Cast: Richard Heffer, Barbara Kellerman, and Ed
Bishop
Director: Robert Young
180 minutes (12) 1983
Simply Media DVD Region 2
[Released 7th May]
Rating: 9/10
Review by J.C. Hartley
A long, long, time ago in front of a television set
faraway, I saw a film in which one of the characters contracted rabies. He was
held fast by a couple of guys while a third, possibly the hero, performed some
tests. This involved bashing two bits of metal together to make a loud noise,
while the poor unfortunate howled in pain. Then the hero poured out a jug of
water in front of the man’s face and he behaved as if terrified. I was watching
the film with my elder sister and she must have known about hydrophobia because
I can remember her explaining this to me. After a little bit of googling and
I’ve decided the film must have been Rage
(1966), starring Glenn Ford, and, given the rules for the release of films for
TV broadcast in those days, I must have seen it around 1970. Apparently, you
can survive rabies if inoculated within six days, although the virus is
generally considered 100% fatal, so Ford’s character might have survived. I had
most of my early education from movies in those days.
I was always a dog lover up until I started working
for Royal Mail. I was bitten by a dog at the end of my first week delivering
solo. Even that experience didn’t put me off, that took another year or so. My
all-time worst experience was on a housing estate, being harried by a pack of
dogs some of which were no bigger than the average carpet slipper. I crossed the road to where the dog warden
sat in his van, to ask if he wanted to get involved. “There’s nowt we can do
lad,” he said. The following week on another housing estate I was stalked every
day by a huge Boxer dog, the sound of claws on a pavement is particularly
unnerving to postmen. These dogs were obviously just let out for the day to
roam around. Finally, I was cornered by two Alsatian puppies, puppies but
well-grown. By this time, I had
completely lost my nerve. I yelled at them to “Fuck off!” and happily they did,
thereby triggering the instant re-growth of my cojones, and I was never scared
of dogs again. This story is designed to show why I could watch the slaughter
of canines in The Mad Death with
equanimity. I always felt that postmen should be issued with handguns, but they
don’t call it going postal for nothing.
The Mad Death was filmed by BBC Scotland in 1981, and broadcast
in 1983, did the renewed talk about the Channel Tunnel make it topical? The
opening credit sequence with soupy visuals, a child-like voice intoning ‘All
things bright and beautiful’, and wavery images of foxes, reminded me of the
opening of the BBC’s later excellent adaptation of John Masefield’s The Box Of Delights in 1984.
Michu, a Siamese cat, is attacked by a fox in
France. The female owner smuggles her cat into Britain. At a party, the cat has
a fight with the householder’s Collie, scratching it on the nose, before
running off where it is run over by an arriving guest’s car. A fox then
consumes the road-kill, and so it begins. There’s a nice circular narrative to
this short, three-episode series, the opening scenes are a little bit
confusing, introducing characters seemingly at random, but things soon settle
down. A middle-aged woman, Miss Stonecroft (Brenda Bruce), lets her dogs out of
her van to run about on a shore. A young girl teases one of the dogs with a
stick and receives a nip for her pains, but fortunately Dr Ann Maitland
(Barbara Kellerman) is on hand to administer first-aid. It becomes clear that
she knows the child’s father, Michael Hilliard (Richard Heffer), whether they
have arranged to meet here is unclear. Both parties have partners, although
Hilliard is obviously estranged from his daughters’ mother, and it becomes
clear that they have at some point had a relationship with each other.
Hilliard, a leading veterinary officer presumably with the Ministry of
Agriculture, is due to take up a post with the UN Food and Agriculture
Organisation in Brussels, however coming events will see that this appointment
will be delayed.
Businessman Tom Siegler is juggling a wife, a mistress,
and another possible girlfriend in the person of his secretary. Stopping his
car to make a call from a rural phone-box he discovers a fox, quite placid and
seemingly tame, he puts it in his car and takes it home to his wife. Siegler is
played by the late great Ed Bishop, one of British television’s busy go-to
American actors, whom I first encountered as Commander Straker in Gerry
Anderson’s UFO (1970-3), although he
had minor roles in a couple of Bond movies, and as the lunar shuttle pilot in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
Siegler cuts his finger slicing a lemon for gin and
tonics for himself and his wife, then infects the wound when petting the fox.
