I think the art of the cinema is at times more interesting than the performances.   Freddie Francis was a dream guest for me, he and his wife Pam were both delightful down-to-earth people.   I remember sitting with him and discussing the beautiful shot of Meryl Streep on the pier in The French Lieutenant's Woman [1981].   I think it is one of the most impressive shots I've ever seen in a film.   Freddie told me the weather was terrible and it wasn't Meryl Streep but a stuntman in her cloak.   I can remember thinking, I'm sitting here with an Academy Award-winning cinematographer, a true genius, how lucky I am.

Freddie filmed the entire convention with a small video camera given to him by David Lynch.   The convention was all abuzz on Sunday when we had to pull Mr. Francis out of the autograph line to take a call from Marty, Scorsese that is.    Freddie Francis has a marvelous sense of humor, which you will notice during this question and answer session. This talk was hosted by Paul Jensen.

My name is Paul Jensen and I'm honored to welcome here at FANEX Freddie Francis.

Thank you very much now, but before we get this thing on the road, there's a question and answer session, isn't there, Paul?

I question, you answer.

Oh.   It doesn't matter, just in case they start asking questions I'd just like you to know about me. I'm a filmmaker, I happened to have made a lot of horror films because I like making films.   It doesn't matter to me, I'll make anything, any rubbish, I'll make it.   I mention this because I'm always embarrassed when people start asking me questions about horror as opposed to horror films because it's something I don't understand.   I'm a good fun loving boy and you know I'm very happy with everything I've ever done, I wish I had made a lot more comedies, but anyway having said that, I'll hand over to Paul, I know he's got a lot to say.

I'm going to try not to say it though; I'll ask you questions, later you may have a chance to.   Freddie Francis has actually led two lives, renowned lives.   The first life as a cinematographer and the second life as a director.   The first life began as a cinematographer and then a director again, and then a cinematographer again; the two lives are intercut together.   He first came to prominence, I would say, in the late '50s, early '60s as a photographer of a number of major British films, groundbreaking British films like Room at the Top [1959], Saturday Night and Sunday Morning [1961].

I was known as the "darling of the kitchen sink."

The darling of the kitchen sink?

Because the kitchen sink started a new era, we thought, in British films.  

Pauline Kael, the American critic, renowned critic and a difficult critic, wrote in 1961, when she was reviewing The Innocents [1961], "I don't know where this photographer Freddie Francis sprang from, you may recall that in the last year every time a British movie is something to look at it turns out to be his, Room at the Top, Sons and Lovers [1960], Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and now The Innocents .   Well she never perhaps had a chance to get an answer to that question, but where did this photographer, Freddie Francis, spring from?

I sprang from, what are you laughing at?   I guess I was, you know, a young kid and I didn't have a great deal of education as you may have gathered and in the last year of school we had to write a thesis on anything you could think of so I decided to write on films.   Not necessarily from an entertaining point of view, [but] from equipment and all that.   And during this period I scrounged a visit to the old Gaumont Studios in London and I was hooked and I wanted to make movies.   I was also madly in love with Joan Blondell, so I thought will this--they laugh, they don't even know who Joan Blondell is--oh God, I'm so old.   And I wanted to make movies and in those days it was easier to get into movies because the British film industry was a very strange industry.   There were one or two great people like the Hitchcocks and that but the rest of them were sort of strange people who would come in, make a film usually featuring their girlfriend and then disappear completely.   But this was very valuable because I suppose I was a bit bright and knew a bit about photography and filming and I used to benefit from seeing the mistakes these people made.   And my advice to students when I'm lecturing to them is to benefit by other people's mistakes.   However, I'm wandering off, you know, I got a job as a clapper boy and I'd tell you the films I made as a clapper boy but you're much too young to know about them.   And, I went along happily until some idiot started a war and I was just the wrong age and I was called up at the beginning of the war, the first month, and I spent the entire war years in the Army, but once again I was very lucky because I was making films in the Army.   So, that's how I started.   I came out and I've done nothing since.   Well, except films.  

Would it be accurate to say you were not necessarily drawn to photography but it was at least your big chance.

I guess it was a chance.

But then you found an affinity for it?

