Original subtitles

(mischievious music)

- To the Mancunian.

- The Mancunian.

(echoing explosion) (metallic rattle)

- [Actor] No, I don't care how you do it,

but I want the Mancunian here tomorrow.

(gun blasts)

- I know you, don't I?

- Around this town, the guy was a legend.

- The legend of Cliff Twemlow,

is something that goes beyond the films.

This character, Cliff Twemlow, he was a local boy,

he was one of us.

- You couldn't get more larger than life than Cliff Twemlow.

- Bronson, without a 'tache.

- He was something of a godfather in film

in the Manchester area.

- Definitely a man with a vision.

- It was the best rollercoaster ride in my life.

- Filmmaking with Cliff Twemlow,

from the early eighties onwards,

was hedonistic, party, fantastic lifestyle.

We were living the dream.

- He did what everybody would want to do during the 80's,

fast cars, fast women,

he just becomes that person that you want to be.

- A lot of it operated on a bit of a wing and a prayer.

- It was all about trying to make a film with no money.

I mean, we were all a bunch of kids

who wanted to play at Cowboys and Indians

and we needed a chief and that was him.

- He kind of encouraged us all, "We can do this.

We're just a bunch of northern lads, we can do it."

- With a very interesting story,

of a kind of mini film industry that existed

for roughly a 10 year period.

(rock music crescendo) - Action!

(gun bangs) (explosion)

(70's rock music)

♪ He walks tall with his head held high ♪

♪ Before he backs down he would rather die ♪

♪ He's a mean machine, no one tougher than ♪

♪ Then man, man, man, man, Mancunian Man ♪

(loud thud echoing)

(gentle music)

(steam whistle blows)

- There has been some conjecture about when Cliff was born,

but when we were researching our book on him, Chris Lee,

my co-writer,

managed to get hold of his birth certificate

and that seemed to indicate 1937.

- Cliff lied about his age.

He always put five years on top of it.

- He would never accept growing old gracefully,

that's where the disparities in his actual age came about.

I think as he got older, he reinvented himself

as an older person, so people would say,

you look that much younger.

- How old are you?

- Old enough to smoke.

- Cliff Twemlow was from very,

very basic working class stock.

Born in Hume, Hume in Manchester at that time

was row upon row of back-to-back terraced houses, a fairly rough area.

The family moved in the late 30's to Eccles in Salford.

- His father was a merchant seaman at that time,

employed by the Manchester Ship Canal Company

on the Manchester Liners.

My father's mother was Ethel Deacon.

She was a professional dancer with the vaudeville artist,

George Robey, as one of his dance troupe.

- So from a very early age, you know,

entertainment was in Cliff's blood.

(Klaxon siren blows) (whistle of bombs dropping)

(loud explosion)

- [Barry] During the war,

my father and his brother were evacuated to a farm

in a place called Glossop in Derbyshire.

- [Radio Announcer] The children head for the special trains

and they're not worrying, they're off on a holiday.

- Where they were quite badly treated

by a farmer and his wife and not fed properly.

- On their return to Manchester, Cliff was determined

that he wouldn't be treated in that way again

and that he wouldn't allow people who he cared about

to be treated in that manner.

So quite quickly he learned how to box

and joined a boxing club.

- Taught him that he had to look after his self

and he was this skinny little whippet of a scrapper.

(bell dings) (audience chattering)

- Behind me is the Godfrey Ermen School

in Eccles in Manchester.

Interestingly enough,

this is where Cliff earned the reputation

as "Scrapper Twem" and became cock of the school

in the common vernacular back then.

- People in his school knew

that he may have been a little skinny kid

when he went off to be evacuated,

but when he came back he made sure

that he wasn't seen in that light again.

And I think that's something that you can see

throughout Cliff's life when he becomes involved

in bodybuilding, when he starts competing in bodybuilding,

all of those things, he starts to be very conscious that,

you know, he doesn't wanna be pushed around.

- He had an awesome reputation within the town that we lived

as being a fighter and someone that no one messed with.

- And he relentlessly pursued the idea

of the body beautiful.

This was the kind of thing you'd see

on the back of a magazine in those days.

It was Charles Atlas,

"Men, do you have sand kicked in your face?"

- A golden rule he lived by when he walked into a room,

he always tried to remember that he was as good as half

of everybody there and better than the rest.

And he said,

"I'd repeat that over and over in my mind

and that would give me the confidence."

- And when the war ended, he left home fairly soon.

I think he was about 14 and pursued a variety of jobs.

He was a cinema projectionist.

He ran the Penny Ferry across Barton Canal,

which was a Norwegian skiff that had to be hand propelled

across the canal.

- I don't know what I'd do without music.

What a way to express yourself.

- In the early 1950s,

his brother got a reel to reel tape recorder.

And so Cliff there, I think,

started his dum de dah style of composition.

- He used to go around with an early cassette player

and hum into this.

♪ Dum de dah, da dum duh dah ♪

- And then they'd record that and they got the ambition

to get down to Tin Pan Alley in London.

They piled into his brother's, I believe,

three-wheel car in those days,

and came back with their tail between their legs.

No one was interested

in Cliff's Dum de dah compositions then.

So his music career wasn't really taking off.

He had a go at the early sort of beat groups in the 1960s.

He was "Steve Reno and the Sundowners",

that didn't really come off and he's at a moment

when Granada Television is becoming a very,

very important television production company in the UK.

- He then got part-time work at Granada Studios

as an extra in things like "Coronation Street"

and also "The Caesars."

- [Andy] Which was made in the late 1960s.

And he was coming home and his car broke down.

- The car ran out of petrol.

So, undeterred, Cliff strode through Salford

wearing his Roman centurion outfit.

- Through the streets with people pointing and laughing.

- With his helmet under his arm,

which when he walked back to the car,

he filled up the helmet with petrol.

- Some of the people he got to know at Granada

were Peter Taylor, who worked in the music department

and he picked up on Cliff's Dah de dum type of compositions

and thought there might be something there.

And he put Cliff, I believe,

in touch with De Wolfe in London.

- And he's supposed to have written

something like 2000 tunes.

And so it was background music, jingles and even songs.

He put out suites of songs.

- And he was getting royalties for his music

about four times a year.

- He wrote some very successful themes.

He wrote "The Crown Court" theme, for example.

(mellow orchestral music)

- "Distant Hills" was a big success.

It was recorded I think by the Simon Field Orchestra

and they had an enormous hit,

a number one hit with another ITV program, "Van Der Valk,"

(orchestral music)

for which Cliff's "Distant Hills" was on the B side.

So chart success of a Cliff Twemlow kind,

not the A side but the B side.

- Great theme, made him a ton of money.

- And some of his stuff was recorded by The Pretty Things

under a variety of names.

- I did discover that one of his tunes

was in "Dawn of the Dead."

So he's got proper horror pedigree.

- What's it called?

"Cause I'm a Man," the "Dawn of the Dead."

A hick kind of song, it's Twemlow, isn't it?

♪ Cause I'm the man ♪

♪ Cause I'm the man ♪

(guns banging) (70's pop music)

- And even though it's Peter Reno, we know who it is.

- He used to go as Peter Reno.

Okay, not as Cliff Twemlow then.

- The other person he met at Granada

was one of the sound engineers David Kent-Watson

and David Kent-Watson will be a key person

in the Cliff Twemlow film story.

- My first sight of Cliff Twemlow was in the late 60s

on the set of "Coronation Street."

And as a sound engineer at Granada Television,

I would find myself using background music

on the De Wolfe label by a composer

by the name of Peter Reno.

Little did I know at the time that Twemlo and Reno

were one and the same person.

When I later set up Indigo Studios in Gartside Street,

we spent several years recording his music.

He would do a couple of hundred press-ups

while he was sat next to me during the mix downs.

At times the studio felt more like a fitness centre.

- I didn't know his first wife Beryl, but I knew of her

and she was a big stabilising influence on him

and there when he started writing music

and achieving the success.

- He lived in Irlam and he had a nice Bentley

and the big house, he was doing very well then.

- I don't know much about composers or whatever,

but I would imagine it's quite an achievement

to have had over 2000 pieces of music published.

- So that by the early 1970s he reckoned he was earning

something like 20,000 pounds a year,

which was big money in those days.

- I was very close to him up until my teens

and then of course the separation came.

My mother really was just a,

an ordinary working class girl

that didn't want to leave her roots.

And my father wanted to go on to better things

and she just wasn't comfortable with it.

And I think that was probably how their marriage ended.

- And then Judy came along.

- I took a job at Indigo Sound Recording Studio.

Cliff used to come in, used to record songs, record music,

and it was a time when he was self penning his own songs

and he did a record called "Loch Ness Nessie,"

the Monster of the Lock.

♪ Loch Ness Nessie, the legend of the loch ♪

♪ Loch Ness Nessie, he gave me quite a shock ♪

- He had a huge paper mache Loch Ness monster

and had it at the Klansman Hotel by Loch Ness.

He liked to be the centre of attraction

like the monster was the center of attraction.

So he was very much full on like that. Yeah.

- I could never say that my father was a modest fellow.

He was very, very vanity struck.

- He was vain!

He couldn't pass a mirror wherever it was

without looking at himself in the mirror

and looking at his hair and things like that.

He had a great magnetic personality,

you know, that's why he got where he was.

- And one of the famous stories, again,

another of Cliff's Peter Reno compositions

was a song called "Live and Let Die."

Salena Jones recorded this one.

("Live and Let Die" by Salena Jones)

♪ Live and let die ♪

♪ Kiss life goodbye ♪

♪ Watch the stranger close behind you ♪

- Terry Wogan picked it for his record of the week.

And just as it looked like Peter Reno,

bracket Cliff Twemlow and Dave Kent-Watson's

Indigo Record label were gonna have a smash hit.

Cubby Broccoli came along and said,

"Excuse me guys, this is very like an ex Beatle's song,

which is the theme for our new James Bond film."

♪ Say live and let die ♪

"Can you please withdraw it from circulation?"

- We finished up in the High Court in London

In time honored fashion,

we lost the case to the money.

- And so I think that's the beginning when Cliff starts

to have a bit of trouble financially.

- He certainly lost all his money.

And you'll find throughout Cliff's story that as it goes on,

another relentless dogged pursuit of failure in that,

he's ill advised, financially, he fritters money away.

- And then later on in the mid 1970s,

Cliff has to declare himself bankrupt.

- Well, I know he had the Bentley,

that had to go when he went bankrupt

and it kind of started then

and he had to build himself back up again.

("Once" by Peter Reno)

♪ Once I owned a mansion ♪

♪ Money couldn't buy ♪

♪ People used to stop and say ♪

♪ There goes quite a guy ♪

♪ Now I'm left with nothing ♪

♪ And I have no place to go ♪

♪ For when you're down nobody wants to know ♪

- Manchester in the early 70s, you know,

it was an up and coming city.

It's the time of George Best in the late sixties, all of those sorts of things

And I think Cliff fits in with that optimistic,

ambitious Manchester. You know,

the we can do anything attitude

that people often talk about.

(tense rock music)

- [Cliff] Manchester, reputed to be

one of Europe's most violent cities. Nevertheless, this is my city.

When night time brings out all the dregs

and drop outs of society...

- [Announcer] Tuxedo Warrior.

One part fighter, one part lover.

- Cliff Tremlow was a nightclub bouncer

from about the age of 16.

- We had the greatest club scene in the country.

- [Andy] Nobody really lived in the city centre.

So these clubs were bright beacons that drew people to them.

- The Millionaire Club was started by Peter Stringfellow

and this was his first big venture into big city clubland.

- A millionaire, in that time, in Manchester

was just a magic of its own.

- And it was a place to be. I don't think any other club could match it.

- All the stars used to go, it was all the celebrities. The atmosphere was fabulous.

- [Andy] You know, the discotheque

where people would dress up.

It was an innovation, it was bringing an international standard club

to Manchester, it was the first one that there ever was.

- It wasn't like work, it was like going out every night.

The Millionaire was the ultimate, every night was busy.

- And Cliff was a tuxedo warrior, a gentleman nightclub bouncer.

- He was the head doorman, very humble, very funny.

He had a wonderful laugh, he laughed from inside his belly.

Wherever you were at the club,

you could hear Cliff laughing.

- He always had a smile on his face.

He was always laughing.

If there was any trouble

he could certainly take care of it, I think.

- He was always immaculate.

- I first met Cliff Twemlow in about 1977 / 78

when he was working at The Millionaire Club.

- West Mosley Street in Manchester

is the site of the Old Millionaire Club.

