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nickgillies1
Reviews
Zeta One (1969)
Best film anyone studying any part of movie making can see/this is all my fault.
This is for the DVD: the Blu-ray has been letter boxed, and so loses half its greatest merit.
The film slowly gained notoriety after I wrote an article in the lads magazine 'Loaded' in 1993,headlined 'The Worst British Film Ever?'. The question-mark was Loaded's addition. I'd videotaped it from a cable channel's late-night exploitation movies, where you could see more of TV actresses trying to break into film than TV itself would show in those days. The cable channel picked only the cheapest films it could rent, but even among that dross Zeta One was a car crash.
In those days videotapes were expensive, and only mainstream films were distributed. I never expected to hear of the film again.
But a cuttings agency had sent a copy of my article to Tigon, and it went on file. I'm guessing someone in marketing recognised that even the badge of worst British film ever had market value, because I saw it referred to in the sleeve notes of a Tigon DVD box set, and the film itself was in the second wave of Tigon's videotapes, about the same time as Au Pair Girls: the 'so bad it's good' culture began about that time.
Tigon must have been deeply hacked-off by Zeta One, because normally you make only a passing reference to your failures. But John Hamilton's exemplary account of Tigon, 'Beasts in the Cellar' devotes nearly as much space to the film as to the company's triumphs, like 'Witchfinder General'.
We don't get to choose what we are remembered for, and my memorial, and that in a very narrow circle, will be giving cult status to a piece of tosh. C'est la vie.
That said, this film could replace the first three weeks of a film course in almost any discipline. It is so obvious what went wrong that you know afterwards what is right about other films.
Starting with the script, what was originally filmed was full of plot holes and missing information, and as filmed ran for sixty minutes or less. It stayed on the shelves before the producer decided to add framing scenes explaining what had happened. Enter Yutte Stensgaard as a sort of nude Dr Watson ("Tell me, Holmes, how did you know that...?").
Secondly, a job you've never thought of before: the production accountant. The inexperienced director spent lavishly on props and location shooting that the budget of £60,000 could not possibly justify. It is, in fairness, all on the screen: gorgeous costumes for the beautiful all-girl aliens, and the finest Finnish furniture film ever made (only one other, I think: Billion-Dollar Brain).
Third, actors. If you want to treat actors like cattle, you'd better be Hitchcock. Michael Cort so wasn't Hitchcock. James Robertson Justice, the principal villain, was so angry that he refused to come back for 'fills', and someone else had to do his voice and hand giving a spy a knock-out pill, essential to the plot.
Fourth, make-up: the gorgeous Valerie Leon, actress in many Carry On films, appears topless in Zeta One. I found this out only years later. Her make-up disguises her utterly without enhancing her character.
Fifth,props, carpenters, lighting: that generation of British techies were wonderfully professional. Why, then did they treat the director with such contempt? The film is lit as lifelessly as a cheap ITV drama of the period. The distinctive Saarinen "Tulip" tables and chairs are replaced by hideous clunky Scandinavian furniture in one scene, and it says much for the strip-poker scene that I noticed the pedestal of one chairs still had packing dirt on it. I wrote in 'Loaded' of another scene "Their lovemaking was both intense and prolonged, so much so that they didn't notice builders had come in and installed a bathroom that wasn't there before".
Actually, if you want to be a camera operator or director, do get the Blu-ray: you will see at once that the natural tendency of a camera is to focus on the centre of the action. This is why so many films don't work on disc: the re-framing from the 4:3 Academy ration most films of the era were shot in to TV-filling 16:9 loses key details, in this case much of the film's only merit, Yutte Stensgaard's beautiful bottom.
Lastly, Lorna Selwyn, who is credited for Continuity in the film. This is unfair. She must have been constantly over-ridden by a director running out of time and money. Previously she'd worked for master craftsmen like Eric Sykes, on The Plank, and she continued to work for Tigon afterwards.
So, a paradox: this is a rotten film, and I thoroughly recommend it.In 80 minutes or so you will gain an understanding that many skilled crafts go into making a good film.
For Londoners, alas, there is another, sad, reason to cherish the film: one of the most unnecessary location shots was of Berwick Street Market, which is now being closed down so advertising and PR people can get to their coffee shops a few seconds quicker.