Oh, I loved it.   And as I say I enjoyed listening to people making ghastly mistakes and if I have any attributes as a cinematographer it's somebody who'll always help the director.   And as I said, in the early days most of the directors were people who came in to make the odd film with their girlfriend and maybe the cameraman maybe in those days knew a little bit more about it than they did.   I used to be astounded when I heard directors ask a cameraman to do certain things and the cameraman would say, "We can't do that," because the idiot directors believed that.   So I vowed whenever I became a cinematographer or whatever, I would never say to a director "No you can't do that."   The worst I ever say these days is "Yeah, we can do that, it will take a little longer but we can do that."   So in answer to your question, I was interested in photographing movies because I feel that photographing movies is part of directing them as well.   My idea of a cinematographer, which varies from a lot of cinematographers I know, is that when I get a film to do I do insist on spending time with the director before we start shooting the film because any director worth his salt has photographed the film in his mind before he starts shooting it.   He doesn't know how to achieve that on film, but he's got this idea in his mind and I find it very interesting to sort of put his mind onto the screen.

I noticed after the war you spent about 10 years as a camera operator before becoming a cinematographer and during that 10 years you worked on 19 films.   Interestingly 14 of them were working with two different cinematographers.   There was a lot of consistency there.   You made eight films with Christopher Challis and six with Oswald Morris so that's 14 out of 19.   Plus there were four films directed by Michael Powell that you worked on and three directed by John Huston, all of which points to a lot of consistency, you were working with the same people.   Do you think that's an advantage?

I think so, because, first of all, I can say this now, because I was a very, very good operator so the cameramen used to like me working on their films and also I had a great affinity with Mickey Powell and with John Huston.   I consider those two my real mentors and, in fact, I had to sort of break away from John because he wouldn't let me go away and light anything, he wanted me there all the time so eventually I had to break with him but I didn't completely break because he knew I wanted to break and sort of allowed me to photograph and direct the second units on Moby Dick [1956].   But I do consider Mickey Powell and John Huston as my mentors.   They were lovely guys to work with, every film was like going off to the great unknown on a great adventure and I like that, this was the spirit I tried to maintain in my own films to this day.

Is this one reason why in your own films you often don't preplan in detail but like to go on the set and discover things?

You see, you've observed me once, so he's telling me all the things I did wrong, you see.   No, one of the reasons I don't like preplanning, one has to preplan a bit as a director of photography because, let's face it, the films on which I've been director of photography have been quite large films, the films I directed have been quite small films, and it's ridiculous to preplan too much because if you get too ambitious there's not the money there to carry out your ambitions, so I make a great point of thinking about them a lot but without planning, as you know.  

I don't really understand what the distinction there is between a cinematographer and a camera operator.   What's the relationship, what's the division with responsibility there?

Well, it differs.   In my case, now, I have a wonderful operator, Gordon Hayman, and I know that when Gordon and I, when I speak to the director about the following sequence and everything, Gordon is always at my side and I know that he will get setups and camera moves almost the same as I would do if I was operating.   So I know that that's something on my plate so I can spend more time with the director.   In fact, in the sort of eight or nine years Gordon's been with me I suppose I've made him change his mind about three times.   I also insist on having the chief electrician, and this again is a similar thing because he can sort of stand in the background while we're talking to the director and I can then turn around and tell him the sort of things I want so he can roughly prepare what I want to do.   It's all, as I say, that my job is to make the director's job easier and to give him more time; therefore, if I've got a great staff who will do what they think I would do in the same situation, it saves a lot of time.

But it would be a mistake to envision the operator as somebody who pushes the on button.   He makes decisions.

No it wouldn't be a mistake.   It would be a mistake in the case of my operator but especially, it took American cinematographers, for whom I have a great regard, a great, great time to get the same idea of operators that we have in England.   Some of them still want to be the boss.

One of the films of yours that I think almost everybody admires, especially in this room, is The Innocents.   Certainly one of the points about that film that is so striking is that the images that include the ghosts had fear, well, you see them but they're not necessarily tangible.   How did you go about achieving that quality, that ambiguity?

It's difficult how I achieved, gosh I can't remember, but this was all part and parcel. Jack Clayton was a very close friend, we'd known each other since the war and we always knew that when Jack directed a movie I would photograph it, as I did with Room at the Top . We were very close and we used to speak always about the movies and I knew exactly what he had in mind; therefore, I used what expertise I had to create that in any given situation.   One of the ghost things I think you're thinking about is Clytie Jessop, when Deborah thought she saw her in the rushes.   This was a great time and I said to Jack, "I know what you want Jack, with this ghastly weather, let's shoot it now."   It doesn't always happen but there should be that very close collaboration between the cinematographer and the director.

The wet rainy atmosphere in that shot wasn't created, that wasn't artificial, that was real?

