I was recently nattering about The World Ten Times Over, which seems to be part of a loose cycle of British films from around the late 1950s to about 1963 (or, as I’m fond of saying around these parts, just pre-Swinging London); tales of life lived but a few steps away from the gutter in London’s Soho and heart of the town nightlife, often set in and around hostess bars / clip joints and the shennanigans, ducking and diving that such ways of life can involve.

As with The World Ten Times Over these are all films that could each be described as “a curiousity, a snapshot of a particular way of life and a transitional point in life and culture – post-war auserity about to make way for the colour, spark and vitality of first Swinging London and pop-art mod(ernisms) and later the evolutions and looseness of psychedelia and what has come to be labelled hippie-dom.”

Along which lines, I thought now would be a good point to gather what for my good self are the particular touchstones / reference point films for such things:

This is a film cycle that could well include the surprising Soho Johnny of Expresso Bongo, the almost Arthur Seaton down-to-earth night out but in Soho-isms of Saturday Night Out, in a more teenage-kicks Bohemian coffee bar manner Beat Girl, the slightly earlier tabloid-esque scares of The Flesh Is Weak, the quota quickie feeling Jungle Girl, the blonde bombshell from over the seas Too Hot To Handle and for myself the somewhat fine grandfather of them all The Small World Of Sammy Lee.

I could possibly include the pre-Steptoe Harry H. Corbett featuring Cover Girl Killer. Released in 1959, it feels like it belongs to a much earlier era. It also has that quota quickie feel but also that curiously clipped older British film sense to it – a past far, far away from modern mores and modes.

Or the also slightly later 1964 Harry H. Corbett featuring Rattle Of A Simple Man, where he plays a Northern innocent lost in Soho who meets a hostess, spends the night with but not in the manner which might be expected.

And in a further over the seas the imagined / reimagined Soho of Das Phantom Von Soho could well belong loosely to this cycle.

One thing that is curious about many of these films is that despite their tabloid friendly subject matter, this can sometimes mask much more human stories than their subject matter and setting might imply and they are not always or just salacious exploitation films; The World Ten Times Over is a gritty realist film with a sense of the consideration of the futilities of life, Rattle Of A Simple Man is actually quite a sweet, touching story of romance rather than times in “London’s sin-filled strip” and The Small World Of Sammy Lee is, well, just mighty fine cinema that takes in realism, thriller, love and loss in this particular heart of London.