17 THE TOUCH
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Elliott Gould, Bibi Andersson (Sweden, 1971)
Perhaps it’s the presence of Gould at his early-’70s peak, but despite his reputation for angst, Bergman’s first English-language movie begins almost like a hip comedy. It soon settles into bleak misery, human weakness, and emotional trauma, though. Andersson plays the wife of Max Von Sydow, commencing an affair with Gould, an emotionally damaged archaeologist, and winding up losing both husband and lover. Beautifully shot by Sven Nykvist, Gould has great affection for the film, but its lack of availability can be explained by the Swedish auteur’s own words: “Few of my films do I feel ashamed of or detest for various reasons… [but] The Touch marks the very bottom for me.” Bergman actually shot two versions, the best known entirely in English, the other a dual-language variation, in which Von Sydow and Andersson spoke Swedish. Long thought lost, the latter version was recently rediscovered and restored, so a DVD might appear. “I believe it just possibly was slightly less unbearable than the totally English-language version,” was Bergman’s ringing endorsement.
Expect to pay: It’s an ’80s VHS or nothing. And that’ll cost you £30
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16 CITIZENS’ BAND
Director: Jonathan Demme
Starring: Paul Le Mat, Candy Clark, Bruce McGill (USA, 1977)
After three (very good) exploitation films made to formula under the watchful gaze of low-budget supremo Roger Corman, Citizens’ Band was the first feature in which Demme’s distinct filmmaking personality began to emerge. This comedy – also known as Handle With Care – was perhaps always destined to fall off the radar, though, designed as it was to cash in on the late ’70s CB radio fad, and it has never been issued on VHS or DVD. Set in a tiny town in the southwest of the USA, it focused less on plot than on a loose set of character studies of small lives – including Charles Napier as a trucking bigamist whose two wives meet after he has an accident – escaping into their CB identities. Demme observes his characters’ obsessions and oddities with a clear, bemused but always affectionate eye. Streets Of Philadelphia may be his best-known, but his fourth film remains one of the director’s most human, most charming works.
Expect to pay: Keep an eye on satellite movie channels, you might get lucky
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15 WHITE DAWN
Director: Phil Kaufman
Starring: Warren Oates, Timothy Bottoms (USA, 1974)
Kaufman’s second film as director, after western The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, suffered from poor distribution at the time, and apart from a short-lived DVD release in 2004, remains out of circulation today. Perhaps it’s easy to see why: in 1974, a film about three whalers from New England shipwrecked in the Arctic in 1896 who are rescued by Eskimos came too late for the hippies and too early for the eco-lobby. Documenting the inevitable culture clash between the Westerners and the Inuits, Oates was fantastic as the cantankerous sailor who introduced whiskey to the Eskimos. Meanwhile, despite the problems of shooting for four months on Baffin Island with a largely non-English-speaking cast, Kaufman managed to capture some striking images: a polar bear hunt, men walking across ice-floes, the shipwreck itself.
Expect to pay: £40 for that deleted 2004 Region 1 DVD
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14 DEAD PIGEON ON BEETHOVEN STREET
Director: Samuel Fuller
Starring: Glenn Corbett, Anton Diffring, Christa Lang (West Germany, 1973)
Fuller was a great Hollywood maverick, and his work has traditionally been very difficult to see. But in the past few years, a steady stream of DVD releases has rectified the situation, with even his controversial 1980 anti-racist polemic White Dog finally being released. There are still gaps, though, including Fuller’s mad 1952 love letter to the newspaper industry, Park Row, the Nat-King-Cole-in-Vietnam war movie China Gate (1957) and this, one of his most bizarre and entertaining films. Originally shot for German TV – and featuring Fuller’s wife Christa Lang– it’s a convoluted crime thriller that quickly becomes a baroque parody of the entire genre: with the American private-eye hero stopping off to watch Rio Bravo (sniggering at John Wayne and Dean Martin dubbed in German), it’s as post-modern as Pulp Fiction. Excellent title sequence, too, with cult credentials further boosted by the fact Fuller hired Can to do the soundtrack. Who knew 1970s German TV was this good?
Expect to pay: There was, apparently, a US DVD in ’04. Good luck with that!