Excalibur

The early 1980s saw a veritable host of fantasy movies arrive on cinema screens - inspired no doubt by the 'magic' sword waggling of the first two Star Wars movies - such as 'Hawk the Slayer', 'Dragonslayer', 'Clash of the Titans', 'The Beastmaster', 'Conan the Barbarian', 'Krull', 'The Dark Crystal' and of course John Boorman's epic retelling of the story of Arthur and the magic sword that waggles above all other waggly magic swords, 'Excalibur'.

Forever doomed to be the second best retelling of the Arthurian legend - "You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you"- Boorman's version is still a bold if slightly overlong, stark if often a tad indistinct, violent and misogynistic reinvention that discards the epic chivalry of Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur and in it's stead presents a version of the legend that literally glows with mythic resonance whilst never shying way from the blood and mud that would characterise such a time - "Dennis! There’s some lovely filth down here!" (I'll stop quoting 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' now, I promise).

To tell his story Boorman assembled cast of then little known but now budget busting actors including Helen Mirren as (Morgana Le Fay), Patrick Stewart as King Leodegrance, Liam Neeson as Gawain and Gabriel Byrne as King Uther Pendragon but it's Nicol Williamson as Merlin who dominates every scene he's in and is sorely missed from those he isn't.  This movie was Boorman's passion project following a decade of career highs, lows and 'Zardoz' and when he finally got the go ahead he threw everything he could at the screen telling a story that encompasses the entirety of Arthur's life which perhaps was not necessarily the best idea but restraint is in no way a characteristic of this film and as an auteur piece it is perfectly realised whilst as a love letter to the pervasive power of the Arthurian legend it is, almost, unsurpassed.

"Look upon this moment. Savor it! Rejoice with great gladness! Great gladness! Remember it always, for you are joined by it. You are One, under the stars. Remember it well, then... this night, this great victory. So that in the years ahead, you can say, "I was there that night, with Arthur, the King!" For it is the doom of men that they forget."

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The British Space Group @ Hay

Hi all

You may have noticed that blog posts here are few and far between at the moment as I've been dealing with the aftereffects of the COVID bout that hospitalised me last summer but I've not gone away entirely and hopefully normal service will resume at some point soon.

In the meantime, I thought I'd stop by and let you all know about a rare live performance from my The British Space Group project at The Old Electric Shop in Hay-on-Wye on Saturday the 22nd of April alongside Henrik Nørstebo, and Jacken Elswyth. More details can be found here.

For those that don't know, I've been making my strange & post industrial music under various guises since the late 90s. Using my current British Space Group alias I am actively trying to explore narrative in my work and tell stories of the type I feature here on Wyrd Britain.  My most recent album 'The Machinery of the Moment' was released last year and tells the story of a man becoming unmoored from time.  Previous albums have explored 'thin places' - 'The Ley of the Land' - and other dimensions - 'The Phantasmagoria'.

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The Gorgon

1964 and with not a toga in sight Hammer plucked The Gorgon from Greek myth and handed her to veteran director Terence Fisher who had a penchant for the classic monsters - 'Dracula', 'The Curse of Frankenstein', 'The Mummy', 'The Curse of the Werewolf'.  In Fisher's vision the creature, named 'Megaera' (actually the name of one of the Erinyes or Furies), has long haunted the woods and ruined castle of the German town of Vandorf and has been responsible - most recently - for seven deaths over the previous five years that are being hidden behind scapegoats and excuses from the world at large.  It takes the father (Michael Goodliffe) and brother (Richard Pasco) of one of those scapegoats along with a handy Professor of Folklore (Christopher Lee) to finally bring the town's curse to an end.

With a stately pace and some great set design and music Fisher's movie - one of his personal favourites - is classic gothic Hammer and with a cast that alongside Lee includes Hammer legends Peter Cushing & Barbara Shelley along with Patrick Troughton (two years away from being cast as The Doctor) and Jack Watson you know you're in for a treat.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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The Black Tomb

We've featured several episodes from the mid 1980s ITV series 'World's Beyond' on Wyrd Britain before one of which, 'Home', featured the unlikely casting of 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest's' NurseRatched, Louise Fletcher. This episode, the fifth in the series, features the equally unlikely casting of Eli Wallach of 'The Good, The Bad and the Ugly' as acting teacher Charles Burgess alongside his real world wife Anne Jackson as Marian, an actress struggling to come to terms with her declining career, holidaying in England where they discover a strange black tomb belonging to the former, unlamented, lord of the manor and Marian is stalked by a masked and cloaked figure.