First night that I met Cliff here,

he heard a commotion in the foyer area

and next thing you know,

I saw Cliff doing battle with two guys.

And that's when I intervened and tried to help Cliff

and did help Cliff actually,

we evicted the guys and from then we became friends.

- We had a synergy because we both trained with weights

and loved to exercise, loved movies too.

We discovered mutual love of John Wayne films.

- [Narrator] From the thrilling pages of Life,

rides a man you must fear and respect.

A man who's unconquerable will and boundless determination,

It's John Wayne as Ethan Edwards.

- We're two of a kind.

- And he wrote, when he was hospitalized

after a particularly severe beating,

a kind of bouncer's philosophy called Tuxedo Warrior.

But just for that alone, he deserves to live forever.

And it's a great title.

- And you kind of think, "Well, so he's singing,

he's writing music, of course he should be a novelist.

- The old adage, write about what you know.

- I loved the book "Tuxedo Warrior."

Knowing Cliff and knowing a little bit

about his early life anyway from the stories he used to tell

was a very interesting take I thought.

- And from his book, I think somebody suggested

it would make a good film.

- And "Tuxedo Warrior" was optioned

by an American film production company

and Cliff got 25,000 pounds and they asked Cliff

if he wanted to go along for the ride

as a fight arranger or stuntman.

(gun blasting)

- [Announcer] But Tuxedo Warrior

doesn't go looking for trouble.

He is trouble.

- We all expected the movie to be made fairly similar

to how the book was written, but it was nothing even close.

- [Announcer] A million dollar casinos.

- I'll play these.

- [Announcer] To the deadly jungles of untamed Africa.

(tiger roars)

(gun blasts)

- I mean, first of all, it was made in Africa

and it was about diamond smuggling.

- The Millionaire Club turned into the Omega,

which was a bar in the bush.

- Come on in.

Omega's got nothing to hide.

- And the only relevance, I suppose, it had to the story

was that the doorman or the bouncer was John Wyman.

And his name in the movie was Cliff.

(thud of punch landing)

- Are you having some trouble Cliff?

- A fist sort of slipped outta my hand.

- And Cliff actually appeared in the movie

with Steve Powell, but he was called Chaser

and Steve Powell was called Dodo Roberts.

- Steve Powell, who was a, you know, a martial arts expert,

you know, a real fighter.

- I first met Cliff through a friend of mine

called John Capello,

used to run a health studio on Deansgate in Manchester.

And Cliff used to train there

and mentioned he wanted someone to help him do stunts

and arrange some fight scenes for the film "Tuxedo Warrior."

We actually used to work out the fight scenes

in his garage in the back of his house.

(80's synthesizer music)

- Drinks on the house.

- Who are you?

- A friend in need. A bottle of scotch, two glasses.

- Cliff by his very nature was an attractive guy to women

and he was a bit of a ladies' man,

there's no two ways about it.

- [Announcer] He mixes danger with desire.

- (moans) I love you!

- When he went to make the film in Africa,

I used to get letters from different women

that he'd obviously been with and they were,

I found them in the drawer in the bedroom,

you know, that sort of thing.

And I said a couple of times,

he never came back from The Millionaire

and I presumed he was with another woman.

- I never ask your business, maybe I'm just chasing dreams.

- I left after that.

- And I remember he took that really badly

because I just got divorced at the time from my first wife

and he was then divorced from Judy and we sort of...

It threw us together with that commonality.

And then after that, Jackie came along.

Then for a while it went very well with Jackie

and she was a good influence, but it was Cliff.

I mean that's what he was, a charmer.

This is what he was about.

He lived as the character

and I think all the women in Cliff's life

that he had a relationship with,

found themselves living with the character,

the larger than life character.

- Me.

- [Announcer] Tuxedo warrior, he'll blow you a kiss,

then he'll blow you away.

(loud explosion blast)

- The "Tuxedo Warrior" movie

was Cliff's starting point really.

When he came back from Africa with Steve,

he announced proudly to everybody

that we are going to make movies.

- After he did "Tuxedo Warrior,"

he wanted to do films his own way.

(apprehensive music)

- "The Pike," Bum bum bum.

Yes, that was a very interesting project.

- It was a very typical sort of British pulp fiction

of that period.

A deadly pike in a lake in the north of England.

- They're very swift, they're fearless

and they'll eat anything.

- And of course it works, you know,

this is the era of James Herbert's, "The Rats"

or "The Crabs," all of those,

sort of, British pulp horror novels.

And he hoped that would be a film.

- It's just that I'm interested

in mysterious waters, you know?

The deep waters, and this lake's very deep in parts.

- He naturally just went headlong into it,

threw every penny that he could find into it.

- [Announcer] None of men's fantasies of evil

can compare with the reality of "Jaws."

- And contrary to what people may think,

I started writing this, this particular story in 1972,

and I think that this was before the other film came out.

- [Interviewer] You refer of course to that monster shark?

- Yes, I do. Yeah.

Well we've got a fresh water monster here,

as opposed to a sea going monster.

- He said, I want a full scale image,

a painting of the pike.

I said, "Well, how big is full scale?"

And he says, "Well, 12 foot."

"Oh right, okay."

- Cliff was absolutely blown away with it.

And that's when they asked me if I'd like to work

on the actual construction of the pike itself.

I said, "Yeah, certainly,"

not knowing really what I was allowing myself in for,

because I'd had no experience of doing anything like that.

I said, "We want two fish, one that was a still model,

which would be just pulled along by a bolt.

And the other was the robot fish itself,

which would swim on its own."

- It was all set to go. Finance was in place.

We had Joan Collins who had agreed

to appear in it in a major role.

- Well, I played the part of a woman who is there

trying to solve the mystery

of what this thing is doing in the lake.

- [Interviewer] What do you think of him?

- I think he's very scary.

What do you think of him?

I wouldn't like to be in any kind of water with him.

Enormous!

- [Reporter] He grew from the imagination of Cliff Twemlow,

from Eccles, who also wrote the book of the film,

the soundtrack, and owns the company who are making it.

He even plays a starring role.

- And Cliff came in on the scene just like this warrior

who had a bow and arrow and said

that he would kill this fish with his bow and arrow.

I mean it got more and more amusing.

- [Interviewer] Is it in any way based on fact

or albeit loosely?

- Well, no, the largest pike ever caught was 19 foot.

So I'm still under par, well a foot light, you know,

and quite recently I saw a picture of a seven foot pike

and pike can be dangerous, you know?

I mean, there's no two ways about it.

- The BBC arrived, Tomorrow's World, that we had the chance

to take it down to Lake Coniston,

put it in the water and see it operate.

(mysterious music)

(water rippling)

- A star that doesn't take its cues

from some young hotshot director, but from a computer.

There's no motor,

just a tail assembly in three hinge sections.

Each one driven independently by its own ram

and by coordinating the three,

the fish should move under its own tail power.

- It broke down, naturally, because it was the first time

it had ever been in the water.

- A key component in the tail section,

one of those sensors we showed you earlier has jammed and

that severely reduced any forward movement.

- The pike didn't work.

- (laughing) It stopped, it wouldn't work.

- So right now, this vicious pike looks about as menacing

as a fish finger.

- The only thing that would work was the jaw

and they got a shot of that underwater.

- But you know, we've gotta remember back in 1975,

Jaws didn't work, you know?

The shark famously didn't work most of the time.

- So it was just a mess. We dragged it up onto the shore.

John Collins had a picture taken with it.

I remember just as they were pulling it up outta the water,

the jaws were open wide and David was on his computer

trying to get this thing to put on a performance,

you know, see what it would do outside the water.

And the press all moved in on it

to take photographs of it naturally.

And the jaw came up and all this water

just spitted out all over the press.

I thought, yeah, great. (laughing)

But they really went to town on it after that.

- They tore it apart. They thought it was a big joke.

They thought it was a big con, which is all very sad.

They lost all the money for the film overnight.

- And Cliff panicked.

He really did try hard to get the finance

but he was just too late, lost the leading people.

It all fell apart.

- And that was after six months hard work

on this dumb fish for the film,

which I thought would probably help make my name.

(bittersweet music)

- But be warned.

These lakes will be safe for only so long.

(apprehensive music)

- Around the time and when Cliff was,

should we say, broke as a result of this sort of thing,

he was helping me clean the shower area in the gym.

It was so typical of Cliff, he'd be singing along,

whistling away and he'd not got a care in the world.

He was able at times to completely detach himself

and not be miserable, lift himself up.

- [Announcer] Imagine a machine

that plugs into your television and records programs

from the aerial onto a two and half hour cassette.

- [Announcer] More and more viewers will want to watch

what they want when they want.

The solution is video recording.

(ethereal music)

The VCR machine has already begun to change

the way we watch television.

- [Announcer] Whether you've recorded it from television

or shot it yourself with the JVC colour camera,

ask your dealer to let you compare

the JVC VHS with other systems.

- He caught the bug and that's when he thought,

"Okay, there's money to be made in this."

He saw the video sell through business coming in,

so he decided to capitalise on that.

- Don't be the last one in your street

to own a VHS recorder.

- Cliff and David Kent-Watson realized

that there was a fabulous potential market for VHS.

- He was ahead of the game.

- So he goes to David Kent-Watson,

who by now has got a video production company called Ice,

I think mainly they were doing weddings.

And created his own film production company

that relentlessly, doggedly

throughout all the upheavals of the 1980s

and knock back after knock back, setback after setback,

went on and pursued his goal, which was to do things,

to create things.

- We are not necessarily thinking this film

might be on at The Odeon.

Why not shoot it on video?

- It's tremendously difficult, wasn't it?

To get a video camera, machines were sort of this big,

to record, portable machines were this big to record onto.

- And of course hardly anyone was shooting feature films

on video in this period.

It's a real big innovation.

(70's funk music)

(loud explosion)

- [Actor] There's one man, right?

One bleedin' man!

- [Actor] I know there's only one man, but he fights like four.

(thuds of punches landing)

- That Union of Cliff and David worked so well

because they both had great heart and great desire.

And maybe they didn't have all the technique

and the skills at the beginning,

but that other thing built in

and then it just grew from that.

- And it was very convenient because Dave wanted

to make his mark as a cinematographer and director

And Cliff's movies gave him the opportunity.

- They didn't say,

"Well we can't do it because we don't have a budget."

They just said, "We'll ask people."

- That's how G.B.H. was born.

Swedish businessmen, Ingmar Rydstrom,

Head of Miss Mary of Sweden cosmetics,

put up the 20,000 pounds budget.

- So they decide they will make a film that looks

at the battle to control the doors in Manchester's clubland.

(echoing thuds)

(mysterious music)

(typewriter clicking)

- That was a more realistic interpretation really

of his life story.

That was much more accurate

than the "Tuxedo Warrior" movie was itself.

- This geezer's a real pro.

- This ain't gonna be easy.

- I assumed all the time that there's some sort

of authenticity to Twemlow's storytelling

that his diamond and Tuxedo is paid off now

'cause he's got the stories to tell.

- So he brought that reality to it, that grit.

- And so we got a sort of Charles Bronson type action film,

shot in and around Manchester.

- Who do you expect?

Charles Branson?

Where's that bastard Keller?

- In "G.B.H.", the storyline,

it was a very much North and South divide

and Cliff wanted to make the point, if you like,

that the North could hold its own.

- You know Keller, when he put teeth in your mouth,

they ruined a good arse.

- Is that right?

- In a way it was like the story of the Krays.

I don't know if you're aware of this story,

but the Krays came up from London to try and take over

the Manchester scene and they were met

at the Piccadilly station by some of the local gangsters.

- You know, this is beginning to sound like

one of those old gangster movies.

- And they, negotiating with the Krays,

persuaded them that it wasn't a good idea.

(ominous music)

- But- - Maybe I should have

brought a London team up with me.

- We can handle it.

He took us by surprise.

- Cliff's ambition was really to make Manchester

the Hollywood of the north.

- And I remember being told,

"Dave, you're never gonna get any decent parts

because it's all gonna be signed and sealed down South."

And Cliff broke that mold.

- Cliff called upon the pool of talent

that was immediately available to him.

It's populated by martial artists of the area.

He knew that people like me and Steve Powell

and others could handle a bit of dialogue.

We could handle a little bit of the action.

- I don't think any of us were great actors.

I smashed the bastard.

Action was really all they could do.

(upbeat 70's music)

(body thuds)

I think action is the way to go.

I mean, I can't see me,

you know, playing a bloody romantic lead. (laughing)

- Ah Donovan.

Well how would you be old Donovan, huh?