Difficult to tell offhand.   I know during the sequence we had the fire brigade from Brighton there, whether they were there for that shot--they probably were, but it was a very nasty English afternoon.

As a man who was a star as a cinematographer, you then after The Innocents dropped that profession and took a turn to directing.   What prompted that?

Money.   No, in those days a cinematographer in England, it was quite a good living, but you know if you wanted to live well you had to work all the time, and I suddenly thought, you know, I just got an Academy Award and people ask me to direct pictures, why don't I do that, so I did.   And got even less money.  

But you made a lot of pictures.

I made a lot of pictures, which is what I like doing, isn't it?   I made too many.   Most of my friends, you know, the late Jack Clayton, Darryl Ryerson, they made sufficient pictures.  

Every several years.

Every several years they said, let's get Clayton to do a picture.   Almost impossible.   The number of pictures he started on then got to do.

Too much of a perfectionist?

Too much of a perfectionist, absolutely.   Are you inferring I'm not?

Early in your career as a director,   you did become associated with Hammer and made a cluster of four films in a row.

Cluster being the right word, yes.

Evil of Frankenstein [1964], Paranoiac [1963], Hysteria [1965] and Nightmare [1963] and several years later another one.   Tell us about that connection.

Yeah, I did a picture, why they asked me to do it [I'll never know], because, at that time, as a cameraman in England, I was rather expensive. [It was] a film called Never Take Sweets from a Stranger [1961, AKA The Molester ], a very un-Hammer-like film, and I did it and I became acquainted with Tony Hinds who ran Hammer, so when I started directing he asked me to make a movie and I did and we had a lot of fun.   You know, I like having fun when we work.   I don't take it too seriously.   We had a lot of fun and he asked me to do a movie and I did it, and he asked me do another one, then he asked me to do another one.   I merely did it because it was so enjoyable.

But the connection initiated with Never Take Sweets from a Stranger ?

Never Take Sweets from a Stranger.

Which was 1959, I think?

Well, it was before I stared directing.

You photographed it.   What's interesting is, if you look at the credits, almost everybody connected with it is a traditional Hammer person except the director and the photographer .

That's right.

You know why they went outside the fold ?

No idea, no idea at all.   I suppose they thought it was slightly un-horror, but exactly why I have no idea.   He was a very good director, Cyril Frankel, but he didn't do many films after that.

It's a film about child molestation.   Straightforward and realistic and not a sensationalistic film.

A very straightforward film.

That led to the personal relationship with Hinds and then that led to directing with them.

Tony Hinds is still a very dear friend, as, in fact, is Jimmy Sangster, and it was a sort of family thing really.   In retrospect, you know I come to these sort of places and you know I am delighted, but sometimes I wish I hadn't gone in that direction.  

So you have Hinds to thank for that.

Hinds, yes, yes, I'll blame him for that.

Could you describe Tony Hinds ?

He's a charming man, doesn't like getting involved in films.   But he's always in the back room, hated to come on stage.   In fact, the only time I remember Tony coming on-stage was when I was doing the fire sequence in [ The Evil of ] Frankenstein where the house burns down and, knowing me, Tony was afraid I'd have a real good fire and burn the studio down, so he came on the stage then and I remember physically restraining him while we were shooting because he was trying to cut the scene.   He's a very charming man.   When they sold Hammer he then retired to a quiet country life and he now directs plays at the village hall, a dramatic club.   Very strange, very rich, but very strange.

Many refer to Tony Hinds as Hammer.   When Tony Hinds left, Hammer really lost its identity.   Would you agree with that, and, if so, what's the nature of his creative influence?

Hammer--there's nobody from Hammer here is there?   It was the most fantastic place I've worked, ever.   Sir James, well, he was James Carreras, but then [he] became Sir James. [He] was a wonderful guy, could wheedle money out of anybody, and they loved him in the States because he was chief of Variety Club and most Americans thought if they flirted with Jimmy Carreras they were close to a   knighthood, because he was very close to Prince Phillip.   So the situation was, Sir James would say to Tony Hinds, "Tony, I'm going over to the States, get me some posters."   He would go around the corner on Water Street to a little man who would design three or four posters for any films they could think of. They would think up strange titles and do posters, then go to Hollywood and get all his friends [to invest].   They used to sort of love him over there, he would produce the posters, he'd come back and say to Tony, "I've got three of these films to make."   Then Tony would write a script and then we'd make the film.   They always came in under budget and it was really a great set-up.   They never lost any money, that combination.   The other thing was, Jimmy was an assistant director, they found Jimmy [Sangster] to write the scripts and they sort of waterproofed the whole thing.   This is the reason why I did too many Hammer films.   Because we had so much fun.

