The industry was in the doldrums as the ’60s drew to a close and the 1970s rolled in. The big American companies who’d bankrolled British films in their mid-’60s heyday had gone, and taken their money with them. Big movies were still being made in the UK but far fewer of them, so to be working you had to be the cream of the crop because everybody was available. To help my job prospects I produced some photographs with my contact details. I’d noticed at Equity actors handing them out, so I thought why not stuntmen. It seemed an obvious idea, except I was the first one to do it. They featured a montage of stunt and portrait shots and I’d send them to producers and studios. I got great feedback, people would ask, ‘Which film is that stunt from?’ As a result they got me a lot of work. Then that work got me more work and it snowballed. So I got a reputation very, very quickly.
One of those jobs was to go out to Ireland for Alfred the Great, an historical epic starring David Hemmings and Michael York. I hopped into my trusty Ford Anglia and sped off to the Emerald Isle, chosen for its trademark bogs, but then experiencing the hottest summer in living memory. We ended up spraying the ground green because it was all burnt brown like Spain. You’d do a stunt fall off a horse and come up with green paint all over you. But Alfred the Great was a big film. It’s a piece of rubbish, but it was a big, big film in its day. I ended up doubling Michael York and doing loads of saddle falls. I was working alongside Jimmy Lodge and so I learnt an awful lot. It was a good experience.
Unfortunately while in Ireland I missed out on a chance to be in one of the all-time great British films, The Italian Job. Because of my experience driving horse trucks, the producers wanted me to drive the coach that in the famous climax crashes and hangs over the edge of the mountain. Ironically I left Alfred the Great prematurely anyway with Jimmy Lodge to go straight onto another picture, Hell Boats, filming in Malta, working under stunt co-ordinator Joe Powell. This was a Boy’s Own Paper-style war adventure and I was hired because I was a good physical double for American star Jimmy Franciscus. Plus I was blond so I could play plenty of Germans running around and getting shot. I actually killed myself in one scene. I played the guy that fired the gun and the other bloke that got the bullet and died. That’s the movies for you.
Working on Hammer’s Twins of Evil. I’m fourth from the right, planning the next shot.
In amongst the big movies was straightforward bread-and-butter stunt work, for example a day horse riding on The Vampire Lovers for the famous Hammer company. I love watching those old Hammer horror movies. They were done superbly well. In fact I did another one for them about a year later, Twins of Evil. That was a fun movie, real gothic stuff. It has stayed lodged in my memory because of the cast – not Peter Cushing, but two stunning real-life twins, real sexy girls and former Playboy models, Madeleine and Mary Collinson. They were gorgeous little things. I remember a mate of mine went out with one of them, I couldn’t believe it. I was so jealous. But that movie is also quite important to me because it was the first time I’d seen prosthetics used (although the technique has been around forever).
In one scene a guy gets his arm chopped off and what they did was find a real amputee, stick a false forearm on him, nail it to this pike he was holding and then slash it off. I was very impressed and it’s stuff I used later in Gangs of New York, so it stayed with me all those years. The old techniques are the best. But it’s far trickier than you might think because you have to hit exactly the right spot, otherwise you’d cut into his real arm. I’ve seen that done a few times. So even something as relatively simple as hacking an arm off, you have to get the timing and positioning just right, and the guy has to react realistically, as if his arm really has been cut off. That’s what it’s all about, selling those moments to the audience.