8 Ways Beatle Turned Producer George Harrison Saved British Cinema

2. Ending With A Tale Of Immaculate Deception: Nuns On The Run (1990)

While Handmade's last truly great film would be Withnail & I, there were a few more hidden gems left for Harrison's stint as a movie mogul. 1987'sThe Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne would win Maggie Smith the BAFTA for Best Actress while 1988's disturbing drama Track 29 (directed by arthouse favourite Nic Roeg and starring Gary Oldman) would become an underground hit. Harrison then reteamed with Withnail director Bruce Robinson and star Richard E Grant for 1989's underrated cult classic satire How to Get Ahead in Advertising, which saw Grant on deliriously good form as an ad exec who grows a boil on his shoulder that grows a face and begins to talk to him. An understandably hard film to market, it wasn't a huge hit but Harrison acknowledged that Bruce Robinson was the kind of filmmaker that needed to have his work seen regardless of financial reward. Handmade's last solid hit was 1990's guilty pleasure Nuns on the Run which starred Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane as crooks who crossdress to disguise themselves as nuns in a teacher training school to avoid the mob and the police. But the real crime was still to come€