With a flat and obvious script by Marc Alexander purportedly based on a story from the archives of the Society for Psychical Research from which he entirely fails to ring any sort of spookiness and some truly dire acting from the principal cast save perhaps John Vine as the Vicar and Derek Benfield (Frank Skinner in 'Timeslip') as the Doctor this is a dreadful piece of old tat. That said though it's an interesting curio of the time it was made within the slight revival of spooky anthology television in the middle of the 1980s alongside other series such as the supernatural classics plundering 'Shades of Darkness', the, apparently mostly lost and Robert Aickman focused, 'Night Voices' (of which only 'The Hospice' seems to remain) and 'Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense' but it is by far the weakest of them all and provides little more than an opportunity to idle away 24 minutes in the company of some unlikely stars. 


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The Quatermass Xperiment

It was only a matter of time before we got to the film that launched - well, revived - a studio and created countless cinematic legends and so here we are in the company of the venerable Professor Bernard Quatermass.

When Hammer released 'The Quatermass Xperiment' in 1955 it was a familiar commodity to the British public with Nigel Kneale's creation having been made as a six part serial by and shown to great success on the BBC just two years earlier.

The story follows the return of the sole survivor of the rocket ship launched by Quatermass' 'The British Experimental Rocket Group' and of the alien parasite that takes over his body leading to one of the most iconic endings in movie history.

Director Val Guest tweaking a screenplay by Richard Landau from the original script by Kneale does a masterful job of building the suspense ably assisted by a sympathetic performance from Richard Wordsworth (great-great-grandson William) as the doomed astronaut Victor Carroon, a gently comedic performance from Jack Warner as Inspector Lomax and a slightly lumpen but enjoyably brusque performance in the title role from Brian Donlevy, an American brought in to help sell the movie to the US.

The end result is a movie whose impact, beyond the rejuvenating of Hammer studios and the myriad films and careers that flowed from it, still resonates today.

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The Ice House

Directed by Derek Lister and screened on Christmas Day 1978, 'The Ice House' was the last entrry in the original run of 8 of 'A Ghost Story for Christmas'. It was the second to feature a wholly original story - following 'Stigma' from the previous year - and was written by John Griffith Bowen who had written a previous G.S for C 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas' and who had also written / would write several other Wyrd Britain favourites 'Robin Redbreast' and 'A Photograph' for BBC1's Play for Today and 'A Woman Sobbing' for BBC2's Dead of Night.

Taking influence from the M.R. James stories that preceded it Bowen's story features a man - an academic, possibly a psychiatrist - out of place, in this instance newly divorced Paul (John Stride) at a health spa run by incestuous siblings Clovis (Geoffrey Burridge) and Jessica (Elizabeth Romilly), but that's where the similarities end.  

Poorly received on it's original transmission 'The Ice House' has fared badly over the years often regarded as the weakest of the 8 but for me I think it deserves reconsideration. As a ghost story it's a dead loss - there are none - and it probably should never have been thought of as such but with an ambiguous narative that owes far more to the strange stories of Robert Aickman than it does to Eton's master of the ghostly tale it's a subtly creepy and claustrophobic delight filled with a subdued, sensuous sexuality that rewards repeat viewings.

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The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

I'm sure that for many people that title up there evokes memories of Astronomy Domine, Instersteller Overdrive and Lucifer Sam but it's original appearence was as chapter seven of one of Syd Barrett's favourite novels, 'The Wind in the Willows'.

Written by Kenneth Graeme - originally as stories to entertain his young son - and first published in 1908, 'The Wind in the Wilows' tells the stories of the anthropomorphised animals of the riverbank such as Mole, Ratty (actually a water vole), Badger and Mr. Toad.  The book has a overarching narrative but in line with it's origin as stories to entertain a young boy it also includes a number of short stand alone digressions such as the often excised chapter seven. A beautifully pagan piece of writing 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' tells of Mole and Ratty'search for Otter's missing son Portly who they find nestled between the hooves of the wild god.

This adaptation is taken from the 1969 TV series made by Anglia Television, narrated by Paul Honeyman over John Worsley' stunning illustrations.

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Christmas with the Sex Pistols

Happy Christmas everybody I hope this finds you well.

Here we have the story of the two gigs the Pistols played on Christmas Day 1977 in Huddersfield at the height of their infamy, the last gigs they were to play in the UK and less than a month before they were to implode on the US tour.

