Jenny Agutter's Schoolgirl Gets a Sentimental Education in David Greene's I Start Counting

I START COUNTING 

(David Greene, UK, 1970, 105 minutes) 

David Greene's vivid, haunting film is a coming-of-age tale, a folk horror, a serial killer thriller, and a decidedly Catholic take on sex and death.

Though only 16 at the time, Jenny Agutter was not an inexperienced actress, but she brings an impetuousness to the role that makes her performance especially compelling. Though she grew blonder over the years, she has long, brown hair here and a makeup-free face; she acts even younger, which is appropriate for 14-year-old Catholic schoolgirl Wynne. 

Drawing from UK writer Audrey Erskine Lindop's 1966 novel, Greene by way of screenwriter Richard Harris (not that one) never explains what happened to her birth parents or her foster father, and it doesn't really matter. 

Wynne has a foster family consisting of her aunt (A Clockwork Orange's Madge Ryan), a brother a few years older (I Could Go on Singing's Gregory Phillips), and another brother (The Spy Who Loved Me's Bryan Marshall) nearly 20 years her senior; younger brother Len (below right) suggests that their mother is divorced when he mentions that she didn't like her husband. 

An older man (Billy Russell), an unbelievably noisy eater, joins them for meals and nights around the telly. Though Greene doesn't spell it out, he's their rather eccentric grandfather, first introduced through a frosted glass window fondling his pet mouse and looking more like a peeper than a relation. Maybe even both.

Wynne's social life revolves around her flirtatious friend, Corinne (Coronation Street's Clare Sutcliffe in her feature-film debut), who favors miniskirts. Wynne is no shrinking violet herself, though she dresses more modestly. 

Greene opens on a bucolic scene: a serene pond, a walking path, and ancient trees that suggest a fairytale, but without any special effects. The folk-tinged baroque-pop theme song, also titled "I Start Counting," that plays over the opening credits makes everything seem slightly surreal. 

Vocalist Lindsey Moore, about whom little is known, recalls Vashti Bunyan, which may have been intentional–Vashti's Jagger-Richards cover "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind" debuted as a single in 1965–while predicting mesmerizing vocalists like Sarah Nixey of Black Box Recorder, Florence Shaw of Dry Cleaning, and the late Trish Keenan of Broadcast–the latter, as it turns out, were big fans of experimental composer Basil Kirchin (The Abominable Dr. Phibes). His brassy, dissonant score for Greene's 1967 The Shuttered Room, with Carol Lynley and Oliver Reed, is also a treat.

As cinematographer Alex Thomson, an Oscar winner for John Boorman's 1981 Excalibur, pans in on the pond, it becomes clear that something isn't quite right, even before he reveals what's wrong with this pretty picture: a brief glimpse of something partially obscured by underwater flora–the face of an attractive young woman staring sightlessly through dead eyes. 

In only a few seconds, Greene establishes that things are not what they seem. The forest is quite lovely, but a serial killer is on the loose, and no young Berkshire County women, including Wynne and Corinne, are safe. 

With her family, however, Wynne feels secure. She's the only Catholic, and she's fairly devout. There's a crucifix above her twin bed, and she dutifully confesses to a priest–not that she has much to confess. She's a teenager, though, and strange, possibly sinful feelings are stirring inside of her. 

Boys her own age take an interest, but she couldn't be bothered--they have no chill. Corinne fancies her brother Len, a handsome lad who works at a swinging record store and hangs out with a local dealer (Michael Feast, having a ball), indicating that he enjoys the occasional lysergic escapade.

Len isn't a bad guy, but he could be, which is germane to Greene's non-didactic, non-judgmental take on a teenager's libido blinding her to the danger in her midst. It's one thing, after all, to be curious about a serial killer, a common teen obsession, but it's another to court his attention, and that's what Wynne does, under the pretext that he would never hurt her. 

Granted, there are other men in her life, like the priest (Lewis Priander) and the solicitous conductor (Simon Ward) she and Corinne run into most every time they take the bus to her old neighborhood where they like to muck about in the condemned, two-story home in which Wynne grew up. This state of affairs suggests both a reduction in income and encroaching gentrification, since the Kinch clan now live in a tower block in bland, suburban Bracknell, parts of which appears to be under construction.