- I got a phone call from Stevie Powell asking me

to go to Manchester to meet with Cliff

who I didn't know anything about at the time.

- You've had enough.

- Nobody tells Big Nick Rafferty

when he's had enough to drink.

(punch landing)

- Well, he just told me he was making this film

and they needed some sort of specialist

martial art type things and I was into Muay Thai

and it's pretty fresh at the time.

So it was incorporating lots of different moves

into this big fight sequence.

(twangy music) (punches thud)

And what we'll do,

we'll map it out and choreograph the thing between us

and it should be fun.

(twangy music)

(punches landing)

And I've never been in front of a camera before like this

so I didn't know what I was doing

and Cliff said, you know,

let's just work through what's gonna happen.

As is usual, it just took a little bit of time

and then we shot the thing.

Basically I got my ass whupped by Cliff and it was good,

you know, I thought this is fun.

(groan echoing)

And that was how it all started from there.

- My role in "G.B.H." was my screen debut.

Cliff asked me, he said,

"Well can we have a fight scene?"

I said, "You and Alfie can attack me,

we can do this, this and this."

And it was all made up on the spur of the moment.

It was funny because Cliff picked me up

to slam me down onto a table.

He'd not realized that I was so heavy

'cause I was a weightlifting regular

I was a pretty big guy in those days.

And I remember him trying to pick me up

and hearing him go, "Augh!"

That grunt, he slammed me down

and he was glad to get rid of me.

There you go, bam I was out.

- Hey remember me out here alone Donovan?

I mean, I remember being in the Millionaire Club

and he came up to me and he said,

"I'm gonna make a film. Do you wanna be in it?"

So I said "Yeah, okay."

Well I was doing modeling and TV commercials

at that particular time.

- [Actor] That's a new Granada isn't it?

- [Actress] Of course it's the 2.9 gear saloon.

- [Announcer] The new Ford Granada.

Let them know you've arrived.

- Cliff and I were very close.

He used to treat me like his son and the only difference is

that I wasn't much younger than him so...

But, I looked a lot younger in those days.

- It's also a story filled with kind of incredible quirks

that had they been in a script

that had gone through feature development

might have been removed.

- You and me, in the park, a bit of jogging, how's that?

- You got no chance.

- Aww, come on. You try and catch me.

(sensitive music)

- One of the sequences that always strikes me is

the kind of strangest but maybe the most personal to Twemlow

is the sort of endless training and jogging

between him and the younger man

that builds into a kind of homoerotic romping.

A celebration of just how macho they are

and that sort of complements the kind of macho qualities,

the masculinist qualities that are there

by making it as homoerotic as possible.

(both panting)

- And then they obviously fall over together

and well, both of them are outta breath, aren't they?

But they look super fit. (laughing)

- Not sure how intentional that is,

but there's something about men being so tough,

so singular that only they can understand each other.

- Bleeding women, no wonder there's so many queers.

- Well the line bloody women,

no wonder there are so many queers,

it does set up scenes of them bonding very,

very closely and you do wonder

if their kind of macho facade is part

of a huge amount of bluster or if in reality

it's kind of informed by a very masculine culture

that he's in all the time.

- Now we're really gonna work out.

(punches landing) (actor groans)

- Cliff's films and the production around them

were very much a boys club.

- Women are there,

but they're really only there to be a romantic interlude

between the fights outside the doors.

- You okay?

I didn't catch your name?

- I'm Jane Cunliffe and back in 1982 I guess it was,

my mom saw an ad in the Manchester Evening News

saying someone was looking for the new Ingrid Bergman.

So mom put my photograph in for the competition.

Somehow I won the competition and that's how I got the part

of Tracy in "G.B.H.".

- Like what you see?

- From the moment you walked in, I liked.

- I was introduced to him as the bouncer

then he was the writer of the story.

He was starring in it and he wrote the music.

I mean, the guy could do everything.

- The name's Tracy and I can look after myself.

- She was quite a snob, you know, looking down

on this guy and what he did for a living.

- The big hard type huh?

- Didn't know it was showing.

- You know, people are very class conscious in Manchester.

I mean, I am Mancunian

but I sure as hell beat the accent out of myself

at drama school because there is

and there's a North / South divide.

So yeah, that would've been a subject

very close to Cliff's heart, I'm sure.

My impression of Cliff, yeah, I mean physically,

obviously, he was very imposing but he was so gentle

and a complete gentleman.

He was always very quietly spoken with me,

very paternal, caring, he was just lovely.

Really lovely.

(Jane panting)

You can probably tell I'm not a natural runner.

I think it's so comical.

I think it's even more comical because it's in profile and

you see the kind of clop, clop.

- I'm gonna have to stop, I can't run anymore.

- Tracy, we've only done half a mile, we've just begun.

- I'd never been on camera before.

It was all extremely new.

But thinking back on it,

I think it was quite new for a lot of us.

- Cliff's key skills would be his ability

to talk people into doing anything.

- I remember certainly on set there was just

a great feeling of collaboration and everybody mucking in.

- You're all flying by the seat of your pants

and nobody's really got an absolute job.

- We'd work on the production,

we'd be shifting tripods, lights.

- I'd work behind the camera

and generally get pitching in really.

- And then Paul has to go to work 'cause he's on the doors

at such and such thing.

Okay, well that means we lose the sound guy.

Well "John, can you act while you're holding the mic?"

"Yeah. Okay."

"Just a bit lower while you," you know...

So you're doing all this stuff

and filling in as best you can.

- The locations like the zoo that we used,

that was the primary location where all the interior scenes

of the nightclub were shot.

And that's just how Cliff worked.

If you could get in somewhere

and they let him have it for free, fantastic.

It's yours.

- You dirty little animal.

- We're out of the zoo.

- So Cliff would walk into a pub and say,

"The manager said it was all right for us

to film this fight sequence."

Now the odds were that somebody would say,

"Well I'm the manager and I haven't given permission,"

so go, "Oh sorry, I made a mistake," and he'll go.

Or the personnel will say, "Oh okay, all right then."

And that's how they'd film the fight sequences.

- We remember hearing about them filming this fight scene

at the Rainbow Room, they said,

"Oh my god, someone's making a film around near us."

That was so exciting as an 11, 12 year old.

- The Rainbow Room in Eccles.

And after all these years, I'm surprised to find

that it's still here.

And this of course was the place in "G.B.H. 1"

where John Barker, aka John St. Ryan met his untimely death

by someone shooting him from the roof.

(explosive boom)

(loud explosion)

- Some of the more complex stuff, like the driving,

for example, Martin De Rooy was a former racing driver.

- I did a bit of racing and I had the bond cars at the time.

- It's his Lotus car in the car chase,

the one from the James Bond movie at the time.

- Cliff being Cliff,

he talked me into using the Bond cars in the stunts.

(classic rock music)

- The American car, I think its a Mustang.

It swings around the corner,

completely misses the mark

and ends up knocking a crash barrier over.

It wasn't a stunt, it was just an accident.

And that's guerilla filmmaking.

Get the shot, move on quickly before anyone complains

and reports it to the authorities.

No come on, go. We're off.

(exciting music)

- And the chase scenes around Heaton Park,

Dave said, "That was a bit close wasn't it?"

Cause actually when he jumped off the road

we timed it just right and I just managed to just clip him.

(gun blasts)

We did a shotgun it on this bandit in Heaton Park

and all these park keepers are running after us

and I said, "Why are they all screaming and shouting?"

I said, "You've got permission haven't you?"

He went, "No!"

So we all had to leg it.

(guns blasting)

(thud echoing)

- I just accepted, I accepted so much of it.

Well this is obviously normal.

(booming thud echoing)

- When the film came out I had to see it, I had to find it.

So obviously a little bit too young to go

and rent an X-rated film at the time.

But we managed to get hold of it.

(VCR whirring)

- [Announcer] If you love actions,

you'll love the Mancunian.

(upbeat music)

- Ahh!

- Agh!

- "G.B.H." was apparently the big hit with the troops

on their way to fight in the Falklands.

This is the very early days of domestic video

and it was World of Video 2000, one of their biggest hits.

And if you think back in those days,

you could rent videos almost anywhere, news agents,

the corner shop, garages, they would buy a copy

and those copies were like up to 35-40 pounds,

which in those days was quite a bit of money.

Then they'd rent them out.

- [Barry] The film sold 9,000 VHS copies in the UK

and reached number nine in the charts.

- Well I've got my copy of "G.B.H."

which I've lovingly kept all these years.

It's a big deal to see yourself in a film

and it's on the shelf in the shop.

(creepy music) (eerie moaning)

(liquid splattering)

- [Announcer] Not for the squeamish.

- It's certainly trying to out tough,

just as a video artifact,

It's trying to out tough anything else on the shelf.

- More brutal than "The Long Good Friday."

That was the benchmark movie.

(booming explosion)

- [Announcer] A terrifying nightmare

from which there is no escape, "The Long Good Friday."

- [Charles] Forget "The Long Good Friday,"

there's a Manchester story.

- It was very gruesome, very real.

(upbeat music)

(blood squelching)

- This was definitely one of the video nasties

or it fell into that category.

- I had no idea I was involved in a video nasty.

No. (laughing)

- Blood everywhere. It's like a battlefield.

- I'm quite proud actually. (laughing)

- The Prime Minister sat with other MPs

in the Commons today to show the government's support

for the new bill to clamp down on so-called video nasties.

- And I think "G.B.H." got caught up in that

but it was because everything had to be certificated.

No one's gonna put that through the BBFC again

and pay for that to be done.

- Cliff liked the idea that it was classed as a video nasty

because that's publicity, it gets people talking.

- I mean, you look at the cover of "G.B.H.,"

not for the squeamish and a man, Cliff himself,

splattered in blood holding an axe.

It's not going to be rented out to little old ladies.

- Yeah, everybody's all, "Oh video nasty."

They were great, you know,

they weren't what they sounded like.

They were just a bit bold.

- But because it's not certificated,

it could be rented out by by kids.

Hopefully it was and they might have got some ideas from it.

- Across the road from my house.

There used to be some shops

and there was a video hire shop there

where you used to be able to hire VHS and they had "G.B.H." in there

and I'd looked at it and I think I was too young,

but the guy who owned the shop said,

"No, that's not for you, that, son."

- A third of all children under the age of seven

have seen a video nasty.

- We loved it.

Myself and my younger brother especially.

We'd ended up sort of doing a dupe of the video

and watching it religiously and quoting the lines.

- And it don't seem right.

All us lot against one man.

- Don't it? What a pity.

Maybe you should have hit him with your bleeding handbags!

- It was ahead of its time in terms of it being

a film shot on video that allowed people

to make their own movie.

First of all it's ahead of that trend,

which is a kind of mid nineties kind of trend really

when digital videos started to really come in.

- But there are now ubiquitous gangster movies,

everything from Foot Soldiers to Krays based films

that are out there all the time.

Back there in their past, in their DNA, is definitely "G.B.H."

- And so their first foray into films made directly

for the video market is something that's successful

and I think that's particularly the film

that people remember Cliff Twemlow for

because that's the one people have seen

that there are copies circulating around.

- It made a lot of money and Ingmar and Lars Rydstrom

made more than their money back.

In fact they made a handsome profit

and Cliff naturally thought that they'd want

to then finance another movie.

But that never happened. They didn't do that.

Cliff was on the hunt then for other backers

because he got the bug.

- Cliff has tasted the forbidden fruit.

He has bitten of the apple of home video

and knows that you don't have to shoot on film.

You can shoot on directly onto a cassette.

You can edit it down the road

and you can get it in the shops.

And an enterprise is born.

(adventurous music)

- [Announcer] Eve Island is the location for action,

tragedy and revenge.

Eve Island explodes onto your screen, the race against time

to uncover the secret of Eve Island code named

the Intercept, return and destroy.

- He asked me if I wanted to get involved

and then, so I came up with the money.

- They've gone from the streets of Manchester,

the clubland world that they were so familiar with.

Now they think, right, let's go international.

- We're off to Barbados in four hours.

- So now we had both caught the bug

and the following year saw us heading for the Caribbean

in the summer of 1983 to film "Target, Eve Island."

- So many new things, I mean for...

I've never been out of the country,

so off we flew to Barbados, our happy band of brothers,

oh boy, not plane flights.

Some of us had too much to drink on the flight

because we're so damn happy.

And we get to Barbados, we get to this beautiful hotel

by the pool and there's a bar...

Whew, three hours later in sun stroke,

throwing up all over the place.

- No, I think most of the time we was all drunk.

