Well I’ll be Damned: film locations holiday is first for Dorset
The Damned: Shirley Anne Field by the Jubilee Clock in Weymouth
PLACES in Weymouth and Portland used for the shooting of Sixties Hammer shocker The Damned are to feature in a unique mini-break.
The Damned: Oliver Reed and gang on King George III's statue in Weymouth
Cameraman and director Nick Gilbey will show tourists around spots haunted by Oliver Reed as a dapper seaside psychopath, and explain how The Damned’s stuntman earned his brandy when he crashed his Jaguar XK120 through the Ferrybridge railings and sank.
Dorset is rich in movie locations, and Nick is planning to cover four films: The Damned, Far From the Madding Crowd, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and Comrades.
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” said Nick. “My interest dates back to when I was a boy in the Sixties and they were filming Far From the Madding Crowd. It was so exciting. It was like the circus had come to town.”
Nick works as a cameraman, mostly for the BBC, and with his wife Sheila runs the historic Abbots House restaurant with rooms in Charmouth. He has directed films on subjects including drag-racing, Westcountry food, railways, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and Martha Brown, the last woman to be hanged in Dorset. So he is perfectly placed for his impending foray into cultural tourism.
Comrades – about the Tolpuddle Martyrs – was premiered in Bridport and there Nick spoke to its director Bill Douglas. When The French Lieutenant’s Woman was shot in Lyme Regis he saw Meryl Streep coming out of the Royal Lion Hotel, in modern clothes, which set him thinking about how John Fowles’s supposedly un-filmable novel could be adapted. And Nick can tell you how apparently simple sequences in Far From the Madding Crowd in fact involved locations miles apart. One example: Gabriel Oak playing his flute by the memorial in Devizes sets off for Weatherbury (Puddletown) via Eggardon Hill, Encombe, Friar Waddon and Bloxworth.
“It’s incredible logistics just to show the Dorset landscape,” said Nick. “Far From the Madding Crowd is one of the very last films that went to that kind of trouble, apart from a few others like David Lean’s.”
Loan DVDs of Nick’s four chosen films will be sent to guests two weeks before the first mini-break, which is scheduled to run from Monday, June 7 to Thursday June 10.
For more details about pricing, booking, etc, click here.
Editor’s Note: I used to work with Nick Gilbey at the BBC, and I wrote most of the script for his Wordsworth and Coleridge film, so I am bound to feel warmly towards his new plan.
But it also seems to me to be exactly the kind of enterprise that West Dorset has been crying out for ever since the Wakeham Associates report of 1995 (prepared for West Dorset District Council) called out for more cultural tourism ventures across the district.
6 Responses to “Well I’ll be Damned: film locations holiday is first for Dorset”
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Who’s that with his back to camera in the top picture? Looks like Sid James…
Yes, easy to imagine Sid James in that kind of situation; you can picture his face and his lecherous laugh.
But actually it’s Macdonald Carey.
Shame it’s not Sid. He did use to play a range of roles (eg in The Helldrivers – have you ever seen that?); but I do also like the idea of him carrying on around Weymouth and Portland
Hello, writing in from the Library of Congress, Wash. D.C. This is a fantastic, brilliant idea! I hope it’s a great success.
Here is a music vid of The Damned, from scenes shot in Weymouth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHjGeCvxDRg
Well blow me down Washington DC eh? And from a sort of British Museum of the west, albeit a tad more in that direction than even Honiton which, I always thought, was where people started falling off the edge!
The reach and the power of Real West Dorset knows no bounds. Next the editor will be marching on Poland – just you mark my words!
Awesome idea
Awesome idea, we are down in Charmouth on holiday and yesterday visited the scenes that were shot on location around Weymouth and Portland, old harbour, clock tower, Royal Oak pub, bridge next to it and only by chance spotted the secret hideaway on Portland,as you can guess I took loads of pics..:))
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