The Committee (film)

The Committee is a 1968 British independent black-and-white film noir film directed by Peter Sykes. It features original music by Pink Floyd as well as Arthur Brown's song "Nightmare".

Plot
The movie follows a man who is unnamed. The movie starts out with the central character in a car with a man who just picked him up. The victim talks to him, but he is uninterested. The victim decides to pull over because he does not like the sound of the engine. While he is looking under the bonnet of the car the central character slams the bonnet down on his head several times, decapitating him in the process. The central character eventually sews the head back on, and the victim wakes up. The central character tells him he does not want to drive anymore that day and to leave without him.A few years later the central character is called on to be part of a committee, a group that supposedly keeps the system running but really do not do much of anything. The committee consists of 300 people who meet in a country estate, where there is swimming, tennis and boating during non-working hours, and a dance with a live band one evening. The man feels paranoid that the committee was called on account of him, and runs into the victim while there, who does not seem to remember him.

The central character talks about this with a man listed as 'The committee director' in the credits. This conversation lasts for the duration of the movie, and features most of the music Pink Floyd wrote for the film. At the end of the committee's weekend retreat, the man checks out, meeting a young woman whose bags he helps carry out. She offers him a lift and they drive off. She asks him if he plays bridge, but he does not answer her.

Cast

 * Arthur Brown as himself
 * Jimmy Gardner as boss
 * Paul Jones as central figure
 * Tom Kempinski as victim
 * Robert Langdon Lloyd as committee director (credited as Robert Lloyd)
 * Pauline Munro as girl

Soundtrack

 * 1) The Committee (Part 1 backwards version) – 0:36
 * 2) The Committee (Part 1) – 0:36
 * 3) The Committee (Part 2) – 1:09
 * 4) The Committee (Part 3) – 2:56
 * 5) The Committee (Part 4) – 1:24
 * 6) The Committee (Part 5) – 2:06
 * 7) The Committee (Part 6) – 0:50
 * 8) The Committee (Part 7) – 2:38
 * 9) The Committee (Part 8) – 3:30

Titles taken from A Tree Full of Secrets bootleg. "The Committee (Part 1 backwards version)" is the original recording, which was reversed for the film. "The Committee (Part 7)" is an early recording of "Careful with That Axe, Eugene". The soundtrack is also on other bootlegs that are just called The Committee. It also has the Arthur Brown track. "Prelude-Nightmare". It has been often misquoted that his song "Fire" is in the film. The confusion is possibly due to the fact that he wears the same "flaming head-gear" that he used in the Fire footage, often seen on TV.

Release
The Committee has only been released once on DVD coupled with a CD Single with Paul Jones' title track "The Committee" in 2005, and later in remastered format on Blu-ray, as part of the 2016 Pink Floyd box set The Early Years 1965–1972.