Antony Balch
Encyclopedia
Antony Balch was an English
film director and distributor, best known for his screen collaborations with Beat Generation
author William S. Burroughs
in the 1960s and for the 1970s horror film, Horror Hospital
.
began early in life, culminating in a school-aged Balch meeting his idol Bela Lugosi
in Brighton, England in the early 1950s. Lugosi was touring in a stage version of Dracula
at the time.
Working his way into the British film industry, Balch directed adverts for Camay soap, and a 30-second commercial for Kit-E-Kat.
In the early part of the 1960s he lived briefly in France
working as a location scout and subtitler of French films for their British releases. In Paris, Balch became friendly with radical artists such as William Burroughs and Kenneth Anger
. Burroughs and Balch met at Madame Rachou’s Beat Hotel
, and the two quickly became collaborators. In Barry Miles
’ biography of Burroughs, Balch is described as “gay, well dressed with dark hair and an eager smile. After a few drinks he could be quite camp: ‘The trouble with fish is that they are so fisheee!’ he once shrieked in a restaurant.”
Balch gets a "special thanks" credit in Burroughs’ novel The Ticket That Exploded
and directed the Burroughs-influenced experimental film, Towers Open Fire among other short works. In 1963, Balch attended a showing of the 1930s horror film, Freaks
and decided to become a distributor in order to open the film in London. Freaks had been banned in Britain since 1932, but, with the help of Anger, Balch bought the British rights to the film. He released Freaks and Towers Open Fire as part of a triple-bill.
Balch was next hired to run two movie theatres in London—The Jacey in Piccadilly Circus
and The Times in Baker Street
. Balch did everything from choosing what films played, the front of house displays, to keeping an eye on projectionists and janitorial staff. Whereas The Times was more rep oriented, The Jacey specialized in playing exploitation films like Nudist Paradise and the Japan
ese horror/art-house hit Onibaba
. Meanwhile, Balch carried on his career as a distributor, eventually releasing films such as The Corpse Grinders, Kenneth Anger
’s Invocation of My Demon Brother
, Paul Bowles
in Morocco
, and Russ Meyer
’s Supervixens
. Balch was one of the first people to embrace art, horror and exploitation films with equal enthusiasm, a view that was hardly shared by many film critics of the time.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s his special niche was releasing foreign sex films. Most of the sex films Balch released in the UK had been purchased at the Cannes
or Venice
film festivals; with no stars or name directors they cost next to nothing. Balch then added his own personal touch, giving the films tongue-in-cheek English titles and eye catching campaigns like "No photographs permitted of this controversial X Film" (from When Girls Undress). Balch worked out of an office in Golden Square, Soho
and lived in Dalmeney Court on Duke Street. Dalmeney Court’s other occupants included Burroughs and artist Brion Gysin
plus the occasional celebrity passing through such as The Animals
’ Eric Burdon
.
A second Balch/Burroughs collaboration film, The Cut-Ups opened in London in 1967. This was part of an abandoned project called Guerrilla Conditions meant as a documentary on Burroughs and filmed throughout 1961-1965. Inspired by Burroughs' and Gysin's technique of cutting up text and rearranging it in random order, Balch had an editor cut his footage for the documentary into little pieces and impose no control over its reassembly. The film opened at Oxford Street
’s Cinephone cinema and had a disturbing reaction. Many audience members claimed the film made them ill, others demanded their money back, while some just stumbled out of the cinema ranting "its disgusting".
Included in The Cut-Ups are shots of Burroughs acting out scenes from his book Naked Lunch
. The idea of bringing Naked Lunch to the big-screen was Balch’s dream project. First developed in 1964, a script with musical numbers was completed in the early 1970s, and the project announced to the press in march 1971. Personal differences between Balch and the film’s would-be leading man Mick Jagger
however caused the project’s collapse. According to Literary Outlaw, Ted Morgan’s 1988 biography of Burroughs, Jagger “thought Balch was coming on to him sexually, and in any case didn’t have a reputation as a director in the industry”.