(digital belch effect)

- It was great being in the Caribbean.

- The beautiful Caribbean provided the background

for excitement.

(gun blasts)

- It was utter chaos really.

Professionally it was utter chaos.

- Clifford always had the idea that he would be

a kind of James Bond action hero.

Here was this opportunity to do that.

(exciting music)

(gun blasts)

(loud explosion)

- This was a Bond style movie co-starring Cliff

and Brett Paul from The Millionaire Club.

- Obviously, fights ensue.

There was sex and all sort of stuff going on.

It was a fun time.

- It features Brett Hutchinson as a spy by the name of Grant

and he was called Grant because they figured

they could get sponsorship from Grant's whiskey.

- Get close to Grant.

As close as is necessary.

- Why can't we just get rid of Grant?

I was working as a model from the early eighties.

Cliff comes along to this place in Manchester,

Ice Productions and Cliff made his mind up very,

very quickly about people.

He just literally said, "Hi look, we're making movies,

we're going to the Caribbean.

I see you as the Russian spy, Stella Starlight,

do you want to come?"

"Yeah!"

My name is Starlight.

Our first scene was at the Playboy Casino in Manchester

and I thought to myself, my goodness,

I've got to make an entrance in this first scene

as Stella Starlight, this Russian spy.

So, at the time there were some adverts with Joan Collins,

if you remember, and Leonard Rossiter

and she was always wearing something white and glamorous

and ended up with a Cinzano in her lap.

- Yes, yes, just as I thought,

made from the finest Italian rose wines.

Now from Cinzano.

- And I thought Joan looks very glamorous in white.

It's got to be a white jumpsuit

for the first scene in the casino, so that's what I wore.

You had the winning streak, Mr. Grant.

Hence, I've worn an updated version of the white jumpsuit

for today, in honour of Cliff.

- Excuse me sir?

- Max.

- Max Beasley, who was a very well known impressionist

and entertainer on the Manchester Club scene.

- I mean I was the Godfather.

So you come to my daughter's wedding

and this is what you wanna do?

- God, that guy can do some good impressions.

- Cliff must have seen some of this going on and went,

"I want to put that character in one of my films."

- Of all the rum shacks in all the towns in all the world,

you gotta walk into mine.

- I met Cliff for the first time

and it was like a press show of "G.B.H."

and there was loads of people there.

And you could see this guy above everybody else.

He had a natural charisma that stood out and he said,

"I'd like you to play this part,

we're gonna go to the West Indies

and you are gonna be playing like a spy

who's in several different characters so

you'll be dressing up, etc.

The next thing, I got the script and the tickets arrived

and we're flying off to Barbados.

- But what happened anyway?

- It doesn't matter.

- The other thing that Dave Kent-Watson did

with Eve Island was arrange sponsorships

and corporate videos during the movie.

And I think he was doing all sorts of deals

behind the scenes.

- And DKW was the master of managing to swap places to stay

in exchange for him to make a promo movie of the place.

The promos that DKW made for Grenada when we were there

involved Brett and I going out in a hired vintage sports car

and we would pretend to be having a picnic

and actually we incorporated it in to the film as well,

quite sneakily.

- This was supposedly a simple shoot.

(exciting music)

- In one of the fight scenes the cameraman

got stabbed in the hand.

- And it went through one side and came out the other.

And Mark's stomach actually, it actually went through

to his stomach and he was rushed to hospital.

That was David Kent-Watson.

And this is where cheap, as they say, cheap becomes dear.

- I thought it was going okay except for the fact

that they were short on money,

which they were always short on money.

- One of the big problems about Dave Kent-Watson

was reliability.

And in hindsight it's easy to say but at the time,

oh it should have been obvious at the time.

But the worst mistake anyone could have made

is give him money.

Because the big question was,

would that be spent on the production?

- One of the biggest lessons you gotta learn

when your financing something

is to have control of the money and I didn't.

That was given over to Dave to book all the flights,

book the hotels, pay for meals, pay for the actors,

all these other things,

which then we later found out didn't happen.

Money went on his bills prior to the movie.

So instead of starting with what we thought we needed

and budgeted two thirds of it went towards that

and then a third or maybe more went away

on his private bills.

So it never got what it deserved.

- Cliff and DK were not on good terms that particular time

for whatever reason.

- I don't know what happened between them, but yeah,

they did have a falling out over that, yeah.

Shame.

- David Kent-Watson wasn't being open with everyone

on the shoot about what was going on.

- He also allowed his personal relationships to get involved

'cause he was having trouble with his girlfriend

so he probably spent money on her

and I know that there was many people

who witnessed him roaming around Grenada and Barbados

shouting for her when she was going off with other people

and he's trying to look for her instead of concentrating

on the production.

- That along with some of the funding issues around the film

led to a slight deterioration in the relationship

between David Kent-Watson and Cliff

that had worked so well on "G.B.H."

- So it was a ridiculous scenario.

- What's going on?

- Somehow the money ran out and it wasn't on wages

because we weren't getting paid a weekly wage

for being there, all the actors

and all the crew that were involved.

Everything would be based on, "Well, you're on expenses."

- So we had to cut personnel that we took with us,

cut shooting and it was just a question

of go around the Caribbean getting things for nothing,

which we did pretty well.

- It caused massive problems and more credit

to the people who were there in the first wave of filming

because they showed how loyal they were to Cliff

to deliver no matter what.

Even though they were living in near starvation.

- Some money went missing,

was living on coconuts for a couple of days.

- Yes, coconuts.

- We were chucking stuff up at these coconuts

to try and get 'em down because yeah,

there was not much food.

- On a beautiful island, but you've got no food

and you don't really know

where you're gonna sleep in some cases.

It's terrible.

- Anyway, I got a job at The Red Crab

which meant I had a legitimate reason to steal,

which I did, but it was food.

I got the job and I had the gear on to be a waiter.

I could nick food for the crew

and they were all sitting there and then the bill would come

at the end and that would disappear

and we'd survive another day.

- What are we living in here?

Some kinda weird Victorian drama or something.

- Barbados, we actually only stayed there for a week

and I think it took me about three days

to get used to the humidity and heat, it was so hot.

- And then we went to Grenada

for another two or three weeks.

- [Brett] It all went to hell when we went to Grenada.

- There is a Marxist country by this stage.

- When we got there, they basically arrested us,

all the guys and you know, put us in this room

and get strip searched and God knows what else.

What's going on?

Then it got worse and worse.

They had a guy come out and look at the script and you know,

take it back to the people,

the powers that be and then they came back and they said,

"You've gotta change the script."

- Now!

- The Grenadan authorities wouldn't allow any filming

to be done unless the Russian spy won.

(Cliff hollers)

- They said it throws the Russians in a bad light.

What the hell's that got to do?

We're making a movie, you know?

- I have already told them, do not play games with me.

- And they had armed guards with them at times to make sure

that they were trying to follow the approved script.

- And we ended up being chaperoned

by armed guards everywhere.

- A lot of guys with guns, proper guns,

I mean walking round the film sets

and wherever we're shooting.

- There's these kids with, you know,

assault rifles just standing there looking like,

"Yeah, one wrong move, and I'm happy to shoot you

'cause you're Yankees or something."

And it was really hairy.

- As you are aware, the Caribbean heads of state

are decidedly uneasy

about our little paradise island of Grenada.

There are even rumors of an invasion of Grenada

an American invasion.

- Eve Island is probably unique in filmmaking history

because in the middle of the production a war broke out.

(exciting music) (helicopter whirring)

- The latest situation, as we now know it,

on the island of Grenada,

which is a tiny island in the southern Caribbean,

it has been invaded by a multinational force

as it's being described.

The bulk of that force about 1800 American troops.

- The Americans decided to invade the island

and one minute, they're waking up to marines

flying up the beach there with a lot of hardware

and gun battles taking place.

- It was 1983 and a military coup took place.

- The US invaded and they thought that we were mercenaries

because we're all big lads, you know,

we all come, you know, looking all tough.

- They used the military coup to obviously to great effect

because how amazing to have a real army with real guns

actually turn up on your film set

and they actually directed the army on the beach

and made them walk forward.

Cliff was charming.

- They got these soldiers on the cheap.

I think things like that sum him up completely.

I think if a phrase fits for him,

it's he could always get where water couldn't.

- Okay, let's hit the beach.

(intense music)

(booming explosions)

- And then of course after that, complete rewrite,

get lots of general views of the Marines invading

and rewrite the script.

- Expecting Howitzers?

- Yes.

(booming explosions)

- It wasn't long into "Eve Island" falling apart

that I got a phone call from Cliff and Martin saying,

"Look we're gonna have to do some pickup shots in the UK."

- When we came back we had no other money for editing

and other work and other things that needed to be done here.

So I had to come up with more money to pay for that.

- You're gonna have to change the story.

We're gonna have to make parts of the UK able to double up

for parts of Grenada and Barbados,

which is creative to say the least

because we did a lot of this filming

in a place called Styal Woods in between Wilmslow

and Manchester Airport, which is nice and picturesque,

but it looks nothing like the tropical rainforest

and the palm trees of Grenada and Barbados.

"Eve Island" became a standing joke.

- Oh it, it was the never ending film.

- [Brian] There was always some more filming that needed,

some pickup shots that were needed.

- I was actually in insurance

and when I met up with him they said,

"Oh, oh you've got an office,

can we borrow your office please?"

I said, "Yeah."

"Oh, you might as well play a sort of M character."

So 'cause I had a business suit

and I had to actually grey up my hair

'cause I did have hair in those days. (laughing)

- This contains all the background information on Irad,

Linden Brook, photos, everything you should need.

- Even three years down the line we still ended up,

"Hi, can we go to Britannia Hotel?

We just need to do another scene."

And went with Brett and we did another scene

and we all totally forgot that Stella Starlight was Russian.

What? I don't understand.

So I ended up using an English accent.

What are you talking about?

Basically we decided there was far too much to dub

and then it was decided, DK just said, "Oh well don't worry,

she could have been a double agent spy."

Oh.

(laughing)

- The friendship with Dave and Cliff was breaking down

and we needed to get the master

and that's when I started getting involved

to try and get the master off Dave.

- I have nothing.

- I'd sold three flats to get the money to do it,

thinking I'd get the money back.

I gave it a year to get the money back

and then when I didn't, lost the flats.

So, that knackered me up a bit.

I still helped him with anything else he needed to do,

but I wasn't gonna put any more money into it.

That taught me one of the biggest lessons of my life.

- I've never seen a completed version to this day

and it's about 40 years later.

- Even if something like "Target Eve Island"s not worked,

they're gonna keep going.

They're gonna try and get some investment.

(thunder rumbling) (upbeat 70's pop music)

♪ Ibiza, Ibiza ♪

♪ Where warm breezes blow ♪

♪ Ibiza ♪

♪ At any time ♪

- Do we have a film or are you still writing the script?

- He could write a script almost overnight.

Within two or three days you'd have a proper working script

and it was quite a good one.

His secretary at the time,

who he used to get to type things up, Jackie,

became his live in girlfriend and it was very handy

because she was a great typist.

So as quick as he could write the notes

and write the screenplay on a notepad,

Jackie would type it up

into some sort of reasonable script format.

(typewriter dings)

- Okay, let's do it.

- The "Ibiza Connection," another great title, I think.

It's a plot where it's a filmmaker

trying to get a film together, they can't get the finances,

they can't get everything in place to shoot it as they want.

- And they'd already done the soundtrack to it.

And it was, the soundtrack was great.

♪ Ibiza, Ibiza ♪

♪ Don't set her free, Ibiza ♪

- Cliff self financed a lot actually.

And he put a lot of money in that himself.

Whether he put all the money in, I can't quite say,

but he got music royalties

that he would quite regularly churn

into - substantial royalties -

He would churn back into the film productions.

- I got a phone call from him.

- I need your help.

The movie's a mess.

- I'd never heard of him before,

but he got my name from a production designer

on another film that I'd just done

in Manchester called "Gunpowder."

And I went to meet him at his house and we had a long chat

and he had a mad party and asked me if I'd like to go

to be his assistant on this film in Ibiza, which I did.

And it became very clear to me

on the very, very first day that I arrived there

that actually I wasn't going as his assistant,

I was going as the director of the film.

But I'd never directed anything in my life before.

So it was a bit of a shock.

- I could see that Howard was like...

He had that, you know that face that people have like,

what am I doing here? (laughing)

I don't know what's happening.

- But of course there wasn't any pre-production period

or anything like that, you got off the plane

and you started filming the following day.

