Review Movies: Telstar | Nick moran | svengali | Joe Meek | Number One | Kevin Spacey | John Leyton | the Tornadoes | Holloway in thw 1960s | Chas and Dave

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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with DAN CARRIER
Published:18 June 2009

Justin Hawkins as Screaming Lord Sutch in Telstar

Original pop Svengali Meek was never an ordinary Joe

TELSTAR
Directed by Nick Moran
Certificate 15

THE tragic story of one of the world’s first pop Svengalis has all the ingredients for a heartbreaker.
Joe Meek’s tale ticks boxes.
He gave us hit after hit yet had a troubled personal life, suffering from horrible episodes of extreme mental ill health and eventually shot his landlady and himself.
Absolutely convinced of his genius, he was his own worst enemy, pushing his caring business partner away – played here by a hardly recognisable Kevin Spacey – and gradually alienating his vital session musicians and composers.
Meek produced the record Telstar, which became the first British recorded number one in the USA, and was vital in the development of pop in the early 1960s. But as this film lays bare, he suffered greatly for his art, having to face a homophobic world and deal with his own mental fragility.
There are some terrific performances, none less than Con O’Neill as Meek. His screen time is immense and he keeps up his tortured genius show all the way through.
While the backdrops are not exactly inspiring, O’Neill’s portrayal of the bizarre life and times of Meek takes us into the savage depths of his psyche.
Director Nick Moran has done a grand job recreating Holloway in the early 1960s and many of the episodes described in the film really happened – we follow Meek’s band The Outlaws and then The Tornadoes as they tour dance halls around the country, and see life on the road.
Chas Hodges of Chas ’n’ Dave fame makes a cameo at the beginning as an angry neighbour, banging a dustbin lid at the noise his young self is creating.
Furthermore, by getting the likes of Chas and Great Escape star John Leyton, who both worked with Meek at 204 Holloway Road, the film has a real air of authenticity about it – Leyton told Moran exactly where to place furniture in the makeshift studio to make it just like Joe had never left.
Essentially, this is a well-made film on an interesting topic, but is rather gloomy as Meek’s life was simply rather sad.

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