Notes on 'Night of the Big Heat' (1967)

Patrick Allen, Sarah Lawson and Jane Merrow 

in Night of the Big Heat (1967)

 

"If this heat goes on like this, it could very well drive us all insane."

 

 

I.

 

Night of the Big Heat (dir. by Terence Fisher, 1967) [1] is not the greatest sci-fi horror movie ever made, but it does contain what, in my view, is one of the hottest on-screen love affairs between Jeff Callum (played by Patrick Allen, who, for many of my generation, was the voice of reliable male authority in the 1960s and '70s) [2] and Angela Roberts (played by Jane Merrow, who, for many of my generation, was an embodiment of feminine allure in the same period) [3]. 

 

In fact, the two nominal male stars of the film - Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing - and their battle against frankly ludicrous-looking alien invaders, hardly excites any interest at all and one wonders if Fisher ever considered requesting that Messrs. Lee and Cushing step aside, so that he might rework the entire film as a steamy romance starring Allen, Roberts, and Sarah Lawson; the latter playing Jeff's slightly dowdy and sightly dim wife Frankie (and who, amusingly, also happened to be Allen's wife in real life) [4].      

 

At any rate, it's the love triangle formed between Callum, his mistress, and his Mrs. that interests me here ...

 

 

II. 

 

Jeff and Frankie Callum run a pub called The Swan, on the tiny remote island of Fara, off the British coast [5]. When not pulling pints, Callum is a professional novelist in search of a reliable secretary. Unfortunately, the attractive young woman who arrives to take up the post wishes to do more than take a letter or type up his latest manuscript.

 

It turns out, in fact, that Angela Roberts is Jeff's former mistress and she has come to the island hoping to lure him away from his wife, or at least cause as much trouble as possible for a man who fled the mainland in order to escape her amorous clutches.  

 

Angela is the sort of sultry young woman for whom many men would give up red meat if that allowed them to catch a glimpse of her in a bra. Fortunately, despite it being the middle of winter, Fara is experiencing a mysterious and intense heat wave [6] and so Angela regularly has her blouse unbuttoned. She's also the kind of girl who knows how to make sweating sexy and raise male temperatures whatever the weather outside.    

 

That, of course, does not excuse the attempt to rape her by car mechanic Tinker Mason (played by Kenneth Cope) [7], but it does explain why Callum finds it so hard to resist Angela's charms; there are at least two occasions in the movie when he passionately kisses her - once on the beach and once in the study - despite insisting that he doesn't want to experience her special brand of madness again and threatening at one point to break her neck should his wife ever find out about their affair. 

Young, beautiful, and sexually attractive she may be, but Angela is not a very nice kettle of fish; in one particularly nasty scene she cruelly toys with Frankie's feelings, confessing she's Jeff's mistress (thus confirming the older woman's fears and suspicions), only then to snigger and retract the statement which she passes off as merely an expression of ill-temper [8].

 

Whether Frankie believes the woman she later describes as a selfish bitch isn't quite clear. But, having accepted Angela's explanation, she then witnesses the younger woman held tight in her husband's arms and enjoying what British people call a snog (see image below). Confronting her husband about his infidelity later on, Callum denies he loves Angela, insisting he was driven purely by lust and that the latter is nothing but a common slut.   

 

Anyway, for those who care, the film ends with a heavy downpour of rain and that finishes off the aliens: hurrah! for the Great British weather. 

 

Callum, Frankie, and Angela, however, all survived the night of the Big Heat and, once things cooled down, they presumably looked for a way to resolve their relationship issues. Who knows, perhaps Miss Roberts decided to stay on the island and Callum somehow managed to convince his wife that a ménage à trois just might work ...

 

 

A moment of shared passion for the illicit lovers and one 

of extreme awkwardness, to say the least, for a loyal wife.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The film was based on a 1959 novel of the same name by John Lymington. It was released in the United States in 1971 as Island of the Burning Damned. To watch the trailer to Night of the Big Heat, click here. To watch the film in full: click here. 

 

[2] Patrick Allen (1927-2006) made regular appearances in many of the ITC shows that I loved as a child and still like to watch now, including The Baron, The Avengers, and UFO. Even many who would be unfamiliar with his name might recognise his face - and would almost certainly know his distinctive voice, if only because he narrated the UK Government's Protect and Survive public information campaign, as sampled by Frankie Goes to Hollywood in their 1984 anti-war song 'Two Tribes' (ZTT Records). Allen also narrated the first series of Blackadder (1983) and voiced numerous TV commercials.     

      

[3] Jane Merrow (born Jane Josephine Meirowsky, in 1941, to an English mother and German-Jewish father) also had roles in many of the great British TV series, including Danger Man, The Saint, and The Prisoner. She was also considered as a possible replacement for Diana Rigg in The Avengers,  although the role eventually went to Linda Thorson. After moving to the US in the early 1970s, she went on to guest star in many hit American shows too, including Mission:Impossible, Police Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, Hart to Hart, and The Incredible Hulk. One can find out much more via her website: click here. 

    

[4] Happily, the fictional affair in Night of the Big Heat had no effect on their marriage and they stayed together until Patrick's death in 2006. Sarah Lawson is perhaps best known for her role as Marie Eaton in The Devil Rides Out (dir. Terence Fisher, 1968), also starring Christopher Lee (and it might also be noted that the actor Leon Greene (playing Rex Van Ryn) had his voice dubbed by Patrick Allen). 

 

[5] Fara is a small island in Orkney, Scotland. It has been uninhabited since the 1960s. I'm not sure if this is the island on which the story is meant to be set, or if the filmmakers simply borrowed the name. 

[6] According to the scientist played by Christopher Lee (Prof. Godfrey Hanson), the heat is of extraterrestrial origin; for Fara is the site of an alien invasion and these jellyfish-like beings seem to emit outrageously high levels of body heat - enough to cause anyone getting too close to spontaneously combust (if the head-splitting noise they also make doesn't prove fatal first).

[7] Fortunately, Angela is able to fight him off (hitting him over the head with a metal ashtray) and he is vapourised when fleeing from the scene of the sexual assault straight into the path of an alien. 

 

[8] This powerful scene between Frankie and Angela begins at 31 mins into the film and ends at 33:10.