THE AMAZING MR BLUNDEN (1972) / CERT: U / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: LIONEL JEFFRIES / STARRING: GRAHAM CROWDEN, DOROTHY ALISON, BENJAMIN SMITH, STUART LOCK / RELEASE DATE: DECEMBER 9TH
In 1972, actor Lionel Jeffries followed up his hugely successful 1970 directorial debut with a strange, dark tale of children in peril which involved ghosts, time travel and magic potions. Whilst his first film, the bona fide classic The Railway Children has only grown in reputation over the years, his second feature has slipped from public consciousness. Now restored and released on Blu-ray by Second Sight films in time for Christmas, The Amazing Mr Blunden is ripe for re-evaluation.
As the first World War draws to a close, a mysterious old solicitor, Mr Blunden, visits the impoverished home of a recently war widowed middle class woman and her children, offering her the position of caretaker at a remote and derelict country mansion. Unable to make ends meet she accepts, and the family move in to the keeper’s cottage next to the once impressive house.
Soon after, the children meet the spirits of two other children who had once lived in the old house almost a hundred years ago. The spirits convince the children to drink a strange potion and go back in time to help save them from a deadly fate. Once in the past, these children are now ghosts from the future and, much to their surprise, Mr Blunden is there too. Will they be able help right a century old wrong, save their new ghostly friends and change their own fate by doing so?
You do wonder at times whilst watching The Amazing Mr Blunden if writers Lionel Jeffries and Antonia Barber (who wrote the novel upon which the film is based), had downed a strange potion of their own when coming up with this quite elaborately bonkers but clever plot. Still, it’s a credit to both of them and to the performances by a mainly juvenile cast that the film convinces utterly and the threads tie together so well come the finale.
As he showed with The Railway Children, Jeffries, who only directed a handful of films, was a master at capturing tiny comic moments, balancing laughs and thrills, and was a brilliant director of children too. A host of fantastic character actors familiar to TV viewers in the 1970s – Diana Dors, James Villiers, David Lodge, the wonderful Deddie Davies – help to generate a warm nostalgic charm. While it doesn’t come close to The Railway Children’s emotional impact, its neglected status fully deserves a new look.
Extras include cast interviews, a copy of the source novel, Kim Newman expounding on an audio commentary with some of the cast and a lovely interview with fan Mark Gatiss, recalling seeing it for the first time as a child and revealing how it has influenced him since.