John, Paul and Steve tell their stories of Christmas in the 1970s and particularly of the gigs they played that day for the locals that evening but especially the one at the party in the afternoon for the children of striking firemen complete with a Rotten instigated cake fight that looks like the most fun gig ever.

It's a genuinely lovely documentary with the 4 members (and others) reminiscing over some great footage about the gig and the times and offering some interesting observations which makes for a fascinating and really very welcome addition to their story.

I hope you enjoy and merry Christmas to you all.

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Literary Hauntings

Available now from Tartarus Press is this fantastic new guide book  to the uncanny or perhaps I should say to uncanny influences.

The literary equivalent of Janet and Colin Bord's essential 'Mysterious Britain' and 'The Secret Country' it probides an exploration of the real world locations that have "inspired the best fictional ghost stories of Britain and Ireland". Contributors include Tartarus Press head honchos R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker along with Mark Valentine, John Howard, Mike Ashley, Swan River Press' Brian J Showers and others and it makes for fascinating reading

If you've ever been fabulous enough to want to float down the canals of Elizabeth Jane Howard's 'Three Miles Up', visit Thomas Carnacki at Cheyne Walk or to climb Arthur Machen's Hill of Dreams then in this fantastic book you'll find your guide to the destinations of all your best nightmares.

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Nebulous

It's 2099 where following various environmental disasters which have reduced human knowledge, changed the Earth's orbit, split much of the UK into islands and vastly reduced the human population we find Professor Nebulous (Mark Gatiss), destroyer of the Isle of Wight and head of KENT (Key Non-judgmental Environmental Taskforce), investigating environmental dangers as he attempts to restore the world while also taking in laundry to supplement their funding.

Nebulous ran for 3 series on BBC Radio 4 between January 2005 and June 2008 with the first episode being remade in 2019 as the animated pilot you can see below.

The show is an affectionate spoof on the cornerstones of Wyrd Britain such as Quatermass, Doctor Who and Doomwatch and indeed the finale of the pilot episode revolves around a notable reference to The Day of the Triffids movie.  It features a strong cast including the likes of the series' writer and producer Graham Duff as Rory Lawson and the great David Warner as Nebulous' nemesis Doctor Klench alongside guest stars such as David Tennant, Peter Davison and Kate O'Mara. Not every joke lands cleanly and episodes are often a little too crammed for their own good but such is the curse of the radio play with it's need to avoid dead air but the series as a whole is a thoroughly enjoyable pastiche of the type of shows we champion here which deserves it's place alongside them.

You can watch the animated pilot below with the rest of the series available to own on disc or download from your retailer of choice or you can listen to them here -  https://archive.org/details/nebulous5

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Dusky Ruth & Other Stories

A.E. Coppard
Penguin

Beyond that woeful 1970's soft porn image that (dis)graces the cover this is another delightful collection of gently bucolic and occasionally supernatural tales from the pen of a master.

I've read more than a few of these stories before in the modern collection I reviewed here the other year such as the lovely title piece, the gently strange 'Adam & Eve & Pinch Me', the devious humanity of 'Weep Not My Wanton' and the gossipy comraderie of 'The Field of Mustard'.  Betyond those are other treasures such as the fairytale of 'The Bogey Man', the delicate familial love displayed in 'The Cherry Tree', the love story of 'Polly Morgan' and many more.

Coppard was a true master of the short story.  Few of the stories in his collections are particarly weird or supernatural but I recommend them unreservedly to devotees of both as he was blessed with an imagination imbued with a pastoral fecundity that allowed it to roam paths trod and untrod through the countryside that fueled it.

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Mr Nightingale

'Mr Nightingale' is an episode of the 1977 BBC1 series 'Supernatural' where an initiate tells a story ro gain membership of the 'Club of the Damned' and here it's the story of an Englishman (Jeremy Brett) in Hamburg on business staying with a local family who discovers he has a double or does he?  Dum Dum Duuuuum!

With very limited sets but a solid cast pulled from the supporting casts of such Wyrd Britain delights such as 'Countess Dracula' (Lesley-Ann Down), 'Doomwatch' (Bruce Purchase & Donald Eccles) and 'The Tomorrow People' (Mary Law) and a workable, if slightly hackneyed, story it could have worked but unfortunately doesn't and the lion share of it's failure must be borne by it's lead.  Brett is very much of the Vincent Price school of acting and has never seen a piece of scenery that he didn't want to chew.  Here he's dialled all the way up to 11 and utterly manic in the role of the increasingly doolally title character but his performance elicits cringes and sniggers rather than any empathy .