You didn't question him very much

'cause he made you kind of believe

that everything was gonna be okay.

- Tomorrow, we start shooting.

- He wanted to be one of the team

but he wanted to be the team leader.

- I've got a home video of us at the airport,

John and I, we were tap dancing.

People thought we were potty but we were so excited.

- You've got to understand, you suddenly think,

Hang on, we're in Manchester doing an everyday thing

and then suddenly we are doing something

most people dream of doing, yeah?

- We're off to Ibiza for the show and boom!

- Didn't believe it until I'm sat on the plane.

I'm thinking, wow!

- "Ibiza Connection" started when the whole cast and crew

had finally arrived on the island at Pike's Hotel

where the year before we'd met Tony Pike

and we'd watched them film "Club Tropicana"

with George Michael, Andrew Ridgely, they were there

so we met them.

- Well Tony's the barman in the "Club Tropicana" video

with the moustache.

- Tony Pike was mad, complete, mad Australian.

- G'day Cobber.

- And Tony Pike became famous on the music and party scene,

The Ibiza Beat.

- He's a a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant character.

- He had this pool bar which was a kind of little alcove

in one corner of the pool and he would just put bottles

of vodka on the bar for people.

Nobody ever paid for anything.

♪ Club Tropicana drinks are free ♪

- And the first night there was a party.

- I'm throwing a party tonight for the film crew and cast.

- And Cliff decided to throw a party.

- Sounds good.

- Not the best idea before a shoot.

- The opening night, before we even shot anything.

- Parties are at the end, not at the beginning.

- Alright. The drinks are on me.

- It was an insane idea really when you think about it.

- It was, Oh an amazing night.

- It was good though.

- It was wild.

- People were in cabanas just having sex.

(sultry music) (record scratch)

- It seemed to me that whatever money had been got

was more spent on, dare I say it,

partying that it was production value.

- Oh jeez. But everybody the next morning.

- Ooh. - I mean,

you're starting first day of filming

with the, probably the biggest hangover

that you could imagine.

- Well gentlemen, I must, move along now.

I have a tight schedule.

- I mean there wasn't a schedule. (laughing)

Schedule didn't exist 'cause everybody was there.

- We'll go straight for a take on this please.

- All right. - So you just,

say right, well let's do this today.

And Cliff would say, "Well we're gonna do these things.

So Howard, what do you think we should do with this?"

Then he'd hand it over to me

and I'd look at the location, 'cause I'd never,

hadn't seen any of the locations beforehand

'cause there was no pre-production.

And that's how it worked.

- Cliff was probably still drunk from the night before

when he did the fall off the roof.

- Make sure you get this.

- Okay boss.

- And it was only, I think it was about a 12 foot drop.

And he falls off the roof, bounces up, breaks a rib,

breaks his nose and he is staggering over to me

after the film that's been cut, going,

"Jesus, I look like Corky the Cat, my nose."

And he'd snap it back into place.

- We're not shutting down the production cause I'm injured.

He'd go on if he was mangled.

- Then of course it went from bad to worse

with Cliff and injuries on that production.

- You're making an action movie.

Accidents do happen.

- He runs to the water and dives in,

not realizing how shallow it is.

He hit the rocks.

- 'Cause they're only about a few inches below.

He's like, boom.

- (laughing) I remember that, that's in the film. Yeah.

- So not only had he got a broken nose and a broken rib,

next thing you know he's got cuts on his face

and his nose is twisted again.

He's like, unbelievable. (laughing)

- Was it really an accident?

- No, he just looked at himself in the mirror

and passed out. (laughing)

- I was playing a character,

a mafia boss called Gino Veradi.

- Look, what do you say we get away for a while?

Fly off some place.

- My wife in it was going to be Susan George

from "Straw Dogs."

There was some disaster happened

and she had to go to America.

And the next lady who's gonna play my wife

was Fiona Fullerton.

- We have to have one professional actor.

- They're able to get a major actor to be in their film.

- On the understanding that I take second billing to you,

nothing less.

- Well I'll see about that.

- She was in the Bond movie at the time, "A View to a Kill."

- [Announcer] Has James Bond finally met his match.

♪ A view to a kill ♪ (gun blasts)

- The personal lives of Susan George

and Fiona Fullerton were oddly connected as Susan George had

had an affair with Simon MacCorkindale,

who was Fiona Fullerton's boyfriend at the time.

So a couple of weeks working with Cliff and his merry band

of filmmakers was probably quite attractive.

- I've read the first draft of your script,

the actions are great, but then your action always was good.

But the dialogue stinks.

- I think the first moment of any panic that I had

was the very first time that Fiona asked me

what her motivation was for a scene.

- I've just tidied up a few rough edges.

- What Fiona must have thought, I don't know,

but she hid it very well.

- Feel free to unload.

(Fiona groans) (water crashes)

- We were all in perpetual puzzlement.

- You need a little bit of guidance from the director.

- Don't flub your lines.

- It was all a bit kind of loose and a bit...

It was a bit of an excitement as opposed to a job I suppose.

Apart from Fiona and Brett Sinclair,

I don't think anybody else in it

was schooled as an actor.

- I think maybe I've got something to say about this.

- "Ibiza Connection"

Do you know, I'm not quite sure what that was all about.

- You say nothing boy, this is men's talk.

- But it was a nice location to shoot again.

Basically.

- Ibiza.

- Come on, Phebos. Hmmph!

- Phebos is Jane Veradi's personal assistant.

- Jane, I'm worried.

- (giggles) Boyfriend trouble?

- Can't you be serious?

- I got along extremely well with Fiona Fullerton.

We arrived top of the gang plank

and there was all this paparazzi,

but then they had the barriers for the actual holiday makers

watching what's going on, with thousands of people.

And there's Spanish television there.

The Spanish press was there.

This is how big it was.

- She's the greatest publicity machine since King Kong.

- Yeah, but that guy took a fall.

- I don't think Cliff was very much about performance

and structure, I think Cliff was actually about action

and to him

(car engine revving)

the car was the most important thing in "Ibiza Connection."

- They bought a Capri with a sort of cardboard rocket on it.

(laughing)

(upbeat electronic music)

(loud hiss)

(explosion) (person screaming)

But the capri was lovely.

- People criticized him for spending

so much money on the car.

But what they didn't know is that he planned to use that car

in another movie, one called "Striker."

So he saw it as saving money and in a way it would've been

had the production happened but unfortunately it didn't.

It was probably the production, a watershed production

when it was the last time Cliff had decent cars.

And I'm not gonna say anymore at this stage,

but you will see how it all unravels

from a motoring perspective.

- (groans) Cut!

- There were certainly times when I was aware

that we had run out of money.

- When can I have the money?

- I'll send Phebos with the banker's draft.

- But it never stopped the shooting.

- You also have a problem.

- The problem we had in Ibiza was,

the airplanes constantly coming over.

So the soundtrack was of no use to anybody.

- We didn't actually have a sound recordist every day.

A lot of it was, you know, directional mic on the camera.

- They realized they couldn't use lots of

the sound they'd recorded.

- It was me and Cliff

who were gonna play all the characters.

- And that ain't good.

- Cliff did Brett's part.

- I know you don't like me, but I do love Jane.

- I did, pretty much the rest of them.

- I can't understand it.

- Can't understand what?

- Remember it's not my voice.

- I could easily get killed performing those stunts.

- Max, I'm not happy. (laughing)

- Well he would complain.

He's not gonna say, "Oh that's a brilliant voice."

- Now look here! How dare you?

That felt damn good to me!

- But I had so many voices to do.

I was thinking how can I change this voice from that voice?

Well I'll go higher or I'll go lower.

- Stop thinking of sex all the time.

- It's all very well for you.

You are married.

- It was very difficult.

- Ah.

- Oh, he must be exhausted.

He asked me to dub for Fiona Fullerton's voice.

- Just a few minor alterations.

- So that involved going to Barcelona for a week.

I'll finish this film.

I'm Jane Veradi apparently, yeah.

I haven't seen that film.

- It was abysmal in many ways.

- The film is crap. The script is crap.

- The problem for Cliff with "Ibiza Connection" I think,

he took the failure and the debts,

that he was doing the honourable thing with and paying off

that Pedro Juan and Jose Maria Garcia had left.

- We're still owing half the money

from the "Ibiza Connection"

'cause the backers didn't pay the rest of the money.

- It was just soul destroying too,

I'd never seen him look so desolate.

And we came back and found Cliff had so many debts,

that was when Cliff had to sell not only Striker

but his Mazda RX7.

You've been in the sunshine,

you've been on the sands, you've been in the warm ocean.

It's been fantastic.

You've lived a dream, return home

and there you are in rainy Manchester.

It was devastating to see how

when he lost money big time,

the money was wasted 'cause the film never materialised.

That he would go through a depressive cycle.

So there's always a cycle

of sort of boom and bust in Cliff's life.

It took its toll on him

because he had nothing else to go to for once.

So it was a very bleak Christmas period.

(blustery wind blowing)

- What they did turn to,

one of the tried and tested exploitation film methods

to try and get investors interested,

was to shoot shorter promos,

showing what they would be able to deliver.

- There are glimpses of other movies

that were never completed.

"Mason's War," the concept of an SAS soldier

back from the Falklands war.

(retro digital music) (punches landing effects)

"The Blind Side of God", and it was about

a vigilante hunting paedophiles down and a cop.

- [Announcer] The heartbreak and torture was about to start.

But for the organizers of this horrific crime,

the nightmare was just about to begin.

- Which has a very striking, gravelly voice over

about how Cliff's central character is gonna come back

and get his revenge on.

- The paedophile.

- [Announcer] Johnny Zero, to the law he was a renegade,

to members of the paedophile, he was a nightmare.

- There was one thing that no one expected

in the mid 80s was to get to see Cliff

dancing around a studio in a nappy.

- Ah, tremendous fun was had at Dave Kent-Watson's Studio

we're doing this thing called "Harrising Moments."

The play on words for Jerry Harris

who wanted to sell the idea into Granada studio.

So to make a promo at Dave Watson's to do that.

- [Announcer] Crappies, the strong ones.

- And "Tokyo Sunrise."

- Now we don't hand over the stuff.

We take the money and we kill him.

(booming explosion)

(gun blasts)

(actress screams)

- We have this insidious plot from Japanese gangsters

to take over the world

by having a genetically engineered energy drink.

- [Announcer] A seemingly harmless soft drink

to which has been added

an insidiously addictive drug produced in Tokyo

and appropriately called Tokyo Sunrise.

- Films that we'll sadly never know

what they're gonna be like,

where we can only get a taster of them.

- The royalties from his music made his money.

Royalties from his music financed the films, his living,

everything that he did,

everything was from the royalties of his music.

- So it was very frustrating 'cause around the same time

of "The Blind Side of God" fiasco falling apart,

this was when the music royalty flow of money

tended to become more erratic.

(eerie music)

(animal growling) (person screaming)

- "Moon Stalker," Cliff conceived that

when we were in Iceland the previous year

and stayed in an apartment with a poltergeist

while we were living in Reykjavík

working at the Icelandic National Theater.

And he loved the supernatural, you know,

mystical beast, cryptozoology, he was a great fan of that.

And he came up with the idea of doing a film

about the beast of Exmoor.

- Ms. O'Neill is seeking information

concerning the beast of Exmoor.

- It's a terrible thing you're asking.

- Why is that, Mr. Ronnie?

- It's touched by the devil.

- So, next thing you know,

we're making a Beast of Exmoor movie,

but it wasn't made in Exmoor,

it was made in Manchester.

- It's basically an American werewolf in Eccles.

- [Announcer] Something evil lives within the forest.

(animal growling)

Moon Stalker.

- And apparently there's another cut out there

called "Predator the Quietus".

- And it marked quite a significant shift

in their approach to filmmaking.

And they had a different director who Cliff had looked

at working with before, Leslie McCarthy.

And "The Blind Side of God" was a project

that they did the teaser for.

They were much more ambitious here

and they decided to shoot on film.

- We shot on super 16 film.

- I remember that

because everybody was a little bit more uptight about that.

- Turning over and action.

- Still no comment on the beast at Exmoor superintendent?

- It wasn't like, "We'll go again, we'll go again."

Because, now it is gonna start costing a lot of money.

So I think there was a slight nervousness with everybody

that was participating in the film relating to that.

- My God, that's all we need.

- He had a good cinematographer,

a guy called David Tattersall.

- Now if you look up David Tattersall now, he's worked

on some amazing Hollywood big budget productions.

- He shot "Con Air," he shot "Green Mile,"

the first three "Star Wars" movies.