Balch found a more committed investor for his plans to make feature films in producer Richard Gordon
. Gordon had a long history in horror cinema, and had been partly responsible for the stage version of Dracula that had allowed Balch to meet Lugosi. Their first film together was shot from a script never fully completed. With Balch using his own money to fund half of the budget what emerged was the deceptively titled Secrets of Sex
(1970). Balch’s feature debut is in fact a multi-genre anthology film which blends slapstick
comedy, spy spoof, bloody horror movie and softcore sex film under the pretext of being a comment on the battle of the sexes. Secrets of Sex was a sensation, running for six months at the Piccadilly
Jacey.
Encouraged by the film’s British success, Balch and Gordon set about a second collaboration called Horror Hospital
(1973). In the classic exploitation film tradition, the title was invented before the plot. Balch then spent his time locked in a hotel room with co-writer Alan Watson
until the script was complete. Horror Hospital featured Michael Gough
as the very Lugosi-like Dr. Storm. When Gough asked Balch what he wanted bringing to the role Balch screened him The Devil Bat
, a Lugosi classic about a mad scientist masquerading as a perfume inventor. Horror Hospital was the most successful of all of Balch’s films.
While other projects were discussed, including a comedy called The Sex Life of Adolf Hitler and a horror film co-written by Chris Wicking, Balch never made another feature film. Speaking to the critic Kim Newman
in Shock Xpress magazine (vol.2, no.5, 1988), Wicking recalled "I had a crazy meeting with him, when he wanted to do some picture or other. He spent most of the time walking across the furniture. Languorously, he would walk across three or four chairs. He went into another little world. He was a sad figure in a way, because he was well before his time". In 1978, Balch was diagnosed with stomach cancer
, and died on April 6, 1980 aged 43.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
film director and distributor, best known for his screen collaborations with Beat Generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
author William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
in the 1960s and for the 1970s horror film, Horror Hospital
Horror Hospital
Horror Hospital is a 1973 British horror-comedy film starring Robin Askwith and Michael Gough. It was the penultimate film directed by Antony Balch...
.
Biography
Balch’s fixation for horror and exploitation moviesExploitation film
Exploitation film is a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter. The term "exploitation" is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising. These films then need something to exploit, such as a big star, special effects, sex,...
began early in life, culminating in a school-aged Balch meeting his idol Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
in Brighton, England in the early 1950s. Lugosi was touring in a stage version of Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
at the time.
Working his way into the British film industry, Balch directed adverts for Camay soap, and a 30-second commercial for Kit-E-Kat.
In the early part of the 1960s he lived briefly in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
working as a location scout and subtitler of French films for their British releases. In Paris, Balch became friendly with radical artists such as William Burroughs and Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger is an American underground experimental filmmaker, occasional actor and author...
. Burroughs and Balch met at Madame Rachou’s Beat Hotel
Beat Hotel
The Beat Hotel was a small, run-down hotel of 42 rooms at 9 Rue Gît-le-Cœur in the Latin Quarter of Paris, notable chiefly as a residence for members of the Beat poetry movement of the mid-20th century -Overview:...
, and the two quickly became collaborators. In Barry Miles
Barry Miles
Barry Miles is an English author known for his participation in and writing on the subject of the 1960s London underground. He has written numerous books and his work has also regularly appeared in left-wing papers such as The Guardian...
’ biography of Burroughs, Balch is described as “gay, well dressed with dark hair and an eager smile. After a few drinks he could be quite camp: ‘The trouble with fish is that they are so fisheee!’ he once shrieked in a restaurant.”
Balch gets a "special thanks" credit in Burroughs’ novel The Ticket That Exploded
The Ticket That Exploded
The Ticket That Exploded is a novel by William S. Burroughs first published in 1962 by Olympia Press and later published in the United States by Grove Press in 1967. It is the second book in a trilogy created using the cut-up technique, often referred to as The Nova Trilogy...
and directed the Burroughs-influenced experimental film, Towers Open Fire among other short works. In 1963, Balch attended a showing of the 1930s horror film, Freaks
Freaks
Freaks is a 1932 American Pre-Code horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with a cast mostly composed of actual carnival performers. The film was based on Tod Robbins' 1923 short story "Spurs"...
and decided to become a distributor in order to open the film in London. Freaks had been banned in Britain since 1932, but, with the help of Anger, Balch bought the British rights to the film. He released Freaks and Towers Open Fire as part of a triple-bill.
