New review! Where Has Poor Mickey Gone?

It’s easy to focus on the 1970s when discussing the venerable British horror film. After all, that’s when things got a bit more “interesting”, with taboos getting busted all over the place. More nudity! More gore! More swearing! And in most of these cases, “more” actually means “some”, because to all intents and purposes that stuff didn’t really happen on-screen before 1969. Not in “proper” films, anyway.

But the thing is, dear reader, having the keys to the sweet shop isn’t necessarily a good thing. Yes, we’re all going to turn up if Michael Gough is messily lopping people’s heads off in his specially-converted Roller, Susan George is dropping the f-bomb, or Oliver Reed is causing nudie chaos in a nunnery. But what do film makers do to get us to turn up if they need to be more… subtle?

In many ways, that makes the films of the 1950s and 60s much more interesting affairs, because occasionally, you’d get film makers coming up with crazy new ways to freak us out. It didn’t always work, but when it did, it created some wonderfully weird concoctions. Where Has Poor Mickey Gone? being a case in point. A strange little support feature with an odd supernatural twist, it’s a slight tale of a gang of no-hopers and their eventual comeuppance.

But there’s something about it that has got under my skin and stayed there.