I hadn't intended on posting this here as in all honesty I thought it was really quite awful but as it would have been Brett's 89th birthday this last week I thought I'd embrace the opportunity and besides someone may enjoy it.

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Titus Groan

Mervyn Peake
Vintage

Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born, he stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that stand for Gormenghast Castle. There are tears and strange laughter; fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings; dreams and violence and disenchantment contained within a labyrinth of stone.
Starts with the birth and ends with the first birthday celebrations of the heir to the grand, tradition-bound castle of Gormenghast. A grand miasma of doom and foreboding weaves over the sterile rituals of the castle. Villainous Steerpike seeks to exploit the gaps between the formal rituals and the emotional needs of the ruling family for his own profit.

This book / series has been on my must read list pretty much since I learned of it's existenceand I knew that one day I'd get the urge to read it and that day finally arrived.  Was it worth the wait? Yes, pretty much but I wasn't as blown away as I'd hoped to be.

Titus Groan is the freshly born heir to the House of Groan, the ruling family of the monolithic castle of Gormenghast and surrounding country.  Gormenghast is a place of ritual where every action is governed by centuries of ritual and heritage that permeates through it's labyrinthine corridors and highly stratified hierachy.   Into this system comes the self serving, psychopathic figure of Steerpike, a kitchen boy with his eye on something more for himself, something better.

It's a richly imagined and intrically plotted novel of Machiavellian intrigue going head to head with the immovable force of entrenched tradition.  It is though very slow,  so slow in fact that I actually jumped when some 200 pages in a character fell over but in it's inexorable advance we get plenty of time to watch the progression of Steerpike's plans and to marvel at his callous, unflinching manipulation of those around him.

It's a book unlike anything else I've read with a bold and frankly astounding vision at it's heart and I wish I liked it more than I did but really I've never been much of a fantasy fan but like it I did and I'm looking forward to book two to see where this long, drawn out introduction to the gothic environs of Gormenghast and it's inhabitants leads.

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The Mutations

Made in 1974 by Cyclone & Getty Pictures Corp and occasional director Jack Cardiff - more famous for his work as a cinematographer for the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston - 'The Mutations' (also known as 'Freakmaker') is the story of a mad scientist by the name of Professor Nolter (Donald Pleasence) who's attempting to create a plant / animal hybrid by feeding rabbits to a tree and by kidnapping and experimenting on his own students.  Helping him in these endeavours is  freak show owner Mr Lynch played, under heavy prosthetics, by Tom Baker in a very familiar looking outfit and who 2 months and 4 days on from the movie's release make his debut as The Doctor.

Truly it's a bit of a mess and really only composer Basil Kirchin who provides an often beautifully dissonant but also groovily jazzy and filmic score and the various cast members populating the freak show come out of the movie with their heads held high.  Pleasence and Baker are both reliable enough and the fabulous Jill Haworth ('The Haunted House of Horror', 'It!' & 'Tower of Evil') is reduced to a little more than a bit part with the leads being given to the woefully wooden Brad Harris and Julie Ege neither of whom have the charisma or the acting chops to carry the film.

Cardiff isn't much of a director and after a promising start the film begins to lag and the monster when it appears is hysterically bad but beyond the creature feature there's a rather lovely little riff on Tod Browning's masterpiece 'Freaks' that's bursting to get out but never quite manages too.

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The Trollenberg Terror (The Crawling Eye)

"Didn't you see? His head! It was torn off!"

Written by legendary Hammer Films screenwriter Jimmy Sangster and released in 1958 'The Trollenberg Terror' (or 'The Crawling Eye' in the US) is the story of an investigation into the deaths linked to an inexplicable, unmoving, radioactive mist on the side of Mount Trollenberg (not actually) in Switzerland.  Doing the investigating is intrepid US troubleshooter Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker), intrepid journalist Philip Truscott (Laurence Payne) and intrepid mind reading sisters Anne (Janet Munro - The Day the Earth Caught Fire) and Sarah Pilgrim (Jennifer Jayne - beloved of us here at Wyrd Britain for being the pseudonymous screenwriter (as Jay Fairbank) of Tales That Witness Madness and Son of Dracula).

What we get here is a good old fashioned alien invasion movie with shades of 'X the Unknown', 'Island of Terror' and 'Night of the Big Heat' and like all good creature features it's a load of B movie tosh littered with cliches, rubbish monsters - in this case a giant eyeball with tentacles - and a heroic, fiery last stand which, of course, is everything one could want in a monster movie.

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