First broadcast on Resonance FM, 26th May 2025. 30 mins.

Or you can watch on Youtube.

The whole of ‘Saturday Night Out‘ is on Youtube (to make the show we bought the DVD for a fiver, if you’re in the UK it occasionally shows up on TalkingPictures). The sequence of bombed-out Limehouse, and Francesca Annis facing Turner Buildings, is here if you don’t mind skipping to end of the film (though watch the whole thing, it’s a tear-jerker to the last scene).

Another shot in ‘Saturday Night Out’, the neon sign of the Mandrake Club, is the after-hours chess and drinking club in Soho. The basement was knocked through to the Gargoyle Rooms run by the film’s producer Michael Klinger, which was a few doors down on Meard Street.

There’s a long shot of the interior of the Mandrake Club in the 1956 Burt Hyams-directed ‘Sunshine in Soho’ (the band here giving off some strong Rowland Rivron energy…) which you can watch for free on the BFI player, at about 29 mins in.

Further reading…

‘Beasts In The Cellar: The Exploitation Film Career of Tony Tenser‘ John Hamilton
‘Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground’ Marek Kohn.

Tracks…
Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra ‘Things Seem So Blue To Me‘
The Searchers ‘Saturday Night Out‘
Malcolm Mitchell, music from ‘The Yellow Teddybears‘
Sylvester ‘A Foggy Day‘
Edgar Jackson’s Gargoyle Five ‘By Special Permission‘