Balch was next hired to run two movie theatres in London—The Jacey in Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster, built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with the major shopping street of Piccadilly...
and The Times in Baker Street
Baker Street
Baker Street is a street in the Marylebone district of the City of Westminster in London. It is named after builder William Baker, who laid the street out in the 18th century. The street is most famous for its connection to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who lived at a fictional 221B...
. Balch did everything from choosing what films played, the front of house displays, to keeping an eye on projectionists and janitorial staff. Whereas The Times was more rep oriented, The Jacey specialized in playing exploitation films like Nudist Paradise and the Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese horror/art-house hit Onibaba
Onibaba
is a Japanese horror film based on a Buddhist parable. Directed by Kaneto Shindō, the film is set in rural Japan in the fourteenth century and features Nobuko Otowa and Jitsuko Yoshimura as a woman and her daughter-in-law who attack and kill passing samurai, strip them of their valuable armor and...
. Meanwhile, Balch carried on his career as a distributor, eventually releasing films such as The Corpse Grinders, Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger is an American underground experimental filmmaker, occasional actor and author...
’s Invocation of My Demon Brother
Invocation of My Demon Brother
Invocation of My Demon Brother is an 11 minute film directed, edited and photographed by Kenneth Anger. The music was composed by Mick Jagger playing a Moog Synthesizer. It was filmed in San Francisco at the Straight theater and the Russian Embassy.According to Kenneth Anger, the film was...
, Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
in Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, and Russ Meyer
Russ Meyer
Russell Albion "Russ" Meyer was a U.S. motion picture director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, actor and photographer....
’s Supervixens
Supervixens
Supervixens is a 1975 sexploitation film by American filmmaker Russ Meyer. The cast features Meyer regulars Charles Napier, Uschi Digard, and Haji...
. Balch was one of the first people to embrace art, horror and exploitation films with equal enthusiasm, a view that was hardly shared by many film critics of the time.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s his special niche was releasing foreign sex films. Most of the sex films Balch released in the UK had been purchased at the Cannes
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
or Venice
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
film festivals; with no stars or name directors they cost next to nothing. Balch then added his own personal touch, giving the films tongue-in-cheek English titles and eye catching campaigns like "No photographs permitted of this controversial X Film" (from When Girls Undress). Balch worked out of an office in Golden Square, Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
and lived in Dalmeney Court on Duke Street. Dalmeney Court’s other occupants included Burroughs and artist Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire.He is best known for his discovery of the cut-up technique, used by his friend, the novelist William S. Burroughs...
plus the occasional celebrity passing through such as The Animals
The Animals
The Animals were an English music group of the 1960s formed in Newcastle upon Tyne during the early part of the decade, and later relocated to London...
’ Eric Burdon
Eric Burdon
Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer-songwriter best known as a founding member and vocalist of rock band The Animals, and the funk rock band War and for his aggressive stage performance...
.
A second Balch/Burroughs collaboration film, The Cut-Ups opened in London in 1967. This was part of an abandoned project called Guerrilla Conditions meant as a documentary on Burroughs and filmed throughout 1961-1965. Inspired by Burroughs' and Gysin's technique of cutting up text and rearranging it in random order, Balch had an editor cut his footage for the documentary into little pieces and impose no control over its reassembly. The film opened at Oxford Street
Oxford Street
Oxford Street is a major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, United Kingdom. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, as well as its most dense, and currently has approximately 300 shops. The street was formerly part of the London-Oxford road which began at Newgate,...
’s Cinephone cinema and had a disturbing reaction. Many audience members claimed the film made them ill, others demanded their money back, while some just stumbled out of the cinema ranting "its disgusting".
Included in The Cut-Ups are shots of Burroughs acting out scenes from his book Naked Lunch
Naked Lunch
Naked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs originally published in 1959. The book is structured as a series of loosely-connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order...
