Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx Knights Electric - Metamatic soundtrack

I've recently become aware of a short film made in 1980 called Knights Electric that features (extracts of) four Metamatic pieces in its very wonderful soundtrack.
As far as I am aware this is the first example of a film that uses John Foxx music...?


Image ©Barney Broom. Reproduced with kind permission.

The four tracks in the film are:-

UNDERPASS (opening sequence)
FILM 1
NO-ONE DRIVING
MR NO (closing sequence)

Knights Electric is 24 minutes long and was played in cinemas as an opener for more high-profile sci-fi and futuristic films.
According to the director - it was quite a wow when it played at cinemas – people actually preferring it to the main picture it went out with.

Here's how it was described in the BFI newsletter, August 1981:
Four punks [incl a young Daniel Peacock] make a sortie into an amusement park where they antagonise other customers and come on to a group of teenage girls. But they are consistently thwarted by the spectral apparition of four handsome youths [the 'Knights Electric'] who ultimately squire the girls away.
Told without dialogue, using occasional snatches of voice-over, this brief sketch has remarkable fluency and gusto. The amusement park setting is inescapably second-hand and the treatment of the quartet of louts, allowing that they eventually get a come-uppance of sorts, remains dubiously ambivalent. But the sheer rhythmic attack suggest that the director and his collaborators might well make something striking out of more deserving material.


Soundtrack also includes pieces by The Ruts, the Pretenders, Numan (Down In the Park) and Blondie etc.
Unfortunately, I don't believe the film is on general release.

I am indebted to director Barney Broom for his gracious correspondence about this film over recent weeks, and the anecdotes and artwork he has sent through; also to Simon Dell who supplied the 'mysterious' press cutting from NME which sparked off this thread of research. Thanks also to forum member Geigertek for his anecdote and note on the film's location.

Martin, fortunately the film is here in three segments to view -

Underpass:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecxLihHcjcw
Film One:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vllo-zprhNc
No-One Driving and Mr No:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrxuhAxU1P0

Scanning thru it quickly I wasn't sure what to expect, but watching the parts together its a fascinating short film from the time and the music flows smartly with the visuals, there are some lovely scenes - the Knights Electric on the ferris wheel, the punks dancing to Madness, and the Foxx roller-coaster ride climax - Most interesting thing of all is the way in which its combination of music and predatory punks roaming the fairground at night predates Joel Schumacher's 1987 movie The Lost Boys, with its use of music set to a Vampire post-New Romantic gang stalking the boardwalk amusements at nightime.

All good stuff.

Also a bit of Tomita's version of Clare de Lune in one part.

Reminds me that it's been years since I played Snowflakes are Dancing

Brian

That is cringe worthy. The "Knights" are four frozen Numanoid clones who don't do anything. The girls are too fat for their skin tight outfits. I could only make through Part 1. Perhaps it got better later.

Ha! I think it's brilliant - very much of its time, but the music is used to great effect, especially the Foxx tracks .. .It's a sort of softer version of A Clockwork Orange (there are many similarities) but with a Metamatic-Numanoid counter-gang ... who at the end are the ones who "pull the birds"! Ace!

Hahahaha! It is hilarious, and now I'm thinking of similar teenage stuff from the time such as Quadrophenia or Breaking Glass and this is really silly in comparison - perhaps deliberately so, judging by the voiceover.

Perhaps now, out of context and under a magnifying glass its faults are more visible, but I can imagine as an energetic short before a main feature such as Breaking Glass, it would of worked quite well. But yes - it does look like someone gave the script of A Clockwork Orange to the cast of Grange Hill and not Kubrick.

Strange how Film One has now been used in two films - Knights Electric and Groping / Parallel Lives.

maybe it's the title .. Write a song with "Film" in the title and you're guaranteed a place on the soundtrack of an obscure short!

I remember seeing this as a fresh-faced 15 year old New Romantic back in February 1981. It was used as the opener for a truly crap Sci-Fi flick called "Inseminoid" which was nothing more than Judy Geeson running around for an hour or more screaming after being "graphically raped" by an alien with a clear perspex knob and orange semen. Yuck and yawn in one go. I actually preferred "Knights Electric" to the main feature. I loved this when I first saw it because of the imagery and music, and even more so when I saw that it was filmed in Great Yarmouth where I grew up. Nice to see Great Yarmouth in it's hey-day looking half-way decent which, sadly, it doesn't now.

And whilst it is a tad "cringe-worhy" in places, it is what it is - a movie short intended to be the warm-up for the main feature and nothing else - but where it succeeds is that "Knights Electric" actually provides something of a snap-shot of the time it was filmed. I don't think it's good idea to put things like this under too much of a microscope as that tends to take away the overall enjoyment of something that wasn't intended to be anything more than it was. I had a communication with the piece's director, Barney Broom, a few years back and he was pleased with it - he sent me a copy of the short through the post but alas it never arrived. I was lucky enough to have picked up the DVD of "Knights Electric" a couple of years ago on ebay, lucky because as Martin has said, it's never been on general release - more's the pity. Watching it again was a real nostalgia thing for me because when I first saw it, it was whilst out on a first date with a rather lovely young lady (at that time of course) called Louise who was also a New Romantic.

I now have to go and watch the DVD :-)

If you are a fan of A Schlockwork Orange, don't let me ruin your enjoyment of it. Clearly the The Future was going to be four boys dressed in Gary Numan Telekon costumes driving an antique American car. And it doesn't take a "microscope" to spot the real drama of the piece. Will those ample asses bust out of those skin tight pants?