A fantastic cinematographer.

The Exmoor shots were the villages of Downham and Chipping

and the area north of Manchester.

- What do you mean you'll be moving

into the forest tomorrow?

- This is a luxury hotel full of people.

I don't think the beast has a room here

and I've gotta be where the action is.

- But the actual main location was at Middlewood Scout Camp

in Worsley in Manchester.

- I would like to get to Middlewood.

Could you help me?

- When it comes to penny pinching, I think,

the best or worst, depending on which way you look at it,

example of this was on "Moon Stalker"

and Paul Flanagan, who's a brilliant production manager

and he's very, very resourceful

when it comes to getting props.

And he managed to source a safari Land Rover

for Cliff's character, the big game hunter,

would've been absolutely perfect.

- I'd got this thing fully kitted out

and it was what a big game hunter would have.

And he said, "It's all right Paul, I've sorted it."

I said, "You sure you've got one?"

So I then canceled my Safari Land Rover, which I should add,

we got for nothing.

And he showed up on set and he showed up and I thought,

"Oh where's the Land Rover?"

(car horn beeping) (engine revving)

And he said, "Oh we didn't get it.

We've got this."

- He opted for a little Fiat Panda 4x4.

- I said, you aren't joking?

He said, "But it's got a bull bar on the front."

And I said, "No Cliff, Cliff don't do this, please."

- Why not?

- You're a big game hunter.

He said, "No, it'll be all right."

I said, I beg to differ but it's your production.

- The local company said,

oh yes you can have this for publicity purposes

but you can have it for several months.

So that in Cliff's book was far better

than having the right car for the job.

- Which in many ways epitomizes Cliff's working methods.

- And that was it.

Cliff was a bit of a penny pincher

and spent the money in the wrong direction.

- But that's what makes the film also entertaining.

- "Moon Stalker" was an interesting production

for me personally, 'cause it was the first decent,

sort of role that I was given by Cliff.

- Well, if it isn't the Big Game Hunter

from Africa, Daniel Kane.

And I played, what is in effect, the leading villain

and I was covering up my murders

under the guise of being the beast of Exmoor.

I put this, it's a very good rubber mask

that Ray Nicholas made.

- I think the total budget for that

was about 180- 200 pounds for doing that.

- [Announcer] Moon Stalker, is it man or beast

or a demon from hell?

- But frustratingly, and no one could ever explain why,

least of all Cliff,

why a decent production that was well made,

that was well edited, was never released.

- That is a great pity.

- [Actor] A great pity?

Why is that?

- There's a lot of money to be made.

- [Both] Is that right?

- The old dull boy you know, next year will be millionaires.

That's how Cliff lived day by day.

I think that's how he got through day by day.

- It was always disappointing, you know,

because the amount of work

that Cliff had put into these things.

(Cliff screaming)

- And it became frustrating for a lot of the people

that were in the productions with Cliff.

That you go, "Well, really wish we could see one

that was released."

- [Announcer] He is, "The Eye of Satan".

He's here amongst us to prepare his masters return.

(tiger snarling)

(eerie music)

(gun blasts)

- "The Eye of Satan" was a crazy film to work on.

- But the biggest shock was

to find that he'd chosen Dave Kent-Watson

to partner with him on that, 'cause it was almost like,

"Well, better the devil you know."

- Many people thought that after the trouble they'd had

making Eve Island that they might not work again together.

- And it was almost certainly because Cliff thought

it was just better to be in production

even though it had to be Dave Kent-Watson at the time,

than not be in production at all.

- The story is a mixture of action and the supernatural.

A hunter steals the precious stone,

the Eye of Satan at a ritual slaughter in Africa.

- "The Eye of Satan" was actually some big red sacred stone.

Through the power of the stone Cliff was able

to transform himself.

- Cliff had a very good idea of what he wanted

but on some occasions he didn't listen 'cause I said to him,

"If you are going to present this thing

where your eyes are glowing, you need UV active,

not fluorescent," but he saw this fluorescent green

and thought they were okay and put them in.

And no matter which way you lit it,

it just looked like you got fluorescent green lenses in.

But Cliff thinking, you know, 300 pounds or 120 pounds,

"I'll get 120," so he just had these green colored lenses.

- I know.

- And I felt so sorry for Cliff because they must have hurt.

- Yes.

- My eyes just used to tear up just watching him

try to put them in.

- And he said, "These are killing me."

I mean these contact lenses.

- I could quite easily kill you.

- Yes, Cliff was very aware of his appearance

and he liked to keep himself looking young and tidy.

- If a film was coming up, he'd increase his training.

- And he used to regularly have his dumbbells on set

so that he could quickly pump up before a scene.

- And here he appears with a Black panther.

(panther growling)

(metal rattling)

- (gasps) Jesus.

- I remember him bringing it in and everyone was told,

you know, it's a wild animal and it was a wild animal.

- Is he dangerous?

- And the owner saying,

"Yes, you've gotta be very, very careful here.

You can't go like this. You can't put your hand in."

Boom. This is the trainer who's training,

and the panther went

(panther snarls)

whoof and nearly took the back of his hand off.

- There can't be that many hit men

that have got a panther for a sidekick.

- There's only a couple of shots,

cause we couldn't afford it for long.

So we basically milked the life out this thing.

(intense music)

(gun blasts)

- I first met Cliff, I got taken to his house in Prestwich

by Brian Sterling under the apprehension

I want to be in films.

Cliff was making films.

So I said alright, "Okay, yeah I'll come up."

At that time I was still fighting

so I was still like world champion at the time.

And my first time I ever set eyes on Cliff

he had a really nice vest like T-shirt on

that he had a pair of scissors and cut into pieces,

which then after the years me knowing him

and realized it was just a thing with him.

He would spend fortunes on really expensive shirts

and take a pair of scissors to 'em

cause he used to like the necks really wide.

Cliff would do anything for anyone.

On a production, he worked the hardest.

He was first in, he was last out.

(explosion)

(screaming)

- What we're dealing with here

seems to have superhuman strength.

- I was one of two coppers who were trying to discover

who this person was or thing was

because some of the crimes were so grotesque.

- Brett was my, I think he was the sergeant.

- Mr. Bendix, don't dig your own grave.

- I was a forensic pathologist.

I had to examine the dead body.

- All we're looking for, is it one person?

- We never did more than one or two takes

for any of these things.

- And the third print, judging by the depth of it

was a person weighing at least 200 pounds.

- And, it was actually a very funny scene.

Wasn't supposed to be.

- Exhibit one, the killer was obviously a lover of animals

and the two corpses didn't share his views

or principles. (gags)

- As I played this,

I think this is like the Egyptian fella Camille.

- Yesterday was never, today is forever.

Tomorrow is but a promise.

- Oh, there was one sequence, you know when you're corpsing

and you just cannot quit laughing.

- Here, take this blood money, you have made a big mistake.

(both laughing)

Oh God.

- The guy could laugh and it was,

it came from down here and it was just so...

And that would just crack me up.

I'd just laugh 'cause he was laughing.

- But you have made a big mistake (laughing)

(all laughing)

- It's like that was it. We couldn't get any further.

It was about 15 minutes to try to do this damn thing.

And every time we come to it, one one of us sniggers

and then that's the whole thing gone again.

- Here, take this blood money.

(Cliff stifles laughing)

Oh bollocks! (laughing) (crew laughing)

- I'll take it. I need it.

I was brought in because sadly, Jerry Harris,

was originally gonna play the part of Bronstein

but he couldn't because of his work commitments.

And it was a bit of a challenging one for me

because it was a different character

than originally intended.

And so, I was a very softly spoken undertone gangster.

Welcome to Frankenstein's castle.

We shot that in what was a converted carpenter's workshop,

which was in Droylsden.

The effects chap, Stevie Tomkow owned that

and built the set.

- We sort of designed it around what we had.

We had my workshop with a split level.

So we had a chat about putting the panther cage up there

and then moving along Cliff's shower

and then dropping down into his front room.

And then at the other end we could fit the altar in.

- Jesus, this place is, just gives you the creeps.

- We built a few more sets in there, the police station,

the funeral parlor when the coffin got hit with a shotgun.

- "The Eye of Satan" coffin scene. Hmmm...

That was memorable because Cliff had bought a coffin,

never thinking to get one that might fit an adult male.

And unfortunately Paul Gribben, who fortunately is thin,

but he's quite tall and he's in this coffin

and with every cheating method we could devise

so you wouldn't see how bent his knees were in this coffin.

He's like, like this. Way too short.

I don't know who it was designed for,

but, it was cheap so he bought it.

(cash register dings)

- Everybody used to take the mick out of Cliff,

you know the character.

"Nobody's safe with Kane the beast."

You know, he slaughters gangsters,

he murders priests and policemen and he drives a Sale Van Hire.

(van rattling)

- Which seems so local and parochial

for this ambitious project.

- But, I did ask him at the time,

I actually remember saying,

"Cliff, how can the devil's disciple, who can do anything...

Why is he driving a Sale Van Hire van?"

He said, "Incognito."

- And I said, "Cliff, that really looks naff."

I said, "Look, just just gimme 20 minutes,

I'll get some waterproof paint, we can paint over that."

And I thought we'll get away with that

and then just wash it afterwards.

And he said, "No, can't do that."

I said, "Why not?"

He said, "They've let me have the van

cause I can advertise it."

And I went, (sighs)

- Of course Sale Van Hire said he could have it

for six months if you were in the movie. (laughing)

(cash register dings)

So, no matter how ridiculous it was for the Devil's Disciple

to be driving around, no matter how incognito

he wanted to be in a Sale Van Hire truck,

it was all about Cliff having the truck for six months

'cause he had no other transport at the time. (laughing)

- Will anything or anyone ever break through to you?

- There were some things which,

he wasn't very organised with.

We had booked a forest and we got down there

and he and the director who was David Kent-Watson,

at the time said, okay, we got set up.

And I said, "Okay, where's the lights?"

And Cliff said, "David's got them."

And I said to David, "Where's the lights?"

And he said, "Cliff's got them."

I said, "I take it we have no lights?"

- So they lit it with car headlamps

but it meant that the actors had to do the scenes

on their knees.

- There he is. Don't miss.

- The next thing was, we're supposed to have this mist

that's floating past, I said "Where's the smoke machine?

Who's got the smoke machine?"

Right? "No, David's got the smoke machine."

"Cliff's got the smoke machine."

I went, "This is not very good chaps, is it?"

And David had a Jaguar at the time

and he put it on full choke.

That was like carbon monoxide poisoning,

but that again comes to not being organised.

- Ginette Gray and I re-met on the "The Eye of Satan"

and that was where we sowed the seeds for our relationship

and eventually got married the following year.

- Cliff was the best man at our wedding.

- Because he had, in effect, brought us together.

- Jackie and I, we love you very much.

And um, it's been great seeing you made so happy.

(intense thriller music)

- Who are you?

- [Announcer] He is The Eye of Satan.

- "The Eye of Satan," which was again

another production that was never fully completed properly,

as far as we know, probably as far as Cliff knew.

And that fell by the wayside.

- Let's just finish this.

Market it, edit it, get it sleeved up and get it on a shelf

so you're earning some money back.

Cause that's the thing that never really happened

- I'm going to admit something on camera now.

I have never seen any of the films.

- When you put a lot into a film

and you don't actually get a chance to see it,

it is frustrating.

(intense thriller music)

(laser zapping)

- [Announcer] Be aware, during our search

to discover the secrets of Heaven

we may only unleash the wrath of hell.

- "Firestar," that was a hellish shoot.

It was hellish 'cause it was studio based.

- I'll see you all in hell.

- A space movie.

Do you know, I was thinking back on these things,

and we didn't half do some stuff, didn't we?

(dramatic music)

- [Computer] She's closing fast.

- Red alert.

(alarm sounding)

- Man your station. (laser zapping)

(digital beeping)

- "Firestar" was undoubtedly the most ambitious film

Cliff and I had made together,

with an impressive above the title cast

and all this was within the budget of 80,000 pounds.

- Originally we're gonna get Oliver Reed

and I think they were just a bit worried

about his lifestyle.

♪ How we doing with the world whoa ♪

- So, we got Oliver Tobias.

- So I thought, yes, I'll give it a go, see what happens.

The script was quite good.

- I need to know.

- Know what?

- The facts and the truth.

- Hey! Hal now listen.

- Cliff thought he'd got Oliver Reed,

so when Oliver Tobias arrived at the studio,

Cliff assembled everybody.

- "Everyone give him a round of applause, Oliver Reed."

