Don't Get Mad, Get Murderous

I don’t know about you, but I tend to judge revolutionary groups by just how much mayhem they cause. I’m not condoning it, but, if you really feel strongly about something, and you can’t settle it by democratic means, you should almost certainly leave a trail of blown up cars, robbed banks, assassinated politicians and burned out embassies in your wake.

Britain’s own The Angry Brigade took a gentler approach, trying to avoid hurting anyone if possible but, ultimately, they proved to be utterly ineffectual and got caught and imprisoned, so it was not a massively successful policy. I’m glad that they didn’t kill anybody, of course, but they might have got further if they had.

So what were they so angry about? Well,  is was all about that bloody System that people often rail about, the capitalist world that, in their eyes, grinds people down and reduces them as human beings. They hoped that by sending a few letter bombs and machine gunning some empty embassies they would incite the working man to rise up and violently revolt against their oppressors. Typical middle class radicals, really: banging on about freeing the proletariat but expecting them to do all the dirty work and the killing and dying while the instigators talk about who’ll be in charge of what in the new order.

Hilary and Anna. Hilary is on the far left , Anna is too.  

In 1972, ‘World In Action’ interviewed two out on bail Brigade members, Hilary Crick and Anna Mendelson. They don’t have much to say for themselves (Hilary is particularly, almost smugly, uncommunicative), and refuse (or are unable to) present a coherent view of events, or even something approaching a defence. Anna tries, but generally drifts off the point very quickly. That said, it must be remembered that these are two people in their early twenties who are under enormous strain and are each facing up to 15 years in prison, so their reluctance to incriminate themselves, and their inability to think straight can be forgiven, especially it is not thought that they were major players in the group.

Perhaps the final word should go to Jim Prescott, the only working class member of the group, a man who was prepared to kill and maim for his cause, but wasn’t allowed to and spent 10 years of his life in maximum security prisons anyway: ‘I realised that I was the one who was angry and the others were more like the Slightly Cross Brigade’.

What a very British revolution.

He's Here To Freak You Out...Of This World!

Colchester, Essex, 1983 AD. I am at a party and have become quite heavily involved with a pretty young lady. The new romance comes to an abrupt end, however, when I check my watch and realise that ‘Dracula, A.D. 1972’ is about to start on Anglia telly. It’s a film I haven’t yet seen, but KNOW will be great, so I rather abruptly make my excuses and leave, leaving my paramour both tearful and furious. Thus, the pattern of a life is set.

‘Dracula, A.D. 1972’ is a supremely silly film. At times, it’s educationally sub-normal. But I love it. I love the middle aged kids and the groovy places they hang out where the sixties still cling to the décor like pot smoke to a pair of garish curtains, and I love, love, love the fact that Count Dracula is going to bite them all and turn their groovy scene to shit.

I love the fact that it takes Van Helsing ten minutes and a pad and pencil to work out that Johnny Alucard’s surname is Dracula spelled backwards. I love that you can now kill a vampire with a power shower, or a bush. I love Peter Cushing’s concession to hip, a moderately daring neckerchief. I love the music, even 'The Stoneground', but especially the electronic séance track by White Noise, from 'An Electric Storm', one of my favourite albums ever. I like the vacuity of the male characters, and the fecundity of the female cast, perhaps the foxiest, bustiest bunch of Hammer starlets in history (Stephanie Beacham is outstanding in this respect). Most of all, I love that Hammer are getting a bit desperate and trying something new and, for the most part, getting it wrong – and I love that it doesn’t matter because the dividing line between brilliantly awful and awfully brilliant doesn't exist in this context.    

‘Dracula, A.D. 1972’ is ninety minutes of everything I love and cherish and admire and am obsessed with about British horror films, and I can categorically say that leaving the party and the girl and rushing home to watch it all those years ago had an enormous effect on me, an impact that has reverberated every day since, and, for better or worse, has directly led to this blog and all the stuff attached to it. And it was worth it. It was all worth it.   

Dracula, A.D. 1972

Coming Soon...

