. I hope
that they will also show other Towers family films such as White Fang, Treasure
Island and Call of the Wild. They have already aired the anodyne Towers
anti-seal hunting vehicle Sandy the Seal and the slow giallo exploits of And
Then There Were None ’74.
Apparently, this film was directed by Born Free/A Study in
Terror director James Hill, once in line to do a Doctor Who film, but I
wouldn’t be surprised to think that Jess Franco (who with fellow
euro-exploitation man Antonio Margheriti did ghost-directing duties on Treasure
Island) helped along, with the casting of Blood of Fu Manchu’s Ricardo Palacios
as a vicious Russian General.
On the whole, it is an enjoyable and yet flawed film. It
seems to go from one segment to another, the only link being the horse. It
takes us from the story of a boy in an English farm to a race among gypsies to
a circus in Spain to an English mansion and the tale of two doomed lovers, the
man who dies in battle in Spain, before the horse is forced to work in a coal
yard and found by Anna Sewell. It is segmented and plot strands are forgotten. For
example, it is said that Lester will see the horse again yet he never does only
in the end titles, where he rides around as the credits roll to his riding.
Although not the period Masterpiece it aspires to, it is fun!