And everyone looked round and went, "Where?"

(laughing)

He said, Oliver Reed. - Where, where, where?

And this bloke went, "I'm Oliver Tobias."

(both laughing)

- (laughing) That's a concern.

- You're withholding information.

- No Cliff, I didn't know who he was. Knew nothing.

- One of the great mysteries about Cliff is

that he had so many aliases.

- Who are you? What's your name?

- That's the problem.

I didn't know it was Cliff.

I think I was introduced to him as Mike.

- Which, for someone who wanted to be so famous

its really counterintuitive.

It's counterproductive because

in one movie he's Mike Sullivan.

- He's trying to restart his career as somebody else.

This is a brilliant stroke. I hadn't got a clue.

- Mike Sullivan was probably from Mike Kirby.

Who John Wayne played in "The Green Berets"

and John L. Sullivan from the movie "Gentleman Jim"

with Errol Flynn.

Then we have Peter Reno,

that's another alias that he used for his music.

John Agar was another one

and John Agar was a character in a John Wayne movie again.

So there were all these aliases,

did nothing but confused people.

- I think it was because he was in so much stuff

he wanted to be so known as somebody different.

- I didn't know he was a writer.

I didn't even know his real name for fuck's sake. (laughing)

- Cut the crap Harry.

We made it together.

- He was a very quiet, unassuming person.

Very friendly and easy going fella.

Well I knew it was gonna be low budget,

but I immediately knew something was a bit funny

when David set up the camera and said,

"Oh no, I've got to do a tracking shot."

And I said, "What are you doing?"

He says, "Well I'm doing the camera as well."

Turns out, he took some good shots

and he knew what he was doing.

- [Charles] If you believed for one moment

I would be pleased with your exploits gentlemen,

you are very much mistaken.

- Then we had Charles Gray, of course from the Bond movies.

- [Announcer] Charles Gray and he's back

as Blofeld 007 style.

- Good evening 007.

- I think he got pissed the night before

cause he was quite red in the face.

- As from now you are relieved of your command of Firestar.

- But we brought back the alien projectile.

- All respect, but that's how it was.

- For medicinal purposes only.

- Who are you trying to kid? You're an alcoholic.

- What happened?

- I thought, how is that gonna go the following day.

But he was there sweating and doing his stuff

and it was absolutely bang on.

- Hmm...

- Script was being changed.

That's the other thing you see with Charles Gray

and like, Oliver.

Oliver Tobias wasn't too bad.

He did things on the fly, but Charles Gray,

he wanted things certain ways.

- We need time.

- So it was a bit of a problem

with some of the things he was doing.

- Why?

- They were a headache.

- Well, I don't think there's anything else

we need to discuss.

- So it had this kind of, madness about it.

- They were nice guys.

I got along really well with Oliver Tobias.

I ended up teaching him martial arts outside

cause it was a sunny day.

- That's what I'm like, tried to learn, you know?

- I've got on really well with him. He was a great guy.

But, it was a headache

when Cliff wanted to do things like this.

He'd go, "Oh no, they don't do like this,

you've got to do this."

Or you need to give them a break now.

And he's going, "No, we're like this, come on."

- I was on it perhaps three or four days.

- I think it was about a third of the budget.

- So, let him go home. He costs too much.

- Look Gary, I'm sorry that you got your wings clipped.

- Well then obviously you realised,

you stick a name on the front of something it might sell.

So that's what you put up with.

He wasn't a mega fan of doing it.

He preferred it to stay with the family doing stuff.

- When you work with Cliff, it was like a family thing

and like an atmosphere on every film.

- So my daughter Chloe got involved.

It was like we need a little girl.

Right, here's Chloe.

- Well I think I must have been about six

and they would instruct me on how to do something

or my dad would read a line and say,

"Look at this person, and do this.

And then just naturally do it."

- Yes, please tell us the story Trooper?

- Can you tell me a story Trooper?

- Well, very well then.

- I don't know if it as good as it was then but... (laughing)

- Okay.

- So, I had a catering unit and my other half,

she used to do the catering for the film.

- The asked us will we do the catering on it.

- They kind of spun that in, make movie food.

- So that's what we're eating here.

- Brett asked me would I do spaghetti bolognese

and I did it for Oliver and obviously they were shooting

a bit longer than expected and he was explaining to me,

later on, how to do spaghetti.

- I cooked myself. I like spaghetti,

I like spaghetti bolognese.

- I don't think it was to his liking.

- She tried, but it wasn't, (laughing)

it wasn't quite right.

- He might remember that. (laughing)

- I'm sorry about that. Tell her I'm sorry.

- He's uh, out to lunch.

- "Firestar" was a full team effort

and we used the same studio, yet again

and we had our science fiction spaceship built there.

- When he showed me the set,

which was really quite incredible, very believable.

- Whoa!

- Tremendous detail.

- It was changing the sets all the time

'cause we had a limited space.

We had one corridor about 30 foot long.

- We actually designed the corridors

so you could flip bits around so it looked different.

- And it worked in the film.

It looks like different corridors

and the spaceships looks very big.

- They decided they'd be able to do their special effects

in a shed.

- Yes, that's right.

- And if you wanted a shootout on a spaceship,

where better to go than Laser Quest on Whitworth Street

in the centre of Manchester?

- Grab a laser, I'll see you there.

- We didn't actually build the monsters.

We had our model maker who was freelance, Pete Minster,

he built the monster on our specs.

(eerie music)

- The monster in the film has teeth in its hands.

So it had tusks here but then when it opened its hands,

they had like teeth inside and that was like, his twist.

(scary digital music)

(actress screams)

- And when it grabs you, this is the nice bit,

it eats the flesh off your face.

(metallic slam echoing)

- Of course we shot at Jodrell Bank as well,

which is another major location.

- Got into Jodrell Bank itself.

- And he only read the guy on the sign at the side

that says, if there's a problem, contact such a body.

And somebody says-

- So he got the such a body, eh?

- No well, somebody come and said "What do you want?"

He said, "Well we've had permission to film here."

He said, "Who off?"

and he just read that chap's name on that board,

and he went, "All right, come on in then."

- When you look at it against

some of the other lower budget science fiction films

that were being made in the period,

I think it does stand up.

(metallic crash) (loud screech)

And so it's not surprising

that it found some international releases.

- Well done for us then.

- I think it did.

I think I've actually seen a full film of that in German.

(speaking in foreign language)

- It look good, you know?

Because they didn't have Mancunian accents.

- (speaking in foreign language)

- I didn't have a clue what they was talking about,

but the actual film looked all right, yeah.

- I feel as though we're being watched.

- Yeah, me too.

- I know it turned up in Germany.

I've heard it been a few other places.

- And uh, were you successful?

- But there wasn't one penny that went to Cliff.

- It just sorta disappeared man like, zoop!

- Not one penny.

- I just know when we both going to end up

like two penniless janitors.

- My relationship with Cliff, he was, he was my father.

My father passed away many years ago

and he would call me son.

Everyone knew me as his son.

It literally was like a father-son relationship we had.

- The situation is going to get worse.

- Him breaking away after "Tokyo Sunrise"

from working closely with Cliff on movies like "Firestar,"

it allowed us to take a greater overview

of how Cliff was emotionally.

- Cliff used to sometimes have times in between his films

when he'd get quite down.

- It's almost depression states, manic depression states

because he would go from the highs to the deep,

the lows became deeper.

- Then he'd be quite quiet.

But generally he never used to talk about it.

- And it became more obvious 'cause we were never,

we were not so closely involved.

We were looking on from more of a distance,

an objective distance and we could see this.

- It was getting quite sad.

He spent a lot of time with Stuart,

which I'm glad about 'cause they were training together.

They lived a stones throw apart in those days.

- He literally was living in a bedroom.

And it used to break my heart.

- The flat above the Vietnam Curry restaurant behind me

was Cliff's last home.

It was actually the guest of his ex-girlfriend's mother

who lived there, and he had a sad little room.

- He came from being nothing, a young lad in Eccles

and he ended up, I wouldn't say being nothing,

but he had next to nothing.

- The problem is with living the dream is

that you wake up from a dream and there is always a time

when you wake up and it's what you had.

The magic, the lifestyle, the money, the women,

the fast cars, they weren't there.

- I was aware that Cliff became quite obsessed

with his training in these later years.

- Better get myself in shape before I hit the big screen.

- Fanatical, absolutely fanatical.

And he used to train twice a day.

- At one point around that time he decided

to enter a bodybuilding contest.

- The Granddad Universe Competition at Salford Tech.

Despite the fact that he wasn't old enough

to be in the competition.

- He didn't even place.

That damaged his ego again.

- Because basically his ego had got that badly hit.

But he knew he was getting older.

- So he came away from that,

oh with a bee in his bonnet to try and train harder.

- And he realised that the people who were winning

were on steroids so he started taking the steroids.

- He dabbled in drugs, you know,

from cannabis, cocaine to steroids for the bodybuilding.

- He just kept grasping,

grasping for that little bit of starlight.

- The anabolic steroids also had an effect

on Cliff's personality.

He was suddenly less the positive, upbeat,

happy go lucky character.

It increased his sensitivity to his insecurities

and brought them to the surface more.

- He always a pad and pencil writing shit all the time.

There was tons of stuff and he'd written like a poem.

It was stunning.

But it was all set about his life,

which he basically says it was called "Alone in my Room"

The last line, and it was something like

"The rain runs down the window,

which is fine for everyone looking in

because they don't see the rain running down my face."

- So now what?

(dramatic rock music)

- [Announcer] Manchester.

Child pornography rife.

Children aren't safe anymore.

The fact is, no one can be safe anymore.

- "G.B.H. 2," I think really gives an indication

that maybe at this point he's looking at his past glories,

so "G.B.H." has been one of his most successful films,

particularly when one thinks that a number of the films

that he'd worked on had had very limited,

if no, release at all.

Whereas the original "G.B.H." was quite widely seen.

- Cliff and David Kent-Watson figure,

let's go back to basics.

Let's go back to Donovan.

- A decade after "G.B.H." we decided to make "G.B.H. 2,"

continuing the story of Donovan

who had obviously survived being blasted with a shotgun.

- So by revisiting that film and that character

and that world, he's maybe hoping

to rekindle some of that success.

- We got a message for Mr. Keller.

- But at the time there was a series on on TV called "G.B.H.".

So there's just some copyright thing

so they changed it to "Lethal Impact."

- And I think some of the problems with this film,

maybe also then reflect the fact that getting funding

for these sorts of projects is much more difficult.

- Cliff would scrimp and scrape every penny he had.

- And from now on we'll do things my way.

- Who got the money and where it came from I did not know.

- And he'd get money out of anyone he could.

Some gangsters I know who are well known in Manchester,

they put money up and I'm going,

"This is like naughty money this, mate," you know?

- I may walk close to the sewer,

but at least I knew which way the filth is moving.

- It was interestingly the time when a very famous nightclub

in Manchester, The Hacienda was being closed down

because Manchester had suddenly got the name Gunchester.

Gang crime was at an all time high

and they capitalized on that idea.

(intense music) (gun blasts)

- It brings some of the ideas that the tempting snippet

they shot for "Blind Side of God" suggested...

- [Announcer] To members of the paedophile,

he was a nightmare.

- So the whole sort of paedophile storyline is present here.

- We all know he uses 'em for pushing drugs

and getting young kids to go in his porno movies.

- But there's also maybe,

a much more melancholic air to this film.

The central character seems to be much more world weary.

- There's some heavy stuff going down.

Are you pissed?

- I'm pissed.

- He's less able to obviously step

into the fray straight away as he was in the original film.

You know, there's scenes of him waking up

and he seems to be hungover, he seems lethargic.

(farting FX)

And one wonders whether

because of the continual difficulties with funding,

with getting the films released,

maybe that reflects Cliff's character

at that time a little bit more.

- You ugly bastard.

- It was supposed to be shot in Malta originally,

but Dave Kent-Watson and the Malta film board

and finance meant that it very soon came back to Manchester.

(record scratch)

- We shot out in Manchester city centre of course.

- Shooting guns off in Magistrates Square in Manchester,

which is where all the courts are.

(gun blasts)

(machine gun blasts)

I'd be like, this is, it's not even borderline illegal.

This is illegal, this.

He goes, "Yeah, but if we do it quick..."

(multiple gun blasts)

(laughing) How are you gonna get away with that?

He goes, "We're not gonna get away, we've got away with it."

And I'd be like, "Right, okay."

(Cliff whistling)

He called me up once and said "We get away with things

'cause we're lovable rogues."