You made four in a row there.

Did I do four, yes, one later, you're right.

Three were of the psychological horror film thriller variety and one was The Evil of Frankenstein .   One was more of a monster film, similarly the other one you made, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave [1969], was a monster film.

That was after the studio at Bray packed up and we made it at Pinewood.   That's right.

Of those two types of stories, types of films, types of atmospheres, which do you prefer ?

Oh, the sort of nightmare type film.   I mean the only film I ever set up and made myself was a film called Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly [1970] which was a sort of black comedy, which, was the sort of film I really enjoy doing.   As I say, I'm a fool, I'll do any film you bring me, because I love making films.

But the paranoiac type of thing appeals to you more.

Indeed, yes.   But of all my Hammer films the one that really appealed to me was Nightmare .

Why more than the others?

I thought it was almost a straightforward story.   After that, as you know, I went over to Amicus, who did a completely different sort of film which was fun enough that I enjoyed doing.   The situation was not as nice as working at Hammer, because it was not as much fun as Hammer, but I enjoyed doing the Amicus films very much.

You mentioned that's a completely different type of a film, Amicus?

Yes, I suppose they come under the heading of horror.

Different in what way?

Softer, shall we say.   That's the only way I can describe them.   Hammer were really full into the sort of blood and gore stuff you know.

And that may be why you preferred the psychological Hammer ones?

Indeed.

The first of your Amicus films was Dr. Terror's House of Horrors , also the first of Amicus' anthology films.   And you later did Torture Garden [1968] for them and Tales from the Crypt [1972] for them.   Did you like the idea of an anthology film or did that seem a disadvantage instead of a straightforward feature?

I thought it was great fun, because, it was sort of, you know, all these pictures were quite cheaply made.   Somehow, if you could break it up into four different stories you didn't notice quite as much.

Didn't notice the cheapness?

Didn't notice the cheapness, and I suppose the audience thought they were getting their money's worth.

It was there too that you started working with Peter Cushing?

Well, I'd worked with Peter as a cameraman, let's see, what did I do with Peter?   He had the tiniest part, but you've got to look quick to see him in Moulin Rouge [1952] and then he did the first film that Joe Losey did under his own name in England, Time Without Pity [1957].   He played a smallish part in that, not quite as small as the one in Moulin Rouge , but he was in that.   Then I became part and parcel of the Peter Cushing entourage.   We did so many films together I can't even remember.  

Cushing starred in The Skull [1965], Dr. Terror's House of Horrors , Torture Garden and quiet a few others.   What was it like to work with Peter Cushing as a director working with an actor?

Oh, it was wonderful because, the drill was, Peter used to live in Whitstable and whenever we're doing a film, Peter and I would arrange to meet, it was all very gentlemanly, we'd meet in the tea room at Charing Cross Station, because he'd come up by train, and we'd talk about it.   We would talk about the film for about half an hour and we knew exactly what we were going to do.   I knew exactly what Peter's views were and he knew what mine were and all I had to say was "Action" and "Cut," and that was absolutely wonderful.   The luckiest two things that ever happened to Hammer were Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, because these two guys were an absolute cakewalk for films, you'd just put them in and they would walk through it.   Peter was wonderful, because Peter, apart from those sort of films, was a wonderful actor so he used to sail through them beautifully.   I did a film later on, I tell this story because, as well I knew Peter, I was surprised. I had a script come to me, and in those days you didn't have [time] like today when you have a year to prepare them.   They came to you today and you start shooting them tomorrow.   A film called The Creeping Flesh [1972], and I saw this script, and these scripts were never works of literary genius.   There was a scene there where Peter describes the whole process of this creature coming to life.   I said to the producer, "Mike [Redbourn], you can't do this, nobody can get away with this, this is absolutely rubbish."   A few weeks later, okay, turn over action and Peter starts talking and I suddenly realize he's playing this scene that I said was absolute rubbish, and it was absolute rubbish, but I was believing every word that Peter said.   So this was the joy of Peter.   Chris was slightly different, not that I ever had any trouble with Chris, but if I ever had trouble with Chris I'd say, "Okay, Chris this sequence is rather long and I'd like to do it all in one."   That worried Chris, he didn't like doing it all in one take, so he'd go away and keep quiet for the next half an hour.   They were wonderful, for Hammer to hit upon those two guys, it was an absolute Godsend.  

