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Cliff Twemlow

Cliff Twemlow (14 October 1937 – 5 May 1993) was an English actor, film screenwriter, producer, composer and novelist. He is notable for pioneering, in the early 1980s, the production of independently-made low-budget films made for the home video market.

Early life

Twemlow was born in Hulme, Manchester, the son of a merchant seaman. In the early 1950s he worked as a nightclub bouncer in Morecambe.

Career

In 1962 Twemlow began his acting career as an extra in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street.

Music

In the early 1960s Twemlow began a successful career composing library music under the names Peter Reno and John Agar. His music was used in TV programmes (e.g., Public Eye, Rutland Weekend Television, The Benny Hill Show, Queenie's Castle, The Sweeney), feature films (e.g., Zeta One (1970), Secrets of Sex (1970), Deathdream (1974), A Touch of the Sun (1979), Dawn of the Dead (1978)) and TV commercials. He wrote "Distant Hills", the end credit theme of the ITV programme Crown Court (1972–1984), which was issued as the B-side to the Van der Valk theme "Eye Level" (Columbia DB 8946).

In 1973 he encountered legal problems with his song "Live and Let Die", recorded by Salena Jones. Although released shortly before Paul McCartney recorded his song with the same title for the film Live and Let Die (1973), McCartney took out an injunction against Twemlow and won the case.

In the mid-1970s,Twemlow returned to work as a nightclub bouncer at Peter Stringfellow's Manchester "Millionaire Club".

Writing

In 1980 Twemlow published his autobiography The Tuxedo Warrior, which documented his career in the music industry and as a bouncer.

He wrote two novels: The Pike (1982), for which he failed to secure funding for a film version, and The Beast of Kane (1983).

Film

His autobiography inspired the film Tuxedo Warrior (1982); however the film ignores his life and instead uses him as a character in a fictional narrative.

In 1983 Twemlow wrote, produced and starred in G.B.H.: Grievous Bodily Harm, one of the earliest British films to be shot on video, which sold over 10,000 copies in its first month of release.

This was followed by Target Eve Island (1983), co-produced with director David Kent-Watson and filmed in Grenada and Barbados, and The Ibiza Connection (1994) with Steve Powell and Brian Sterling-Vete.

In 1986, Twemlow produced and starred in Predator: The Quietus (aka Moonstalker), with David Tattersall as Director of Photography, later to be cinematographer on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and three episodes of the Star Wars franchise.

The films Firestar: First Contact and GBH 2 followed, and a television series pilot Bad Weekend.

Twemlow appeared in several special interest films produced by Brian Sterling-Vete on the MajorVision label includingThe Power to Win, The Ultimate Self Defense and Fitness Over Forty.