Then there's George, the virile 32-year-old brother who lives at home, presumably to help support his family. Even the blond, blue-eyed conductor is handsome, giving Wynne yet another crush option, except he mostly makes eyes at Corinne whose miniskirts rise up when she sits down, though it's something he also criticizes, admonishing her, "Your skirts are too short."

When George gazes longingly at a black-and-white photo of him and a young woman, Greene suggests a lost love (a flashback reveals a fatal fall). He's single now, and gainfully employed. He also dotes on Wynne, who has developed a major crush, which would be bad enough, except she also believes he's the killer, since he's been leaving clues about a secret life. 

From the start, Greene confirms that she's right about the secret, but doesn't explain whether or not he's the killer--until the very end--but what should be scaring Wynne away, compels her. The director doesn't explain why, and nor is it necessary. The film would be less intriguing, less resonant if he did. 

If you were ever a teenage girl, you probably had a crush at some point on the worst person. Not the worst in terms of their persona, but the worst for you. We've all been there. Though a man could have written the novel, I'm not surprised that a woman did, and though it would have been interesting to see how a woman would have adapted it, Greene always honors Wynne's perspective, as blinkered as it may be. Everything unfolds through her eyes.

George prepares for each day with the bathroom door open, so she watches him shave and put on his shirt, but nothing more intimate than that.

One day, she notices scratches on his back, presumably from a woman's nails. Later, since she spies on him whenever she can, she catches him placing a package in the garbage cans outside their building. When she gets the chance, she snatches the bundle and brings it back to her room, where she opens it up to find a cream-colored sweater with a sizable blood stain. 

She doesn't tell Corinne, she doesn't confront George, and she doesn't inform the authorities; she simply ramps up her campaign of surveillance. Greene suggests that it's possibly even a turn-on. A contemporary filmmaker might be more explicit, but I prefer his subtlety and restraint.

She has fantasies, for instance, like one in which her hand slides under her crisp, white sheets while thinking about George--and as Christ looks down from the cross above--or when she's taking a bath, and he walks in, and places a hand on her shoulder. She quickly comes to, which keeps Greene on the right side of the censors, but also suggests that she doesn't know what would happen next. She's a virgin, and it's possible that Corinne is, too, though she brags that she's had sex seven times. "Seven!," she yells.

Wynne also asks George questions designed to trip him up, but phrased so that they sound as innocuous as possible. It mostly confuses him. "You're a funny little biscuit," he responds to one of her odd inquiries. He knows about the crush, but seems oblivious to her suspicions. 

In addition to fantasies, Greene inserts flashbacks, like one in which Wynne remembers George handing her a silver foil-wrapped box for her birthday, while everyone looks on eagerly. She opens it to find a white rabbit with red eyes and a Victorian outfit. I believe he's meant to recall Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit–which makes Wynne Alice and the forest her Wonderland. 

The rabbit is, frankly, pretty scary-looking, but Wynne hugs and even sleeps with it in a way that suggests she's still a child, and also that she associates the creature with the handsome human who gave it to her. If anything, she appears to imagine she's embracing his body rather than a stuffed toy. 

To protect George, she returns to the old house and incinerates the sweater using the cast iron stove. Each time, Greene makes it clear that someone is both following and spying on her, whether she's with Corinne or not. 

We learn more about George when Wynne visits him at work. The film's only nudity is plastered all over the wall: dozens of nudie cuties. It's yet another sign that he prefers adult women, though she barely notices. She's so besotted that she believes love is all he needs, explaining, "When people have people who love them, they don't have to worry about anything." Later, she tells him, "I understand you, and I don't want anyone to hurt you." 

In other words, he'll stop the strangling once he accepts Wynne as his savior. He never takes the hint, because he always sees her as a child. 

That doesn't mean her crush has no basis in reality. George may not see her as an adult, but he sees her in a way no one else does. She's neither alone nor lonely, just a little odd, and he's always happy to humor her oddities and to give her a ride whenever he has time. He even tells her she's pretty, though she seems more embarrassed than flattered by the compliment. 

As her campaign heats up, she makes mistakes, finds out things she wishes she hadn't–not necessarily what she expected–and gets in trouble, but Greene never overplays his hand. 