I suppose that example with Christopher Lee illustrates one of the talents, skills of a good director, that is getting your actor or whoever, to do what you want him to do without telling him to do it.   To understand his personality in such a way that you can say this and it makes him do that.

Yes, without actually fighting with him.   I didn't really have a problem on that film until we came to the billiards scene, where Peter and Chris, a very nice scene, and I decided to play a bit into walking around the table and got to do it.   And neither remembered to tell me that they couldn't play billiards, which was quite a problem.

So you never showed the ball?

No, no, no.   They picked up the cue, prepared to shoot and then [I'd] go in close.

With Cushing you never had to rein him in.

As I say, a delicate English tea at Charing Cross Station before we started the movie and that was it.   I could have gone through the movie without even speaking to Cushing.

Your relationship, working relationship, personal relationship with him, straddled the death of his wife.   Did you find the methods of working, or his functioning on the set changed afterward.

Not really, no.   The film I did after she died, we talked with him and said Peter would you mind if we used Helen's name as the name of your wife and do you mind if we have Helen's photographs around the set, which he absolutely loved.   So one had to play with him a little bit that way.  

That was your idea about the photograph?

Indeed. Yes.   Actually, I asked Peter over our gentlemanly tea at Charing Cross Station.

And that appealed to him?

Oh he loved it, absolutely loved it.   Well, without going too deep into Peter, he just couldn't wait for the day he'd join Helen up there or where ever.

That was Tales from the Crypt you were talking about, where he was the junkman ?

You know better than I do.   He's the old man whose father commits suicide and comes back from the grave.   Yes.

I remember reading somewhere that that was not the role he was initially hired to play in that film.

I hired him to play that role.

There was an interview with him where he said, can I play this one instead, and between he and you, you worked out and built up the character more.

No, sorry Peter.   No.

Okay, strike that interview. Milton Subotsky is to Amicus as Anthony Hinds is to Hammer .

No.   No, let me tell you about Amicus.   There's nobody here from Amicus, is there?   Lovely guys, one of them's no longer with us, Milton is no longer with us.   But this was a set up, there was Milton Subotsky, Max Rosenberg. Max used to stay in America to raise the money, Milton used to stay in England to make the movies.   Max was the wheeler-dealer and they'd sort of get a script and they'd budget this roughly, and maybe they'd work out a budget. Let's take a figure from those days, I can't remember, budget figures were very different in those days, say they'd work out £100,000 to make the film.   Max would go around the world trying to get it, and suddenly, we'd hear that he raised some money but he'd only raised £80,000 so we had to make the film for £80,000.   In order for them to sort of live, dear old Milton had to write the script.   Sorry Milton.   Milton was not a writer but he had to write the script.   I'd get scripts delivered to me, I remember one actual case, we were making a film with Margaret Johnson who played a crippled woman, Psychopath [1966], and first of all we haven't got enough money to make it, then the script came to me and I read it, and I said, this is very short. So, I said to my wife, "Pam, darling, time this script, I think it's very short." We were making an 80 minute film.   So my wife, who's the greatest script timer in the world, she timed it--40 minutes and we've got a week before we start shooting it.   We start shooting it on Monday morning and I've got a 40 minute script with about 20 minutes of ideas I can put in.   Max came up to me on the set and said, "Great news, Freddie."   I thought he was going to say we'd got more money.   He said, "I've just heard from Columbia, they're going to do a television deal, they want 10 more minutes."   But, they were great guys, but this was the way we went on.   They were very different [than] Hammer.   Hammer was really dead on the nail.   They knew how much money they wanted, how much money they had and the script was always right.   Plus, [with Amicus] the fact that I always had the problem at the end of it.   Milton used to always like being in the cutting room.   So I used to have to shoot the film in such a way that Milton couldn't touch it.   But they were good guys and I liked the films they made anyway.

How did you approach editing?

Well, I don't know if you remember things like The Innocents and films that I'd photographed, all done in rather complicated tracking shots and movements.

So that you'd stage a scene with a long continuous take involving camera movement and not involving editing.

Sure!

And therefore no editing is possible...   So that wasn't an artistic choice on your part?

Well, I think I would have done it.   I'd been so used to working with people like Jack Clayton and John Huston and Mickey Powell, who liked lots of moving shots. But, I guess I would have gone to that method anyway.

Certainly another challenge that comes from what you were describing is the fact that you have to keep making these films longer .

