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Great British Road Movies anyone

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Inspired by @anton – great British road movies anyone?

Radio On, to start with, although a fascinating unintended documentary of 70s Britain, is a bit of a non-event as an actual movie.

Anyone seen the Peter Capaldi one Soft Top, Hard Shoulder (the title does not give me confidence). Hardly Vanishing Point is it? Hmmm that had a Dodge Challenger. This has a 1971 Triumph Herald. And a score by Chris Rea.

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Comments

  1. Road to Hell indeed. Glad to see you got the reference. Haven’t seen Radio On since it first came out- as I recall the soundtrack was more enjoyable than the film. Can’t think of many brit examples – Sightseers maybe? Genevieve? The Fast Lady? This maybe the best – certainly a great cast:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZhg5caZjyg

    You really need Warren Oates in there somewhere

  5. Coast To Coast springs to mind – an 80s tv movie with Lenny Henry and lots of sixties soul as I recall. Haven’t seen it since the 80s mind you, so it’s probably not as good as I remember.

    I spent a lot of my summer holidays with my Dad in the 80s, who worked across the UK, so spent a lot of time driving. Our road trips were soundtracked by a multitude of 60s soul compilations, and rested from in tiny B&Bs all over the country. This film rang a lot of bells.

    And look, it’s on youtube! I’ll watch that later and be really disappointed I’m sure…

  10. Must be a limited pool for UK road movies…how’s this for a limited pool – NZ road movies….”Goodbye Pork Pie” I loved as a drunken student in the 80s. Don’t know how that would hold up now though.

    • The basic problem with the UK road movie is that the place is pretty small and built up – and there are service stations every 26 miles on the motorway, the AA will come out – so it’s quite hard to generate any jeopardy. At least NZ is an epic canvas with lots and lots of empty space. I like the call for the 39 Steps as the Highlands is probably the only place in the UK – maybe bits of Wales too – where you could generate broken-down weather-closing in miles from anywhere style tension.

  13. Definitely a road movie. Staggered is an offbeat comedy in which husband-to-be, Martin Clunes, is left stark naked on a Scottish island after his stag night and has to get back to London in time for the wedding. His misadventures include a visit to a Dr Who convention.

    I enjoyed it a lot.

    Couldn’t find a trailer, so you can watch the whole film.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcraLwKI2K8

    The adaptation of Fielding’s Tom Jones is a road movie of a slightly older vintage.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbH96NJ_VIQ

  14. Science fiction though it may be, the film of PD James’s Children of Men is definitely an English road movie.

    And a very good one too. Laughs however are few and far between.

  19. Well I’m nominating the Comic Strips first “Bad News”
    I know it was made for a tv series but it does show them on the road to Grantham!!
    Unfortuanately no full version is available on You Tube so you’ll have to make do with this

  20. Does a road movie set in Britain count?

    Pasolini’s Canterbury Tales anyone?

    There have also been several TV adaptations of Chaucer.

    Here’s one with puppets. Looks rather promising.

  22. Doomsday! Technically a “Great British road movie”, rather than a “great British road movie”, if you know what I mean…

    I still enjoyed it. The world had been crying out for a Scottish version of Mad Max.

    • “The world had been crying out for a Scottish version of Mad Max.”

      Thanks Bingo! That quote made my evening. But don’t you mean Mad Macs?

      It actually does look like rather a lot of fun. With more a few political undertones and ridiculously rampant Scottophobia lying not far from the surface.

  27. I did a thread on British road movies on the old Afterword site. I really like them, Soft Top Hard Shoulder* has a gentle charm to it, as they often do. The limitations of the short distances in the country mean that the plots tend to veer off into B-roads and fields (like Clockwise does). Others I can think of right now are Bhaji on The Beach and Restless Natives.

    The film with the pink car mentioned above may be Beeban Kidron’s Vroom, Clive Owen’s debut, with David Thewlis, Diana Quick and Jim Broadbent. There’s a lovely innocent feel to the film

    Then there are the more violent road films, like 28 Days later mentioned above. I haven’t seen Sightseers, the Ben Wheatley film, yet, but it put me in mind of Michael Winterbottom’s Butterfly Kiss – a solid black comedy:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIyd1ZsfkzY

    There may not be such a strong tradition as in the US, but there’s a nice little body of work if you look for it.
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    * the whole film is available on YouTube.

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