. The idea of bringing Naked Lunch to the big-screen was Balch’s dream project. First developed in 1964, a script with musical numbers was completed in the early 1970s, and the project announced to the press in march 1971. Personal differences between Balch and the film’s would-be leading man Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
however caused the project’s collapse. According to Literary Outlaw, Ted Morgan’s 1988 biography of Burroughs, Jagger “thought Balch was coming on to him sexually, and in any case didn’t have a reputation as a director in the industry”.
Balch found a more committed investor for his plans to make feature films in producer Richard Gordon
Richard Gordon (film producer)
Richard Gordon was a British-born producer and financier of horror films.-Career:As a youth, Gordon displayed a love of films from an early age. While he was in school, he wrote articles on the subject, edited fan club magazines, and organized a film society...
. Gordon had a long history in horror cinema, and had been partly responsible for the stage version of Dracula that had allowed Balch to meet Lugosi. Their first film together was shot from a script never fully completed. With Balch using his own money to fund half of the budget what emerged was the deceptively titled Secrets of Sex
Secrets of Sex
Secrets of Sex aka Bizarre, is a British film, directed by Antony Balch, an experimental filmmaker and frequent collaborator with William S. Burroughs...
(1970). Balch’s feature debut is in fact a multi-genre anthology film which blends slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...
comedy, spy spoof, bloody horror movie and softcore sex film under the pretext of being a comment on the battle of the sexes. Secrets of Sex was a sensation, running for six months at the Piccadilly
Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster, built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with the major shopping street of Piccadilly...
Jacey.
Encouraged by the film’s British success, Balch and Gordon set about a second collaboration called Horror Hospital
Horror Hospital
Horror Hospital is a 1973 British horror-comedy film starring Robin Askwith and Michael Gough. It was the penultimate film directed by Antony Balch...
(1973). In the classic exploitation film tradition, the title was invented before the plot. Balch then spent his time locked in a hotel room with co-writer Alan Watson
Alan Watson
Professor W.A.J. 'Alan' Watson is a Scottish law and legal history expert, and is regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on Roman law, comparative law, legal history, and law and religion...
until the script was complete. Horror Hospital featured Michael Gough
Michael Gough
Michael Gough was an English character actor who appeared in over 150 films. He is perhaps best known to international audiences for his roles in the Hammer Horror films from 1958, and for his recurring role as Alfred Pennyworth in all four movies of the Burton/Schumacher Batman franchise,...
as the very Lugosi-like Dr. Storm. When Gough asked Balch what he wanted bringing to the role Balch screened him The Devil Bat
The Devil Bat
The Devil Bat is a black-and-white comedy-horror movie which was produced by Producers Releasing Corporation and directed by Jean Yarbrough...
, a Lugosi classic about a mad scientist masquerading as a perfume inventor. Horror Hospital was the most successful of all of Balch’s films.
While other projects were discussed, including a comedy called The Sex Life of Adolf Hitler and a horror film co-written by Chris Wicking, Balch never made another feature film. Speaking to the critic Kim Newman
Kim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...
in Shock Xpress magazine (vol.2, no.5, 1988), Wicking recalled "I had a crazy meeting with him, when he wanted to do some picture or other. He spent most of the time walking across the furniture. Languorously, he would walk across three or four chairs. He went into another little world. He was a sad figure in a way, because he was well before his time". In 1978, Balch was diagnosed with stomach cancer
Stomach cancer
Gastric cancer, commonly referred to as stomach cancer, can develop in any part of the stomach and may spread throughout the stomach and to other organs; particularly the esophagus, lungs, lymph nodes, and the liver...
, and died on April 6, 1980 aged 43.
Films directed by Antony Balch
- Towers Open Fire (1962–1963)
- Guerrilla Conditions (uncompleted)
- The Cut-Ups (1967)
- Secrets of SexSecrets of SexSecrets of Sex aka Bizarre, is a British film, directed by Antony Balch, an experimental filmmaker and frequent collaborator with William S. Burroughs...