Absolutely. I remember one night we were so short on this thing, I thought I'd better write a little scene tonight to cover that.   I said to Pam Davis, I said, Pam, please tonight write a scene about such and such a thing, and I said to my wife, Pam, will you write a scene about this and we'd be writing three scenes overnight to expand it.

One of the remarkable things to me is you look at the film and it doesn't feel that way.   It doesn't feel added.   It doesn't feel expanded.   You've managed to hide the seams.

I suppose that comes not from being clever, but from having an idea about what the film is going to be about before you started.   So, a little bit more doesn't hurt.

Certainly one of the most visual horror films I know of is your film The Skull .

I agree with that, I'm sorry to say.

Why are you sorry?

I agree completely.

How much of the last 30 minutes of the film, how much was your improvisation on the set?

If it was an Amicus picture, practically all of it. You know, one of the good things about that, we had a wonderful set designer and set dresser and he came up with an awful lot of good stuff to play around with.   Then, I was able to play around with this thing where we had the huge skull, and I used to have the camera, and I would be on roller skates with the camera mounted in front of me, so I was wandering around looking through the skulls eyes.   We had a lot of fun that way.   So I suppose having fun helped it as well.   The visual things helped.

By the end of the Amicus period you were getting frustrated with all of this?

I think so, yes.

And were looking for other kinds of things and that's where                       Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly came in?   Which is based on a               play .

A play that an agent rang me.   An agent, who was Maggie Johnson, who, as an actress had been in The Psychopath and who decided she was going to look after me for the rest of my life.   She used to always try to help me, and with Maggie's help you don't need enemies.   Anyway, she rang me and said, "I've just seen this play at a night theatre in London and I think you ought to read it."   I read it, and I liked it, and I got somebody to write a script, and, this was the strangest thing, it really spoilt my life in movies because I didn't realize how difficult it was to set up a film.   Because, something happened that was quite mad.   I finished the script.   I remember I picked up the script from the stenographer and took it to my agent and I said, there we are, get this going.   He sent it to a man in London, an American who'd just been given a lot of money to start a leisure company and he read this overnight, spoke to the leisure company, and said I think instead of opening the leisure company, we should spend the money making this film.   So the next day we'd set the film up.   It's never happened again.   I thought it happened like that all the time.

What was it that appealed to you so much that you would choose this as your first independent production?

Well it was a bit of a sick comedy.   I like sick comedies.

Sick in what way?

Well, you know, these young kids who were about 20 and pretending to be about 12 and still went out and found new friends to play with them and then they built sandcastles and put their friends in the sand up to their necks and kept them there. It was crazy and the mother was crazy.   I thought everything about it was crazy.

I remember one of the characters was beheaded.   You don't see it happen but the head was in a boiling stew pot on the stove and one of the characters begins to think that maybe the head is in the stew pot and gets up and starts to look and his courage fails him and he can't look.   You have a subjective shot where the camera is rising slightly until the camera can almost see but never quite sees it.   This struck me, at the time, as being an extremely good example of a sort of discretion.   You're not showing the head in the stew pot but you're playing with the idea.

We couldn't get anybody to play the head.   I still like the film, not may people saw it.   But, in my defense, I think we made it at a very bad time.   We made the film and I made more money out of that than I'd made out of any other film, although it didn't do much business.   On completion, the film was sold immediately to Cinerama, who then went out of business so the film struggled around, hardly got shown.   But you can still pick up copies.   I know I was trying for ages to get a video copy which somebody sent me one from the States.   Anyway, nobody's seen it but I did enjoy it.   Have you seen it?

I did see it and I recommend it.   It is eccentric .

He recommends it.   You have his word.   You heard it here.

It's called Girly over here, just Girly .   Subsequently you did initiate another project-- Tales that Witness Madness [1973]. Didn't you initiate that?

Oh yes, yes, yes.   Well, I made a film for-- The Creeping Flesh --I made for this new company, and while I was doing it, you know, they were very happy and as the Max [Rosenberg] and Milton [Subotsky] films had been so successful, I thought, well, it would be a good idea to get a four story film going.   So I spoke to the man who ran the company, John Haven, I got the script to him and, he said, "Come up and see me."   So, I went up one day and he said, "How much money do you want to make this film?"   I can't remember what I said, it was very little.   He said, "I can fix that for you."   I thought, "Yes, I've heard all this story before."   It was the strangest thing ever.   We were alone, it was a bank holiday, he walked out of his office into the teleprinter room, and I head him tapping something out.   He came back and said, "Oh, I can get this fixed up for you in no time at all," and we spoke for about two minutes and suddenly the teleprinter started working, he went in again, he came back, he said, "That's okay, we got the money."   He telexed to Frank Yablans, who was running Paramount then, and one of the films that I'd done for Max and Milton had been shown over here and was a great success, and Yablans'd seen it was a success, so, he gave us the money to make that film.

