The Committee is a 1968 film Written and Directed by Peter Sykes and staring Paul (Manfred Mann) Jones. The film features a superb score by Pink Floyd, and even The Crazy World of Arthur Brown make an appearance. In the film Paul Jones who is unnamed, is picked up and given a lift in a car. The driver of the car pulls over because he does not like the sound of the engine. When the driver is checking the engine Paul Jones slams the bonnet of the car down on him decapitating his head. After a while Paul Jones sews the drivers head back on. The driver wakes up and Paul Jones informs the driver he does not want to drive with him anymore and he should leave. A couple of years later Paul Jones is invited to join a committee. These committee groups seem to exist to keep the system??? up and running, but really seem to not do anything. Later Paul Jones encounters the driver who gave him a lift a few years before. The driver does not seem to recognise Jones or remember having his head cut of. Jones then asks the man "are your teeth ok?" Jones then spends the rest of the film talking with The Committee Director (Robert Lloyd) about his earlier actions involving the car driver.
The film is in black and white and is quite compelling. My own favorite sequence early on in the film is when a number of suit and tie gentlemen are walking through a building, accompanied by a 1st class Pink Floyd score. The camera follows these men going to a meeting, intercut with other images of old reel to reel computers and card index machines. The musical score by Pink Floyd at this moment is a must and would not have sounded out of place on Piper at the Gates of Dawn or Saucerful of Secrets. After a very successful run in The West End in 68, screenings of The Committee were almost non existant. I won't pretend that I fully understood what was going on in The Committee but who cares? maybe that is what makes the film interesting, and as a slice of 60s weirdness and self indulgence The Committee is definitely out there.
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