The following morning, the rabid fox is in a state of rage and Siegler is
forced to scare it away by driving his car at it. He visits his mistress Jane
(Debbi Blythe) and bites her lip when kissing her. The following day he is
unwell, and after crashing his car and suffering a concussion he is admitted to
hospital. Experiencing frightening hallucinations involving drowning and erotic
imagery he is kept in for observation. When his condition deteriorates, a West
Indian nurse with experience of rabies recognises the symptoms. Dr Maitland is
called in, but Siegler dies.
Hilliard is presented as a typical maverick with
little time for authority. The government want him to take a lead role
coordinating the response to the rabies outbreak as he has prior experience
from working abroad. He initially refuses as he is eager to take up his new
post, but the Minister Bill Stanton (Jimmy Logan) uses emotional blackmail to
persuade him to stay, a second victim after Siegler is a young girl the same
age as one of Hilliard’s daughters. The story then unfolds with the procedures
brought in to control the outbreak, and some of the reactions from the
animal-loving British public, as their domestic pets are forced to wear leashes
and muzzles or are impounded and quarantined. Hilliard is provided with a press
officer to oversee public relations, and he reads Hilliard the hate-mail that
the vet is receiving. The press officer, Bob Nichol, is played by Paul Brooke,
who memorably shed tears over Jabba the Hut’s Rancor beast after it was
despatched by Luke Skywalker in The
Return Of The Jedi (1983). Hilliard and Ann resume their affair fuelling
the suspicions of Ann’s partner, the aristocratic Johnny Dalry (Richard
Morant). Ann is ready to leave Dalry but she is reconciled with him when
Hilliard orders a horse that Dalry has bought for her to be shot rather than
quarantined.
It is discovered that reclusive Miss Stonecroft,
reappearing after her early scene, collects stray dogs and provides a home for
cats in her castle. As the place is inadequately secure the dogs are taken into
quarantine. Miss Stonecroft subsequently visits the pound with a set of
bolt-cutters and releases some 60 dogs, some of them infected with the virus,
into the wild. This is the cue for a major operation involving the army, and
police sharp-shooters, who scour the area of countryside where the pack of dogs
have fled. Dr Maitland visits Miss Stonecroft but the disturbed woman traps her
and imprisons her in a room with her ‘naughty’ cats, despite Ann suffering from
ailurophobia.
Meanwhile, Hilliard, hunting for some dogs which
have slipped through the army and police cordon, finds himself stalked by
Dalry, as Ann has not returned home. Dalry assumed she was with Halliard, but
the pair realise she must be at Miss Stonecroft’s castle. When Miss Stonecroft
releases her rabid cat into the room where she has imprisoned Ann, the Doctor
manages to capture the cat in her jacket, and when Miss Stonecroft opens the
door to investigate the noise, Ann hurls the cat at her, whereupon it claws her
face. Ann flees and is reunited with Halliard and Dalry. They enter the castle
where Miss Stonecroft attempts to shield one of her rabid dogs which has
returned home. The dog leaps at his
mistress, and she falls from a landing and is killed, Hilliard shoots the dog.
Stanton sees Hilliard off at the airport to take up
his new post. Stanton is glad that the crisis is over but Hilliard warns him
that the incubation period of the virus means that there could be more cases.
The woman whose actions precipitated the outbreak is seen preparing to return to
France, being reassured by her male friend that her cat Michu might still turn
up. Outside, Hilliard sees two children teasing a collie dog which is leaning
out of the window of a parked car, the dog is snarling, it has a scratch down
the side of its nose.
It’s interesting that these old TV series are being
released. This one has hardly aged apart from some of the extraordinary outfits
sported by Barbara Kellerman. It’s worth noting that, as with Doomwatch (1970-2), the central female
character is portrayed as a strong and independent professional, and not just
as eye-candy or a ‘screamer’. Kellerman was Clare Kapp in Quatermass (1979), and a memorable White Witch in BBC’s The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe
(1988). This series obviously had a decent budget, there is a lot of location
filming and the third episode featuring a literal army of extras and a
helicopter must have cost a bit. Apart from a slight descent into melodrama at
the end, with Miss Stonecroft reaping the retribution of her actions, the drama
remains taut and gripping throughout. Would the great British public react so
illogically now in the face of advice from ‘so-called experts’, plus ça change,
plus c’est la même chose.