You also had the stories written, didn't you?

Oh, I had an actress friend of mine, who had been in many of my films, Jenny Jayne, you've seen her.   So she wrote it and off we went.

Did you originate the story ideas ?

It's too long ago to remember.

I was particularly was struck by the one called "Luau" in which the Hawaiian hero has to sacrifice a virgin and feed her to her mother.

This was a children's film, yes.

As I recall, you treated it as a comedy.

Not that one exactly.   No, we couldn't get a laugh out of that at all.   But it was very enjoyable, because, we had some very good actors in it and we had a very dear lady, Rita Hayworth, come over to play the part, but she was too ill.   So, she couldn't do it.   She had this terrible Alzheimer's disease and it was starting then, so we had to replace her with another lovely lady we have, a very good friend, it was Kim Novak.   We had a lot of fun on that movie.   We had a lot of people in it.   Other people too numerous to mention, quite a big cast.

After finally I guess reaching a point of complete disillusions in the films being offered you, you took about five years off.   What where you doing in those five years between Legend of the Werewolf [1975. AKA Plague of the Werewolf ]   and The Elephant Man [1980]?

No, that's not quite true.   I did take it off from feature films but, you know because I like eating or drinking, if anyone offered me a television show, I did things like The Saint.   Another very good show, I thought, with Richard Bradford, Man in the Suitcase, I did several of those, Black Beauty s.   I did those to keep body and soul together.

What prompted you to shift back to photographing films with The        Elephant Man ?

More promise.   Well, David Lynch and Jonathan Sanger, who produced The Elephant Man , came over, they were looking around and they            asked for a meeting with me, I met with them, and we hit it off             immediately as, in fact, we still do.   So I said if they wanted me to                        I would do the movie.   There was a lot of opposition. People were          saying, "You can't have Freddie, he hasn't photographed a film for 10 or 15 years," and David said, "Well you know, it's like riding a bicycle, once you can do it, it's just the same."   So, it was a very funny thing.   They finally got it down to two people, me and one other guy who is a friend of mine, so I won't mention his name, so they said, "Let's toss a coin.   If it comes down heads we'll have Freddie, if it comes down tales we'll have the other guy." So a great friendship sprang out between the three of us.   I've just come back from seeing David in L.A., but that's how I did that picture.

Which started you off.

Next thing I knew I was on The French Lieutenant's Woman and so on and so forth.

With a little bit of more directing in between , The Doctor's and the Devils [1985], a very striking film which is missing one scene I understand, the scene toward the end where the doctor feels remorse.

Oh yes, yes, yes.   When I was doing Cape Fear [1991] I spoke to Martin [Scorsese] about it and he said, "Why don't we buy it and put the scene back?"   But I couldn't go through all of that.

Was that scene shot and just cut out?

The idea was shot and cut out because dear old Mel Brooks didn't think it was necessary and as it was his money.

But the footage existed?

The footage existed but don't ask me where.

As much as I liked the film, there is a sense that everything happens too fast at the end.

The whole subject is the ends justifying the ends, and that's missing.

What's on your schedule at the moment?

Funny you should say that.   I'm too old to run around setting up               films, I'm also too old to work 18 hours a day on films.   Not that I'm      too old, it's not necessary, so I won't do films unless I'm really             interested.   I have a project.   When I was doing Cape Fear with Marty       a script came to me and Marty heard me talk to the guy who brought        it, Henry Bumstead, and   I said, "Henry, I don't want to get involved        in setting up movies," blah, blah, blah and Marty said, "Let me see           that," and he took it home to read it.   And, he said, "Freddie I think        you should do this movie."   I said, "Why Marty?"   I can't tell you                      why, because it gives away some secrets.   Anyway Marty said, "You        direct it and I'll produce it," so we're trying to set that up at the               moment and yesterday, I had a meeting with the Maryland Film               Commission because I want to do it here.   We'll see.

So there's still more directing in store?

I hope so, yes.

