Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 54: Thursday Feb 23

The Lifetaker (Papas, 1975): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.40pm

This is a screening from The Flipside team at the BFI.

I asked Will Fowler from The Flipside for the history and the ideas behind their screenings. He told me: "Our first Flipside was back in late 2006 when we screened the mondo-style documentary Primitive London. The drive for the slot is really to show films and TV programmes that are held in the BFI National Archive but rarely or indeed never shown in the cinemas at BFI Southbank.

"And these could be things that might not automatically be considered similar or comparable but that at some level do all sit in the margins of cinema and TV history- old Rupert Bear television episodes, the shocking horror film Corruption starring a rather blood thirsty Peter Cushing as well as genre pictures, 'curates eggs', the weird and wonderful.  

"I think our favourites tend to be things that sit on genre borders.  Art pictures that feature horror or exploitation elements like the film The Lifetaker, starring the old Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan, that we are showing on 23 February when Peter Duncan will be a guest. We like to make our screenings enjoyable and accessible and invite the directors or actors but we don't mess around with the conventional cinematic viewing experience - there are no new soundtracks - we're also traditionalists!"

There's an excellent interview with Sam Dunn here which gives more background and you can get details of the titles on special offer via the BFI website here.

Here's the team's introduction to this night: Unfairly dismissed by critics at the time of release, this haunting collision of exploitation and art film still packs a punch. Bored, beautiful young wife Lisa (Lea Dregorn) spends her days in luxurious, lonely solitude at her rich older husband's vast country mansion. Spying youthful Richard (a pre-Blue Peter Peter Duncan) in the woods one day, she takes him home for a night of fiery passion. But when her ex-mercenary hubby (Terence Morgan) returns home unexpectedly, the stage is set for some strange - and increasingly violent - tests of masculine prowess.'