Take Me High

From 1973, here we have the rather rare and highly collectible movie (still not released on dvd and the retail video released in 1988 has long since been deleted) Take Me High starring pop legend Cliff Richard. Unlike many previous Cliff movies, this doesn't co-star the Shadows, Richard O' Sullivan or Melvyn Hayes. Instead it co-stars George Cole (I forgot Arthur Daley was in this!), the great Anthony "Brideshead Revisited" Andrews, the sublime Richard Wattis (you never get any characters the like of Wattis nowadays), the sweet and gorgeous Deborah Watling (best known to us Doctor Who fans as "Victoria", of course, from the Troughton era), Hugh Griffith and lovely Madeline Smith (in a rather small role), amongst others. To those out there who need to know: Yes - this is the one about the "Brum Burger"!...

The plot: Hear Cliff sing 12 great new hits in this musical ode to Birmingham! Cliff plays a fast food entrepreneur who scales new heights in culinary excellence by inventing...the "brumburger"! Garnished with sizeable helpings of concrete flyovers, flared trousers, crushed velvet suits, the Rotunda, the (then newly-built) Bullring Centre and – probably the highlight of the film – a brace of Police "Jam Sandwich" 2200s!

 Being from the early 70s, the atmosphere is very much of it's time and, it has to be said, is a pretty cool piece of relative obscurity in terms of Cliff Richard's filmography. Set in Birmingham (West Midlands, England - not it's American namesake) where I'm from (yayyyy!), this movie is a great feeling of the times-that-were-a-changing. Cliff's looking great in his 70s fashions - all suits, big ties and flares! The soundtrack is really groovy too. After all the "Summer Holiday", rockabilly rebel and teen idol stuff of his previous movies, Take Me High makes for a nice mature change of scene and direction and makes one wish he had done a few more 70s movies.

A huge thanks to jimbo100 for a spiffing job in ripping this rarity for CosmoBells. :)

CosmoBells' mate Eddy has also scanned some pages from a 1974 edition of Photoplay magazine which features a great article on the movie together with some nice pics. Well worth checking out, you can get them here.

Take Me High
1973
XVID
Approx. 86 mins
825 mb

Ripped & encoded by jimbo100.

 

 "Bow ties are cool!"