(1969, released 1970) - Bill and Tony aka Who’s Who (1972)
- Horror HospitalHorror HospitalHorror Hospital is a 1973 British horror-comedy film starring Robin Askwith and Michael Gough. It was the penultimate film directed by Antony Balch...
(1973) - Ghosts at Number 9 aka Ghosts at Number 9 (paris) (1982, posthumously released short film compiled from reels of film found at Balch’s office after his death)
- William Buys a Parrott (posthumously released 1982)
Films distributed by Antony Balch
- Freaks (1963)
- Towers Open Fire (1964)
- Do You Like Women? (1964)
- The Curse and the Coffin (1964)
- The Burning Court (1965)
- Noite Vayia (1965)
- Secret Paris (1965)
- Mr Lewis (1965)
- Men and Women (1965)
- Flora (1966)
- The Kinky Darlings (1966)
- X-Ray of a Killer (1966)
- The Horrible Profession (1966)
- The Decadent Influence (1966)
- Une Fille Et Des Fusils (1966)
- The Suitcase (1966)
- Les Fetes Galantes (1966)
- Gift (1966)
- The Pornographer (rejected 1966)
- Lu (1967)
- Massacre For an Orgy Cert (1967)
- The Shape of the Light (1967)
- Where Once Kings Rode (1967)
- The Pussycats (1967)
- The Comic Strip Hero (1967)
- The Cut-Ups (1968)
- Mondo Bizarre (1968)
- Skin Skin (1968)
- The Brutes (1968)
- Hercules against the Barbarians (1968)
- Requiem For A Gunfighter (1968)
- Witchcraft Through the Ages aka HaxanHäxanHäxan is a 1922 Swedish/Danish silent horror film written and directed by Benjamin Christensen...
(1968) - Thoughts of Chairman Mao (1968)
- Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1969)
- Lot in Sodom (1969)
- Run Angel Run (1969)
- Invocation of My Demon BrotherInvocation of My Demon BrotherInvocation of My Demon Brother is an 11 minute film directed, edited and photographed by Kenneth Anger. The music was composed by Mick Jagger playing a Moog Synthesizer. It was filmed in San Francisco at the Straight theater and the Russian Embassy.According to Kenneth Anger, the film was...
(1969) - The Dream Girl (1969)
- The Gay Deceivers (1970)
- Freaky Rider (rejected 1970)
- The Weird Weirdo (Le Grand Ceremonal) (1970)
- Love 65 (1970)
- The Curious Female (1970)
- Hetrosexual (1970)
- Secrets of SexSecrets of SexSecrets of Sex aka Bizarre, is a British film, directed by Antony Balch, an experimental filmmaker and frequent collaborator with William S. Burroughs...
(1970) - Dementia- Daughter of Horror (1971)
- War Between the Planets (1971)
- Paul Bowles in Morocco (1971)
- A Matter of Fat (1971)
- Justine and Juliet (1971)
- Don’t Deliver Us From Evil (1971)
- La Fete A Jo Jo (1972)
- The Hippie Girls (1972)
- Loving and Laughing (1972)
- The Importance of Being Sexy (1972)
- Moral Love (1973)
- The Corpse Grinders (1973)
- Horror HospitalHorror HospitalHorror Hospital is a 1973 British horror-comedy film starring Robin Askwith and Michael Gough. It was the penultimate film directed by Antony Balch...
(1973) - Sexy Darlings (1974)
- Doctor in the Nude (1974)
- Bill and Tony –Who’s Who (1974)
- When Girls Undress (1974)
- Mama’s Dirty Girls (1975)
- Truck Stop Women (1975)
- The Love Hate (1975)
- Machismo (1976)
- L’Aggression (1976)
- Bisexual (1977)
- SupervixensSupervixensSupervixens is a 1975 sexploitation film by American filmmaker Russ Meyer. The cast features Meyer regulars Charles Napier, Uschi Digard, and Haji...
(1977) - Secrets of Sex: Short Version (1977)
- Blacksnake (film) aka Slaves (1977)
- 18 Year Old Schoolgirls Cert X (1977)