Verity Lambert’s Thorn-EMI Films

Abstract

Verity Lambert’s brief period as Director of Production at Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment (TESE) was responsible for the in-house development of five films: Morons From Outer Space (1985), Restless Natives (1985), Dreamchild (1985), Link (1986) and Clockwise (1986), although she had left the company before the last three were released. There has been limited critical engagement with these productions and Lambert’s tenure in general, with the existing literature on this material tending to emphasise the eclectic nature of what were to be TESE’s last releases before the company’s sale to Cannon (Hill 1999; Moody 2018; Park 1990; Walker 1985; Walker 2004; Wickham and Mettler 2005). Drawing on a series of detailed interviews with former TESE Production Executive, Graham Easton, along with previously unreleased archival documents from the Film Finances archive, this article develops a more detailed textual analysis and production history of these releases, in order more clearly to map TESE’s complexities during this period. By engaging more coherently with the themes and aesthetics of TESE’s output, the article argues that there is a consistency to Lambert’s productions which can be seen at both a thematic and stylistic level, centred on notions of constraint and obstacles to communication, and that this was nurtured by the environment created by Lambert and the Film Finances completion bond for each film.