Cult Movies (and Not Only): Get Carter

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Get Carter (1971) is the debut film for the director Mike Hodges. His earlier work for the BBC had been welcomed by the British television viewers. Hodges wrote also the film’s script based on Ted Lewis’ novel “Jack’s Return Home” written in 1969. Lewis inspired for his novel by the real life of “One-armed bandit murder” in the north east of England.

Michael Caine is Jack Carter, a ruthless gangster working in London for the Fletcher bros. Jack suspects that his brother’s (Frank) death in his home town of Newcastle was not a drunken car accident as officially listed. He travels there and questions the loan shark Cyril Kinnear (John Osborne). Local gangsters threaten Carter and warn him to leave town. Their attitude confirms his suspicious. He violently attacks them and forces one of the gangsters to give him a name. Carter learns the name “Brumby”. On the other hand Cliff Brumby (Bryan Mosley) -the local mob boss- identifies Kinnear as Frank’s killer. During his investigation, Jack discovers that his niece Doreen was a participant in an amateur porn movie filmed in Kinnear’s apartment. He becomes enraged and concludes that his brother Frank knew about the films but killed before he could expose them.

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Although the director establishes his debt to the works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett by showing Caine reading Chandler’s “Farewell My Lovely” on the opening scene in the train to Newcastle, Jack Carter is not one of Chandler’s lonely avengers. Hodge’s idea of a gangster film is ugly and uncomfortably repellent. Not even the main character is a man that audience asked to admire. Jack owns a cold heart and he is almost completely devoid of any human emotion. Wearing a stone-face, Jack seems to find decency only in the deceased Frank, who represents the honest type of man. But unfortunately the next generation, Doreen, has already been corrupted.

A brutal chase for vengeance begins.  No sympathy or humanity is shown by Carter to any baddie. Into a grim, grey world of smoky bars, working men’s clubs and derelict urban housing, Jack takes out each of his enemies with no remorse and utter brutality. A man stabbed in the heart,  another pushed off from a multi-story car park and a girl murdered via a fatal injection of heroin among others.

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Produced by Michael Klinger and released by MGM London, the film was shot on a modest budget of $750.000 in just forty days and the locations used were Newcastle and Gateshead in the UK. The final scene filmed at Blackhall Colliery beach, north of Hartlepool. Back in 1970 collieries were active and waste from pit was still being tipped directly into the North Sea. A nightclub that figures in the story, ironically but genuinely called “La Dolce Vita” was the setting for a real crimeland killing a few years before “Get Carter” was filmed. The Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park is the most talked- about location known for its 60s brutal architecture and is set to be demolished soon.

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To make the film more financially viable in the US, MGM wanted American actors alongside Michael Caine but Hodges did it in his way. He used local actors from the TV, possibly because they were able to support better the genuine north British sulky industrial atmosphere.

On each release in 1971 the film made no money. Perhaps this tough British thriller was too real, brutal and close to home for the audience those years. It is possible the absence of any cartoon and unreal violence, and the quintessentially British appearance of the film made the audience unable to stomach it. Nevertheless, “Get Carter” now is considered to be one of the best British films ever as in 1999 was ranked 16th on the BFI Top 100 British films and in 2004 the magazine Total Film claimed it as the greatest British movie ever.

Death and sleazy sex in British style is a welcome change today from the more familiar American-set thrillers. (Only some words in brackets I can spend for the remake of this film in 2000, where Sylvester Stallone and his abysmal “talent” are staring. Oh! I forgot his twit macho style! Sadly, Michael Caine makes an appearance as Cliff Brumby.)

Roy Budd composed the distinctive soundtrack which played by himself, Jeff Clyne (bass) and Chris Karan (percussion). Organ and Tablas over a bass-driven funk line produced a much admired main theme. Often this theme was used later as incidental music for TV programmes and adverts, most with no connection to the film.

And some classic memorable quotes:

Carter at the race track takes Eric Pace’s sunglasses off and says ‘”You know Eric, I’d almost forgotten what your eyes look like. They’re still the same, Piss holes in the snow”.

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Carter is standing naked with a gun after being caught at it, one of his enemies says “Put it away Jack, you know you won’t use it” and is accomplice says “the gun he means”.

Carter goes to Bruby’s house and says to the man “Your a big man and your in bad shape, and for me it’s a full time job. Now behave yourself”.

Carter finds where Keith lives and sees he’s in bad shape so tosses him some money and says “Get yourself some Karate lessons”.

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With Margaret on the Bridge, holding her angrily, he mutters “The Only reason I came back to this….crap house, is to find out who did it”. Classic!

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See also:

• Cult Movies (and Not Only): Vampyros Lesbos
• Cult Movies (and Not Only): Zabriskie Point
• Cult Movies (and Not Only): “S’était Un Rendezvous”