Gaps and Gold in the Klinger Archive

Abstract

Michael Klinger’s career as a film producer followed a trajectory that makes for a tempting narrative arc. The former Soho strip club owner entered the movie world with the Harrison Marks nudie-cutie, Naked as Nature Intended (1961), which was made under the auspices of Compton films – the company Klinger founded with Tony Tenser. Compton’s output graduated from sexploitation and shockers to more respectable arthouse fare, such as Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), and bigger budget films of international ambition, such as the Sherlock Holmes mystery A Study in Terror (1965). Following the dissolution of the Klinger/Tenser partnership, Klinger set up as an independent and began producing well-regarded auteurist films, most famously Mike Hodges’ Get Carter (1971), before moving on to starry blockbusters such as Gold (1974) and Shout at the Devil (1976). These big budget affairs were produced alongside the four Confessions (1973–7) films – a series of sex-comedies that can be seen as Klinger’s bread-and-butter movies. The diminishing returns from the franchise reflected the twilight of Klinger’s career, characterised by his unsuccessful final film, Riding High (1981). Such an analysis is not without merit, but reductive. But it is often very difficult to put flesh on the bones of a producer’s career, and this is largely because the producer’s contribution to a film is not immediately visible within the film text. The producer, then, is best found in the archive. A two-year, AHRC-funded research project – led by Andrew Spicer and for which I am Research Associate – investigating Klinger’s career is, luckily, backed up by an