Dr. Who: Carnival Of Monsters

I love the Jon Pertwee era Doctor Who like mad, but I’m not a massive fan of ‘Carnival of Monsters’ or, indeed, of the creeping, cringing sensation I get as I watch it. Is it the sock puppet monsters? The glam rock Bacofoil outfits? The insistently unsuccessful attempts at comic relief? Well, yeah, it’s all of that, but it’s mainly because Jon Pertwee doesn’t seem to be bothered, and that makes everything a bit stilted and sad.

Granted the freedom by the Timelords to take the TARDIS wherever he fancies, the Doctor heads for the beautiful blue planet of Metebelis 3 (a running joke in several stories is how he never quite gets there - and, when he finally does, it's bloody awful). Instead of going on holiday, however, he and Jo find themselves stuck in a futuristic contraption called a Miniscope, sort of a cross between a zoo and a ‘What The Butler Saw’ machine. There’s a Cyberman in there (the closest Pertwee came to one as an incumbent Doctor), an Ogron, and a load of vicious, drooly, shouty rubber dragon monsters called the Drashig. There’s also a British ocean liner populated by a group of awfully posh idiots who haven't noticed they are living the same day in 1926 over and over.

Outside of the miniscope a depressingly unfunny diplomatic incident is taking place between the miniscopes owner Vorg and his scatty asistant (grumpy old Leslie Dwyer and Cheryl Hall) and a race of pompous, squabbling bureaucrats who look like Sam the bald eagle from The Muppets and really get on your tits, although there is a good bit where one of their rubber skull caps goes a bit awry.

The Doctor and Jo have to basically get out of the Miniscopee before it blows up or is destroyed by the blue bonced powers that be, and this takes the best (worst?) part of two hours. Oh dear. Not so much a carnival as a tatty fairground sideshow.

Only ever mildly diverting, occasionally awful ‘Carnival of Monsters’ seems in many ways to herald the end of the very best of the Pertwee era, although he would continue in the role for another couple of years. There was something special about the Doctor being exiled to Earth, something unique and absolutely right for the time. Maybe Pertwee knew that as he just doesn't seem that into it, and looks weary and unmoved throughout. He's normally such a good reactor, for example, so much so that he quite often goes over the top. Here, his first sighting of the Drashig doesn't even warrant an arched eyebrow.

Later on, he has another go, and does a bit better, but it's still pretty lazy by his superlative standards.

It's just not like him to be so non-commital.

The Wrestling

I love The Wrestling, the proper, sweaty, fat, hairy middle aged men pretending to be in agony wrestling. And look at those prices! Book then to avoid disappointment.  

An Appalling Amalgam

God knows I love Pete Walker films, even the dodgy ones, but 'The Flesh & Blood Show' just doesn't do it for me, which is awful, as all the component parts are there, they're just badly and lazily bolted together.

The action all takes place at Eastcliffe On Sea (actually Cromer in Norfolk), where a group of young, hairy actors are brought together by a mysterious production company to improvise a play that will apparently be staged in the West End at some point (the bits we see are awful, so it would probably have been a very short engagement). The rehearsal space is an abandoned pier and, because they're skint, the lads and lasses of the company kip there as well. It's a cold, damp, eerie place, and something bad happened there that no-one can quite remember.

One by one, the girls disrobe and get murdered, and then everyone else looks shifty and nutty in order to satisfy a daft twist ending that could have made sense if it hadn't been so badly botched. Walker seems to lost his way entirely at times: virtually every opportunity for a decent sequence is compromised by poor editing or filming, or, in dramatic terms, relies on the most incredibly illogical behaviour. It's horror by numbers, random numbers at that, and he's so much better than that.Also, for a film that runs for a 100 minutes, it's also extremely slack, and the last half an hour, including a final 3D flashback (the 'Scooby Doo' moment of explanation), is interminable.

It has a fair cast (the silky voiced and always likeable Ray Brooks, foxy Luan Peters, Jenny Hanley, Candace Glendenning, sexy Jane Cardew), good music, a great location and the germ of an idea, but it never flowers into anything decent. Balls.

Here's the trailer.

