REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS
WITH THE PETER CUSHING-STARRING DALEK MOVIES NEWLY RESTORED IN 4K, WE TALK TO ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ANTHONY WAYE
HE BEATLES MAY HAVE BEEN “MORE popular than Jesus” by 1966, but in 1964 the Daleks were providing some stiff competition. Their appearance in Doctor Who’s second adventure captured the public imagination, launching a wave of merchandising. So the time was ripe for someone savvy to place them – as the eventual trailer excitedly declared – “in colour on the big screen, closer than ever before!”
Alert to the money-spinning potential of the craze, producer Joe Vegoda secured the rights to the Daleks’ TV debut from the BBC. Milton Subotsky – co-founder of Amicus, the British studio behind anthology horrors like
Dr Terror’s House Of Horrors – set about compressing Terry Nation’s scripts into a screenplay, turning the Doctor into a “brilliant science professor” (played in avuncular fashion by Peter Cushing). As Amicus was strongly associated with horror, it was decided to present this more child-friendly offering under the company name AARU Productions.
When originally announced, the director attached was Freddie Francis, the Oscar– winning cinematographer on films like The Innocents, who had also directed for Amicus. However, by the time production on Dr Who & The Daleks began at Shepperton Studios he had – for reasons lost in the mists of time – been replaced by Gordon Flemying (soon to father actor Jason).
“Right beside Gordon” and “running the whole show, basically” was assistant director Anthony Waye. When shooting began in March 1965 he was – like cinematographer John Wilcox, and the film’s leading man – fresh off Amicus horror The Skull, which wrapped 17 days earlier. (As Freddie Francis directed that too, maybe he just needed a bit of a break?)
Waye, who went on to work on the sequel too, tells SFX his overriding impression is that “they were very cheap budget movies” – £180,000 in the case of the first. “We were up against it all the time, money-wise. The schedules were so tight and the budgets were so mean that you just had to bash on and shoot as much as you could a day.”
Waye characterises his Glaswegian director as “a disciplined man” but “quite a handful”: “He needed a little kick now and again, but they all do! It’s a first assistant who puts the discipline down, and you’ve also got to discipline the director to some degree.”