A Perfectly Spooky Halloween
A stormy Halloween night in East London was brightened considerably by a screening of the 1960s comedy classic Carry on Screaming (Gerald Thomas, 1966) in the shiny new BLOC cinema at Queen Mary University of London. Organised by Living British Cinema and Simon Mckay of the Fenella Fielding Foundation, the packed house included many friends of Fielding, including Andrew Logan and Zandra Rhodes.
The digital restoration of the film looked beautiful, with Valeria Watt’s (Fenella Fielding) sumptuous red dress particularly stunning. Valeria is a villainous seductress who lives with her (dead) brother Dr Orlando Watt (Kenneth Williams) in a suitably creepy mansion. Their business, aided by their Frankenstein monster style creations Oddbod and Oddbod Junior, involves kidnapping young women and turning them into shop mannequins.. The key scene, which is arguably Fielding’s most remembered screen moment, has Valeria seducing the hapless Detective Sergeant Sidney Bung (Harry H Corbett) who has been sent to investigate the disappeared women. ‘Do you mind if I smoke’ she purrs in an impossibly deep seductive tone, before being encased in plumes of smoke as she does indeed smoulder!
After the film we were able to view an exhibition of Fenella related items from the Foundation’s archives, alongside drinks and Halloween themed snacks.
Cathy Lomax