The Flesh and Blood Show

Interesting Postcards

Giant Panda, Chi Chi

Pandas feed on bamboo shoots and are confined to the area around Szechuan in Western China. Chi-Chi was captured there in 1957 and lived in the London Zoo from 1958 to 1972

British Museum (Natural History) London SW7 5BD

There’s an inherent contradiction in a nation of animal lovers who wrench creatures from their natural habitat and put them in a cage for the duration of their lives, but there it is, we’re complicated people. The same ambiguity extends to our furry friends post mortem: having loved the creature, we have it cut up, emptied out, stuffed and put on display again - this time for all eternity. No wonder Chi Chi looks so forlorn.

Asylum: Mannikins of Horror

‘Mannikins of Horror’ (their spelling, please don’t write in) rounds off the film in an interesting but slightly frustrating way. This segment is in real time, no flashbacks, and is rather brief which is a shame, as the premise is intriguing.

Doctor Byron (Herbert Lom, intense) is a celebrated neuro-surgeon who has gone crackers and now spends his time making models of his ex-colleagues who he believes are responsible for his current condition. These aren’t just bits of plastic and a load of matchsticks glued together, however, indeed Byron claims that he has imbued them with life: organic parts, a fully functioning brain, a soul. We never quite find out how he has achieved this miracle (I have long suspected that this segment is so brief because it pointedly avoids any kind of rational explanation), but he is clear about one thing: they do his bidding, and his bidding is revenge.

After a very short interview, Martin sort of shrugs his shoulders and goes downstairs to discuss his findings with Doctor Rutherford. In the meantime, and over an uncertain timescale (it’s now late at night), Byron stares and stares at a doll that has his own face, seemingly transferring consciousness and the will to kill into it. As Martin and Rutherford rhubarb about methods and treatments, the funny little doll walks across the floor, out into the hall, climbs into the dumb waiter and hitches a ride directly into Rutherford’s office, where it stabs him in the back of the head and kills him.

The whole sequence is extraordinary for a number of reasons, firstly for the fact that the Mannikin traverses the equivalent of several miles of ground whilst travelling at a steady third of a mile an hour; secondly that, despite having a clearly solid and inflexible body it can, apparently, bend and climb stuff and quite easily escape from a locked down secure unit and, finally, that it goes to Rutherford’s office without a weapon of any sort, only coincidentally picking up a discarded  scalpel en route, thereby saving the manikin the crushing embarrassment of travelling all that bloody way simply to gently poke the back of Rutherford’s head with his plastic finger.

Anyway, before you can say ‘Jesus of Nazareth, Doctor Martin has dashed the homicidal homunculus to the floor and crushed it with his foot at which point everyone goes ‘urrggh’ because the little model is full of real life wet, red guts.

Finally, it is revealed that Doctor Starr is not either of the two young girls, the Jewish tailor or even the bonkers Doctor Byron (who ‘burst open’ at the same time that Martin stamped on his dolly), but the kindly man that Martin believes is Max, the Orderly (the Crowman, remember). Starr / Max wastes no time in strangling Doctor Martin with a stethoscope, before bending over his corpse and emitting the most horrible sound, a breathy, scraping kind of maniacal laughter with rises in pitch and intensity and volume: it’s a terrible and terrifying noise, and may be the scariest thing in the film.

As a coda, we see another young man arriving for a job interview. He is met by Doctor Starr and shown inside…

As you might have guessed from the amount of verbiage on the subject, ‘Asylum’ is a firm favourite of mine, a film that I have watched and enjoyed many, many times. For the most part, it’s well written, well directed (by genre stalwart Roy Ward Baker) and, with the exception of Charlotte and Britt, well-acted. It zips along nicely, and doesn’t let ridiculous things like logic get in the way.  Like all portmanteau horror films it can be patchy but, on the plus side, there isn’t time for the dodgy comic story that mars so many of these types of productions. Ultimately, I suppose I’m saying that watching ‘Asylum’ is a very good idea so, although I’ve probably spoiled it all* for you by giving everything away, you should probably get that sorted as soon as.  

* I’m not apologising for the spoilers, by the way, the film is 42 years old, after all.