Jamaica Inn

The Making Of

Duncan Heath, my agent, acquired the rights of Jamaica Inn and asked me to go in with him as a partner. There was another fundraiser involved who didn't raise any funds and was a nightmare of false hopes and dodgy deals but we eventually shed him without losing too much money but the main goal of getting an American network deal eluded us so as I recall we barely broke even which was a shame because we had a fairly stellar cast and the wrecking scenes were spectacular.
Jane Seymour came to the cutting rooms in Soho when she was in London and viewed Harrys Game and agreed to make the film. Patrick Mcgoohan and Trevor Eve joined the cast and Billie Whitelaw, Samuel Becket's muse played the wrecker's terrified wife.
We started with the wrecking scenes which we filmed in late October at Polzeath in Cornwall near Bokelly where Maggie and I had moved in 1973. Robin Cecil-Wright who lived locally  owned the Marquesa, a square rigger, that was ideal for our purposes and we bought a three quarter size replica off three hippies who had dreamed of sailing round the world and towed it up to Wadebridge where we remasted it with telegraph poles and put enough sail on it to look reasonably convincing.
The idea was that after filming the real Marquesa being lured by false lights towards a storm bound coast we should tswitch to the replica as it smashed on the rocks at Polzeath. Fate stepped in in the form of Peter Graham-Scott, the line producer and the insurance agent.
When we formed up on the cliffs at dawn on Monday 21st October it was blowing a good strong southwesterly gale which was ideal for our purposes. It was nearing high tide which meant there was enough water for the boat to smash onto the rocks. Robin and I were set to go but PGTips as we called him and the agent lost their bottle and postponed the filming to the next day by which time the wind had dropped and our replica lolloped across the estuary and because the tides were now wrong stuck firmly on the sand a hundred yards from the rocks.

Amazingly our luck held. In the late afternoon the gale blew up again and the ship was blown unmanned onto the rocks below on the rising tide and the intrepid crew was able to swing across from the cliffs and then start making out they were trying to save themselves which in some cases they were.
The next morning with the boat wedged firmly on the rocks we filmed the wreckers, led by a manic Patrick MacGoohan looting the ship only to discover that it carried munitions for the Napoleonic wars which were ignited by an unwary torch bearer thus blowing it to smithereens. Our special effects man assured me that it would do no damage to the house adjoining the cliffs at New Polzeath. In the event he underestimated the power of the explosion and several of them suffered broken windows. Luckily the holiday season was past and they were unoccupied.
We spent a few more days in North Cornwall filming the climax of the film when the villain of the film, the vicar of Altarnun, played by John McEnery, falls to his death over a suitably spectacular cliff top at the Rumps. We then adjoined to Yes Tor on Dartmoor where we had built a very good replica of the exterior of Jamaica Inn which served our purposes very well except when the autumn gales blew so hard the chimneys of the inn which were plywood were seen to wobble a bit.
It was a somewhat surreal experience because Yes Tor is also a military training area and since at that time the Falkland war was in full swing we had to pause our filming periodically while the young soldiers skirmished past us.
Jane Seymour throughout the filming was completely magnificent. She endured terrible weather conditions and on occasions some unavoidably rough handling with great good humour and handed in a very fine performance.
She had been recently paid a huge sum for a perfume commercial which was shot in Europe and when we completed our filming at St Catherine's Court near Bath she was so taken with it that when she found it was up for sale she was able to buy it