The Big Switch (1968)

I remember when, back in the day, I first got interested in horror films, Pete Walker's films tended to be given short shrift in the literature then available.  His horror films were vilified, much in the way that the later so called 'video nasties' would be, as being crude, sensationalist and artistically worthless.  Walker himself was dismissed as some kind of talentless hack.  Of course, his films were virtually impossible to see at the time I was reading about them: these were pre-VHS days when, if you hadn't caught a film on its initial cinema release, then you had to wait for it to get a TV showing.  Not that there was any chance of a Pete Walker film turning up on the BBC or ITV back then.  So, it was impossible to judge the films for yourself.  But times change and most of his films are widely available on DVD, Blu-Ray and streaming services.  Many of them have even turned up on Talking Pictures TV.  Consequently, I found that not only were some of his films actually quite interesting in terms of their approaches and subject matter, but also that Walker was a pretty competent director.  Sure, they aren't exactly polished productions, generally being shot on low budgets, but they are very professionally put together.  They actually look and feel like proper films.  What marks them out from many other contemporary British exploitation films is Walker's eye for the sleazy - at their best, his films capture the faded seediness of seventies Britain's underbelly of dodgy clubs, strip joints and after hours drinking establishments.

This is especially true of Walker's non-horror films, (that was the other great revelation to me when I could finally start watching his output: he also made sex comedies, thrillers and action films).  The Big Switch (1968) was his second film and first feature and aspires to be a gritty thriller.  Set against the backdrop of an incredibly seedy looking Soho and a Wintry out-of-season Brighton, (it even snows during the climax), it concerns a low-rent playboy framed for murder then blackmailed by a sleazy club owner into participating in dodgy scheme.  While, at first, it seems like this scheme is going to involve participating in porn shoots with a similarly coerced girl, it turns out to be an identity theft plot, with an ex-pat criminal and his wife vying to return to the UK by stealing the faces (via plastic surgery) and identities of the protagonist and the girl.  The plot is full of holes and really doesn't stand up to scrutiny, (the revelation that the murder wasn't real and had been staged makes no sense whatsoever, for instance).  The acting from a decidedly lower tier cast is generally pretty terrible, with stilted delivery of stilted dialogue.  Indeed, the film encompasses most of the problems inherent to Walker's early work: he seems to have no actual feel for the characters, presenting all of them unsympathetically, giving the audience little idea of their motivations and inner workings.  This situation would be rectified when he later started working with writers like Alfred Shaughnessy, Murray Smith and David McGillivray, (the latter of whom has written extensively and amusingly about his experiences of working with Walker).  They provided him with scripts featuring better developed characters, better dialogue and quirkier plots.

But while The Big Switch might have many shortcomings, it presents a vivid picture of a not-so swinging sixties - all crappy clip joints, bored prostitutes and downmarket would be gangsters.  You get the distinct feeling that this what it was really like in the UK in 1968 - less swinging and free love, more sleazy opportunism.  The tone is set by the Patrick Allen's deadpan (and uncredited) opening narration: "This, as you may or may not know, is London - headquarters of devaluation, socialism, and the permissive society".  While the causal link between the three is never explained, I like the idea that one of the world's largest cities could be characterised by these three, apparently random, things.  (In point of fact, socialism is, more often than not, surprisingly conservative in nature, making it an unlikely cause of the 'permissive society' - almost as unlikely a cause as the devaluation of the pound).  Walker moves the film along at a reasonable pace, driving it toward a live;y and reasonable effective finale on a closed-for-the-Winter Brighton pier, culminating in a shoot out on the ghost train.  The closest thing to a star name in the film is Virginia Wetherell, who appeared in a number of exploitation films in the late sixties and early seventies, including Tigon's Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968) and Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) for Hammer.  Otherwise, it's the usual collection of minor British characters that Walker tended to favour in order to fill out his casts.  Of these, Jack Allen puts in a notable performance as the main character's boss, who turns out to be a villain and who goes absolutely bonkers during the film's climax.

So, while The Big Switch might not be Walker's best work, by a long way, it still makes for an enjoyably seedy experience.  If nothing else, it's portrait of an England long gone is worth watching - half empty (by today's standards) A-roads, 'luxury' flats that look decidedly dowdy and filled with cheap furniture and decor and a depressing-looking out-of-season Brighton, (it most certainly isn't gay in any sense of he word).  It's the 'swinging sixties' at their crappiest.