Regarding casting and working with actors:

It's strange, sometimes on the sort of films that I have done, I appreciate that I can never direct all the artists, because there's not time.   So I'm very careful to cast them with friends or with people who have done so many films with me they've become friends and just get on with it.   With Peter, you know, there's no problem, providing you let everyone know beforehand what you want to do with this movie.   Fortunately, I've come across very few awkward artists.   Chris, as I've said, used to need a bit of jockeying along, but Peter you could forget he was there.   It's nice to have friends to play those smaller parts where you know you can't devote too much time to them.   I have a very funny story.   There was a very famous Irish actor called Jackie McGowran, he was one of the Abbey Theatre, and he was wonderful.   I think it was the first film I'd ever directed, there was the part of a hotel porter or landlord or something.   I said to the producer, "I'd love to get Jackie to play this part." I went with Jackie, I said, "This is a hotel porter, blah, blah, blah," just said a few words to him, and [told him] go ahead.   Now this is a famous Irish actor, and suddenly, after two days, I was looking at the rushes and I suddenly realized Jackie had decided to play it as a Welshman, so you come across these snags occasionally.   But one has to cast carefully because if you have a difficult artist in the movie, forget it.

Did Peter come to you with tidbits on how you wanted him to play Baron Frankenstein.

Very rarely, he'd played it before and we discussed it and [then] get on with it.   Let's face it, Baron Frankenstein eventually becomes Peter Cushing.  

You photographed a number of films in black and white.   What are the advantages of it and do you think there's any future for it?

People are always asking me this question; they're always coming                   to say, you made something in black and white or color and they want       to know was it a great artistic decision and invariably it was a                 commercial decision.   Everybody always says what a wonderful idea         it was to make The Elephant Man in black and white and who made        that decision.   It was not [an] artistic decision.   It was a Mel Brooks        film as you know and he didn't want to spend the money to make it               a color film.   Invariably those are the things.   For my money, I love        both black and white and color.   I think I could have made The               Elephant Man look just as period had we done it in color, it would have been more of a challenge.   Very rarely is this an artistic decision.   I think these days it's a bit rather difficult to sell a film to television if it is black and white.

Then, once the decision is made, that sets off a chain of thought about how to use black and white or how to use color.

Indeed.   It comes down to the DP and designer.

So once you go down the road planning it for black and white, you couldn't just instantly change it to color.

I could.   [laughs] I really mean that, you know.   Once one's got the mood in one's mind you can create that mood in either black and white or color by different means.

How were the Hammer films conceived when they were released, critically.

It depends on the press.   The sort of high-class press sort of rather frowned on them.   It's very strange because I directed a lot of these pictures, as you know, and most of my friends in the business would never dream of seeing them and eventually, in the early days of television they'd probably see these films and I know people like Jack Clayton and these people come visit and say, "I've see one of your films on television last night and it was very good, wasn't it?"   But the press are very strange people.   They have to hit a certain area and they're above all that you know.   So not very well.   The low class press, which, of course, I don't read, they viewed them quite normally but generally they [the films] were sort of frowned upon.

The films you're directed, did you have a choice of lighting and cameramen?

Not a great deal of choice because money came into it a lot.   It's funny, the first film I directed, I'd seen a lot of films that had been directed by cameramen and I thought they had no soul, I thought they concentrated too much on the lighting.   "When I do this I won't interest myself in the photography at all, I'll turn away from it."   That was my worst mistake.   And after about two films I said, "Oh to hell with this, I'm going to get friends to photograph them" and I would have long chats with them and tell them how I want this to look.   Which I did and toward the end of those films I directed, you'll find I had one or two cameramen around all the time, John Wilcox and a guy called Norman Wooley.

You worked with David Lynch on two very different films, The Elephant Man and Dune [1984].   How would you contrast working on each film?   Dune obviously cost a lot more money, but was it a more difficult film to make than The Elephant Man .

Not really, no.   I had my faithful companion Gordon Hayman with me on the movie. We loved David, and we realized that we would go into eternity on that film, and it was going on and on, and I can   remember, I turned to David and I'd say, "One hour 40 David." "Aw, shut up."   When I left the film, David said, "I'd like you to see the film before I go."   That was the cut at the time which ran for four hours, so the film was in my opinion--I know some people love it--but I thought it was a very slow film.   Also the sort of contrivance of having Mrs. De Laurentiis coming on screen every time and telling you the story, I don't think worked.   But working with David is great, and, you know, those two films I enjoyed very much.   David knew exactly what he wanted because he hadn't been used to studios, so, he didn't quite know how to go about getting it.   So, I was able to sort of guide him a bit.   Both the films are what David wanted, and I was able to help him get it, but, as far as I was concerned, I didn't think Dune was ever going to be a successful film, but it was very fun to work on with David.