TAKE AN EASY RIDE (1976)
BLACK ANGEL (1980)
The opening narration to faux documentary TAKE AN EASY RIDE sets the tone: "At times you could wish the wife and kids were out of the way as you pass the mini-skirt thumbing a lift. The producers of this film wish to give you the opportunity to decide for yourselves whether hitchhiking should be banned. Is it a form of Russian roulette?" Margaret Heald looks suitably nervous.
CINEMA itself started as a short film, dictated by the amount of stock a camera could hold (around 1,000ft, which would equate to approximately eleven minutes at 24fps). Although the feature and double bills became prevalent, the notion of the short would also play a part on both an educational and entertainment level. These supporting pieces to the main event could cover public information (Will Hay and Thora Hurd extinguishing incendiary devices in GO TO BLAZES) to tantalising travelogues (TELLY SAVALAS LOOKS AT BIRMINGHAM). But there was also room for the experimental mini-drama, such as Stanley Baker portraying Edgar Allan Poe in THE TELL-TALE HEART.
TAKE AN EASY RIDE is a forty minute classic of ineptitude, dubiously mixing public information with sexploitation. Directed by Kenneth F. Rowles - who edited SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL and produced THE UPS AND DOWNS OF A HANDYMAN - the perils of hitchhiking are only the tip of the iceberg in this patchwork of stern voice over, vox pops and sleaze. Any attempt at moralising is lost in the four cautionary vignettes, which are unskillfully interwoven into 1970s cliché, poverty row production values and non acting; apparently Mary Millington tried out for a part but was turned down, which illustrates the standard on show.
TAKE AN EASY RIDE is one of the most immoral examples in a broad palette of hitchhiking film portrayals; together with the road movie, this is a subgenre with unlimited scope for capture and torture.
The main thread has Mary (Margaret Heald) and Anne (Helen Bernat) hitching to the Ashford pop festival, despite being given money to safely use the train (this land-locked event is illustrated by ITN footage of the 1970 Isle of Wight gathering). Picked up by a black-gloved man driving a convertible, the women become uncomfortable when he shows them a porn mag; a LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT-style assault then takes place by a river. The other violent tale has two female hoodlums (Gennie Nevinson and Sella Coley) steal a knife and - after an unconvincing drug deal - decide they need "a whole new scene;" this involves traveling "to the coast" and stabbing a driver for the contents of his wallet.
The unintentional highlight however is the yarn of Suzanne (Danish model Ina Skriver). "Excuse me, do you hitchhike?" asks the optimistic voiceover as she is stopped in the street; "oh yes, I used to hitch" she replies, "but it's not a pretty story." In flashback, we see our leggy blonde picked up in a Rolls Royce by swingers Alan (Alan Bone) and Margaret (Tara Lynn), ending up in a semi-consensual ménage a trois. The only glimmer of decency is portrayed by lorry driver Jock (Charles Erskine), who picks up a couple of girls (Pauline Bates and Christianne) - presumably going to the same festival - and protects them from abuse in a transport café (although he does take obligatory glances at their legs).
Moving from set decorator on STAR WARS to art director of ALIEN and MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN, it is no wonder Roger Christian would leave an impression with BLACK ANGEL.
Making fleeting use of T. Rex's 'Bang a Gong (Get It On),' TAKE AN EASY RIDE has been dubbed the ultimate English exploitation film. Originally intended for Southern Television, Rowles's extravaganza was expanded for a sordid supporting piece on the big screen (the Soho strip footage is shoehorned in to add to the already haphazard nature). It's
not as if teenage girls would have taken to viewing it in the heart of Piccadilly's raincoat brigade anyway, and overall it has all the subtleties of a sledge hammer. When Mary's mother is in a state of not knowing if her daughter is alive or dead, a Police Inspector asks "I must know if your daughter was in the habit of taking lifts, whether she went out with a man, or men, regularly." The whole sorry mess ends on a POV shot of a police car, sirens blazing as it heads off to the next instance of debauchery.
At the other end of the creative spectrum we have Roger Christian's twenty-five minute BLACK ANGEL, which was commissioned by George Lucas to accompany the release of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK in the UK, Australia and Scandinavia. Shot in the Eilean Donan region of the Scottish highlands, we follow medieval knight Sir Maddox (Tony Vogel), as he returns from the Crusades to find his home rife with sickness. Saved from drowning by a mysterious maiden, he learns that she is being held captive by the evil Black Knight. A penetrative myth that captures a timeless environment with age-long decay, prints of BLACK ANGEL were lost after its initial release, but a 35mm negative was discovered by a Universal archivist in 2011 and is now readily available online. Like many this writer remembers it fondly, and its imprint remained heavy on the consciousness of many STAR WARS fans; the slo-mo fight sequence even influenced EMPIRE for its Dagobah "dream" sequence.