(The scene in which she overindulges in George's hooch is hilarious.) Wynne even tries to seduce him, the most cringe-worthy thing she could do. I've gone to bat for melodrama, but that isn't what's happening here. Though not quite a kitchen sink drama, it's more grounded than that, but nor is it a tragedy or full-blown cautionary tale. Unlike some women in the film, Wynne will live to make more mistakes in the future, but falling for another potential murderer seems unlikely. 

I went into I Start Counting cold, other than encounters in Kier-La Janisse's essential book, House of Psychotic Women, and outstanding documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror–I credit her for encouraging me to track it down–and didn't know how the film would end, but the metaphor of the house in the woods becomes crystal clear.

The film is neither wholly unpredictable, nor otherwise. Wynne gets an education in adulthood, sex, and  life, and it's consistently gripping, due largely to Jenny Agutter and her touching awkardness combined with a certain fearlessness, but everything–and everyone–lives up to it. 

Compared to the films with which it shares  thematic similarities, like Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, Jerzy Skolimowksi's Deep End, and even Hitchcock's lurid Frenzy (which features Madge Ryan), I Start Counting is a gentler proposition, but what it suggests about the lure of danger, the compulsion to control the object of one's affection, and the invincible power of love, is every bit as dark. It's just that it's filtered through an adolescent worldview. 

In her commentary track, Samm Deighan mentions an earlier Hitchcock film: 1943's Shadow of a Doubt with Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotton. Though it didn't occur to me until she mentioned it, she's right. Uncle Charlie is more problematic than George, but the film also revolves around a young woman's affinity for a man to whom she just happens to be related. 

Hitchcock made the film during the height of the production code, and he had to be more circumspect than Greene, though I don't recall any sexual spark between the two, but like Wynne, Charlie sees her uncle as something other than who he actually is, while the elder Charlie–they share the same name–makes her feel seen. She may bring out his best qualities, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a bad man. Nor does it mean his affection for her is insincere, assuming a sociopath is capable of affection, and therein lies the tragedy, because she loves him, but he's beyond redemption. 

In short order, Agutter would go on to star in Walkabout, Logan's Run, and An American Werewolf in London–setting hearts aflame all the while–but she doesn't just play a minor in Greene's film. As she reveals in the interview included with the restored Fun City Editions Blu-ray, "He told the entire crew not to swear in front of me." It's doubtful he issued the same proclamation regarding Clare Sutcliffe. Though she successfully passes for an obnoxious, self-obsessed teenager, Sutcliffe was a full decade older than Agutter–and five years older than the more mature-looking Gregory Phillips. 

I've continued to enjoy the now-73-year-old Agutter's performances on British television shows that often turn up on PBS, like Spooks–MI-5 in the States–and Call the Midwife, now in its 15th season, in which the actress who once appeared fully nude in a Nicolas Roeg picture at 16, plays a fully-covered Mother Superior. She does quite a nice job, too, in a role with faint echoes of the devout schoolgirl she played 56 years ago–name aside, Sister Julienne could, after all, be the fully-grown adult version of Wynne.

I Start Counting is now out of print in the States–Fun City Editions only produced 2,000 copies–though a Region 2 edition exists through the British Film Institute, and it's packed with twice as many extras, including Deighan's informative, context-rich commentary. Used copies of the former now go for as much as $129.99 on eBay, though less expensive copies abound. 

I have faith that the film will return to home video in the States in the not-too-distant future. Thanks to Kier-La Janisse and other influential enthusiasts, it's unlikely to ever disappear completely and consistently likely to discomfort and bedazzle each new viewer who makes its acquaintance. 

I Start Counting and The Shuttered Room are both available on YouTube. 

Images: ithankyou (Jenny Agutter), Mondo Digital (Billy Russell, Madge Ryan, and Gregory Phillips), the IMDb (Berkshire forest, Agutter in forest, and Agutter and Bryan Marshall), Trailers from Hell (Agutter and Clare Sutcliffe), The Kim Newman Web Site (Agutter and Marshall), Fopp (Agutter and creepy rabbit), Cinema Retro (Agutter and Marshall), American Cinematheque (Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten), and eBay (Walkabout).