- And it's lovely to see Chloe in them

when she's so young and in a school uniform.

- Yeah and when I saw the clip I couldn't believe it

'cause that was the hat I used to wear for school

and that was my actual school uniform.

I don't know how the school would've felt about that.

I mean it's shocking enough to find out it was in a movie

but nevermind one about a paedophile ring?

I had no idea!

- Excuse me sweetheart.

- Yeah, I need to have a word with my mum. (laughing)

About what went on there?

- Well if it was today's day and age,

I mean there's no way she would've been in it.

It's just that I didn't realise it.

- [Cliff] Reverend Spinner?

- Yes?

- I played a perverted vicar.

And I think I only got the part cause I had the costume.

- I believe you carry a love for children

far beyond the practice.

- Derogatory statements made by misinformed gossips.

And we went, did it at church in the deep, deep snow

and I had to die then.

(slam echoing)

(eerie music)

- There was a scene where he busts in.

- Who the fuck are you?

- While I'm holding this sweetie,

as far as you're concerned, I'm God.

- And he gets a gun, lifts me up in the cheek

with the gun and then you see me feet come off the floor.

(high pitched groaning)

- How's this for a blowjob fellas?

(gun blasts)

- And then you just see all these innards hit the wall yeah?

And we shot that one day

and then I went back on the Sunday

for all the prosthetics to be made up.

It took hours and basically my head just hits the floor

and it's all like a skeleton blown away.

- And with "G.B.H. 2", I think it's interesting to reflect

that Cliff also was thinking about a third entry into

what would be called these days, the "G.B.H." franchise.

(gun blasts)

They were thinking in some way of a third film.

Certainly there are versions of "G.B.H. 2", which end with a,

almost a James Bond like, Donovan will be back.

(intense digital music)

(groaning painfully)

- This guy, and I'm not even gonna mention names

cause he's still around and he's a proper well known fella

in the bad lad circuit

and he'd just give money, to make this film.

He's like, "No, no, no, I understand.

It's all right, you're straight with me,

I'm straight with you."

We ended up putting a premier on of the film in his club.

I was like, "Oh shit, if this goes wrong,

we're all going home in lead boots.

(dramatic music)

(metal shatters)

(actor screaming painfully)

The room was full of proper gangsters.

I'm talking like, Kray style gangsters.

Then we're like, "Shitting Hell!"

Cliff was like, "Oh," hugging everyone.

The film never went anywhere.

The guy chucked up a shitload of money, I swear,

a lot of money.

The man brought a lot of money into the film

and it never went anywhere.

- The up and down finances, the not being able

to necessarily repay investors in the way they hoped.

- (sighs) So many things we have to do.

- All of that, I think, maybe led to, you know,

less energy in the production process.

And I think that's reflected in the fact

that "G.B.H. 2" is the last feature length thing they make.

He's still trying to make the films,

he's still got the desire, the ambition,

but maybe the knock backs are now

starting to take their toll.

- Unfortunately Cliff, if we are looking at faults,

he lacked follow through and he would produce a movie

and the moment it hit difficulties in post-production

or business, the business side was something

that he never really understood.

So that's why he always retreated into what he used to know.

Let's go into another production!

- Always. There was always something on the horizon.

Looking forward to tomorrow we'll do today,

but this is gonna be the next thing which is gonna come up

and it's gonna be fantastic.

- I'm thinking, well hang on,

we've not finished that other one yet.

Oh that'll be okay son. That'll be fine.

That'll work out now.

And of course, it never did.

- He tried to fund things himself,

which he ended up being, he bankrupted himself really.

- Things weren't working in the movie industry.

He wasn't making money.

- I think it made most of his money from his own music.

- He was having battles with the music royalty people.

I believe that was de Wolfe

to try and get his rightful royalties out of them

and that was a struggle.

He was a bit lost.

- He'd come to me with the checks from PRS.

I'd put 'em through my bank, then I'd give him the cash

because he didn't want the money to go through his bank

because he'd taken out loans so he could make a film

and they were gonna try and take the money back

any which way they can.

- Brian and I had a video company called Major Vision.

- Since Cliff was obviously struggling financially,

we offered him some jobs here and there.

And he was very good in instruction movies like

"Fitness Over 40" 'cause he was over 40 and very fit.

- And then after that was a massage technique video.

And I remember I'd hired Shrigley Hall

with a four poster bed and a model

and Cliff had white hair by then.

I think he actually dyed it totally white.

- And he was very adept. He was a quick learner.

Yeah, he could do it really well.

- I was quite impressed with Cliff.

- Yeah, it was just nice to be able to give him back to

at a time he needed.

- But, Cliff doesn't give up and I think that's, you know,

Cliff Twemlow all over.

He's still having ideas and they come up with the idea

of "Bad Weekend."

- You had one bad weekend Mr. Ferguson.

- This film pilot was an experiment

in the making of a television series of shorter films.

Each one could be shot in its entirety

over just one weekend.

It drew heavily on actors from Salford and Manchester

who were used to the high work rate,

which was a feature of all our films.

- It was like weekend shooting.

All right we're doing something this weekend, all right?

Come on. And off we'd go.

- And we all came down. Dave Rankin brought his own tent.

We all kipped in his tent.

Everyone literally just rocked up for nothing.

It was a thousand pound in the budget.

Dave Kent-Watson took most of that.

- David Kent-Watson said, "I just got my Hi-8",

Some small camera.

- The Sony TR 75 with Stereo sound.

- Oh "Bad Weekend" was great.

That was filmed in Alderly Edge and Styal Country Park.

That film was shot in about three days.

- Rise you lazy bastards. It's daylight.

- Do you have to kick me that hard?

- Well how does this feel?

(punch thuds) - Whoa!

- I played the lead in "Bad Weekend"

where I was supposed to be a champion archer.

- I came first in the competition earlier this year

and I put it in the trailer and forgot I had it.

- I had a bow from a film I was working on.

- Have you seen this?

- You just see it and go, "Ooh, I like the look of that."

- And then the story develops whereby this gang,

led by Cliff playing the part of a really evil, nasty brute.

- You attacked my boys without provocation,

you could go down for "GBH".

- He goes and rapes a young girl

who's just camping with her father.

- Little girl, have you ever been fucked?

- Now look here. (malevolent music)

(punch thuds) - Dad!

- One of the funny things was

when they filmed the rape scene

that was inside a tent and we were outside,

sat on a log with the rifles and the handguns

and there was people walking past 'cause people shouting

and screaming inside the tent being raped.

And we were stood there.

We sat outside with guns and people were wondering

what the hell was bloody going on.

I said, "It's okay love, it's just a film we're doing."

(daughter crying)

- Oh, it's happening.

- [Cameraperson] No, no, no, no. It's before the injection.

- Oh it is? Oh!

(both laughing)

- Right from the beginning.

- I'm sorry.

- Oh Christ you two.

(actress laughs) God almighty!

- I need a cigarette.

- [Interviewer] So did you ever get paid

for any of these roles?

- Next question? (laughing)

- I never got paid well.

I mean for about weekend we've got about 50 pound each.

- None of us had enough money.

We were all doing stuff for free.

- All right, who wants a Raisin?

Come and get paid. Get paid!

- What about the raisins?

- Come and get your money! (laughing)

- Do you know what? It didn't matter.

Because we enjoyed ourselves doing it.

- Nobody asked for a penny.

Everyone did it just for the love.

It wasn't just for the love of being in a film,

it was just for the love of Cliff.

- The idea that Cliff's beginning to play characters

that are maybe a bit more jaded or faded

or no longer in their prime

was something that interested him.

And he did work with David Kent-Watson

on a project called "Hogan's Champion,"

which was about a character

who is no longer the force he used to be.

- I've travelled thousands of miles looking for you

to present you with a get rich quick proposition.

- No way, Hogan.

Every time you come with one of those propositions,

you get rich quick and I get hospitalized.

- Cliff had once been a fairground Prizefighter

and he wrote a story based on a gone to seed boxer

being enticed to make a comeback by his former manager.

- Hogan's champion is back.

- Which was to be an action film

dosed in liberal amounts of humor.

- That'll have to go.

(groans painfully)

- Well, unfortunately they didn't get too much

in the can for that one.

- But it was not to be.

Cliff died before any of the proposed filming in Salford

could be started. (Cliff screaming)

(metallic shattering)

(multiple sounds overlapping)

- Nobody dies forever.

- About a month before he died,

he told me that he was on 10 times of the normal amount

of the testosterone and steroids,

which eventually led to his heart attack.

- We were training in Blues Gym,

which used to be in Sheraton, not far from here.

And we worked out together and his last words tome,

and he always used to say it was,

"See you tomorrow, boy. We'll be bigger."

And we went home that night and had a massive heart attack.

I got a phone call about two o'clock in the morning

or something from Jackie who used to be like his girlfriend,

saying, "Cliff's dead."

- That's on the autopsy.

It was said that his heart had grown that big.

- His heart was two and a half times the normal size.

- You know, because it's a muscle.

There was furrows where it had been pressing

on his ribcage and it obviously caused his death.

- A tragedy that.

- It was never gonna be the same again.

(mellow pop music)

- Well, nobody lives forever do they?

- And the next thing we're all at the funeral.

- Religion - wasted on me. Gino.

- Behind me is St. Wilfred's Church in Northenden.

And this is where Cliff's funeral service was held

and indeed where his ashes are interred.

On the day of the funeral, the place was packed.

In fact, the streets around us were packed as well.

It was wall to wall people.

It attracted the press, people from all walks of life,

the showbiz community, gangsters, police officers.

His films and his books and his persona

reached far and wide.

And he was much loved by pretty much everyone who met him.

- And I remember the vicar introduced a couple of pieces

of music that he wanted to play

that were composed by Cliff.

In his words, he said, "These two pieces of music

we're going to listen to were composed by Cliff."

And with the first one, can't remember what it was,

but it certainly was, it was Cliff's film.

And then the second one came on and it was actually

Debussy's "Clair de Lune" that played, the classic.

What the vicar had forgot to say was,

that actually the second one

was Cliff's favorite classical piece.

So there was people sort of,

there was eyes flitting around when "Clair de Lune" was on,

Cliff didn't, Cliff didn't compose this. (laughing)

- I think he'd be up there looking down, going, "Yeah."

And I think he'd be laughing his head off.

I can hear him laughing now.

- Cliff would've been happy that he'd have thought,

that the vicar thought that he'd have written that.

- And when Max Beasley, outside the church after the funeral

said, "The problem is, it's like saying to someone,

Mickey Mouse is dead."

'cause it's the larger than life character

that is immortal in our minds, and now he's gone.

- You know, we're mad.

We hate it while we're here.

We miss it when we're not here.

- He also lived by the ethos that nobody dies forever.

And he used that line at the end of "Ibiza Connection."

- Nobody dies forever.

- His own words have become his epitaph almost.

Nobody dies forever.

That his legacy lives on.

So in reality, he has not died forever has he?

I just wish he could have lived to see the success

and the the legacy that he's left.

- Cliff is now an inspiration to a whole generation

of filmmakers in the North of England

and that his reputation's spreading far and wide.

- The films are the greatest type of exploitation film.

You laugh at them, you laugh with them,

but they're also entertaining.

They're brilliant.

- We had some great times with Cliff, really good times.

- I see what we did and I think, yeah,

that's how it all starts.

You know that real desire, no matter what.

- Cliff was one of those people who you were drawn to

because of his persona.

- You could be yourself with him.

He would never judge you.

- Well, he was a proper light.

He was a lovely fellow.

- But the one thing is he always cared

and looked after people.

- Because he could use his fists,

but he could use his brain and his heart.

- One of his biggest gifts to people

was daring them to fulfill their dreams.

- Loads of people sit around and dream,

and maybe loads of people think they haven't got time

to do any of these kind of creative endeavors.

He seemed to throw himself in absolutely 100%

into every one of those endeavors.

- He certainly lived to his own dreams.

- I said to him, "Cliff," I said, "you've done more

in one year than most people have done in a lifetime."

- Everybody loved Cliff. You couldn't help but like him.

It's a shame that you never met him

because you would remember him for the rest of your life.

- A humble man, a driven man, a funny man, a lovely man.

A Mancunian Man.

(upbeat music)

♪ He walks tall with his head held high ♪

♪ Before he backs down he would rather die ♪

♪ He's a mean machine no one tougher than ♪

♪ He's a man, man, man, Mancunian Man ♪

(upbeat synthesized music)

(upbeat music continues)

- Cut! That's a rap studio.

Cue break.