What follows is often cruel, and hard to classify as entertainment; we see a labor camp in full spate, and — surely a cinematic first — some form of ape crucifixion.
The film becomes a study in togetherness, both bad and fruitful; on the one hand, we get the creepy sense of a community closing ranks, while on the other there is the old-school pleasure of watching an ensemble in full spate.
When pro-democracy demonstrations broke out after a coup in 1976, Mr Samak, in full spate on an army radio station, called the protesters communists and whipped up mobs to besiege Thammasat University, the centre of unrest.
That April, to mark Shakespeare's quatercentenary, Olivier played Othello, and Tynan published a diary about the production, with a rhapsodic account of "a great classical actor in full spate".
There is a typically disturbing scene in Jonathan Coe's latest novel, The Closed Circle, in which our tremulously would-be adulterous husband-figure is ironing his shirt in front of the television while a cookery show is in full spate.
It also offers stereo Bluetooth, a mobile hot spot and the full spate of Google services.
It is also something of an object lesson in the methods of late-phase literature in general, where the high-gloss productions of the imagination in full spate give way to a sparser, stonier art of suggestion and juxtaposition.
To watch him in full spate, onstage or on a talk show, where he would shift and bounce in his seat like a young boy who wants to play outside, was to be nagged by a question, however naïve: Why in heaven's name did this man, of all men, need extra stimulants?
Yet to see how quickly and effectively the anti-government, anti-tax and anti-spending forces snapped into action the day after President Obama announced an idea like this in his last State of the Union address gives you a tangible and fearsome sense of the full spate of the barriers facing those disadvantaged children.
In full spate, the Bloco band are a tumultuous river of sound with Sun Ra, Fela Kuti and the Clash all pushing the current.
