The Last Night at the Star Dome Lounge

M.R. Carey
Absinthe Books

Fain has inherited Ocean View, a boarding house in Hove Harbour from her late mother, who’s still hanging around to offer advice where needed and generally keep an eye on the place – when magic of a different sort starts to rear its head within her home, Fain, her mother and friends old and new must band together to protect Ocean View, and each other.

For the last 20 something years Mike Carey has been a pretty constant presence on my reading pile, from his run on the 'Sandman' spin-off comic 'Lucifer' through the occult detective stories of the 'John Constantine Hellblazer' comic and his own 'Felix Castor' novels to the mushroom zombies of 'The Girl With All The Gifts' and beyond to 'The Books of Koli' he's produced a succession of imaginative wonders that have traversed Heavens, Hells, pasts, futures, elsewheres and other heres.

In this novella for the PS Publishing imprint Absinthe Books Carey takes us to a provincial guest house called Ocean View that's populated by owner Fain, the jar that holds her mother's cremated remains, a closed and sealed off magical night club and an assorted cast of gentle eccentrics and, one night, someone or, perhaps, something, other, that takes up residence and begins offering the residents the fulfillment of their deepest wishes.  We are told little of the world beyond Ocean View but we know it's one where magic holds a place in society and where it's policed aggressively and so the arrival of this new resident brings Fain and her friends into conflict with the authorities.

As a touch point Carey's urban fantasy has echoes of Neil Gaiman's 'Coraline' and 'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' but there's always been a kinship between the two author's work going back to "Lucifer' which the story here is most redolent of both in concept and in execution, the vividly visual nature of the storytelling leaving you with the feeling of having read a comic book more than prose.  Carey has long shown himself to be the consummate world builder and storyteller and proves it again here as with the briefest of strokes in the limited page count open to him he weaves a story of family and of love and creates a world that I'd be happy to revisit again anytime soon.

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Kevin O'Neill

Remembering legendary comic artist Kevin O'Neill on what would have been his 70th birthday with this fascinating two part interview where the artist talks about his long career in both British and American comics.

An early job as an office boy at IPC led to him being one of the original staffers on a new science fiction comic being developed at the company called 2000AD.  For the new comic he drew covers and posters and occasional Future Shocks before he became a regular artist on the Ro-Busters strip working with writer Pat Mills with whom he would have a long and productive association on strips and titles such as Nemesis the Warlock, ABC Warriors, Metalzoic and Marshal Law.

O'Neill's other collaborator of note would be another 2000AD alumni, the grand wizard of comics, Alan Moore with whom he enjoyed a 20 year collaboration on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen having also, in 1986, collaborated on Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual No. 2 for DC Comics which contributed to the downfall of the censorious Comics Code Authority who objected wholesale to O'Neill's entire art style much, I imagine, to his delight.

O'Neill died on 3rd November 2022 leaving a gaping, lurid, flamboyant, spectacular hole in the world of comics having forged a singular path through the industry by producing some of the most memorable work in the field.  For me as a young kid discovering comics in the 1970s and 80s it was always his art that shone through, that unmistakable air of the macabre, the underlying violence, the explosive dynamism, the irresistable humour and, above all, the incomparable character of this quintessential artist and storyteller.

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Quatermass 2

Released by Hammer in 1957, 2 years after both the release of their first Quatermass movie and the showing of the original 6 episode TV series, Quatermass 2 (or II if you're feeling slightly Roman) is perhaps the least regarded of the three Hammer Q movies which I think is a real shame even if I do mostly share that opinion.

Treading similar ground to 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', which was released in the intervening year, we find the Professor and the members of The British Experimental Rocket Group investigating a meteor shower that falls on the isolated location of Winnerden Flats where he finds an industrial complex eerily similar to his own proposed moon base staffed, it soon transpires, by people under the control of little alien blob things that had arrived in cute little rocket shaped meteors and which planned to transform themselves into very large alien blob things.

Compared to the first there's a notably bigger budget on display here and director Val Guest (who had also directed Xperiment) keeps the pace high but allows Kneale space to explore some of his favourite themes of totalitarianism, of indifference and incompetence amongst the British classes and the rejection of rational science characterised by the downtrodden but dogged Professor.

Returning to the role of Quatermass (the only actor to do so) Brian Donlevy plays him as a notably less abrasive character here than he was in Xperiment cowed perhaps by his failure with Victor Carroon but certainly by his dealings with British governmental bureaucracy.  As with his first appearance in the role Donlevy's performance is often clumsy and his delivery less than perfect a result no doubt of his alcoholism but he's supported by a very capable cast of recognisable character actors including Bryan Forbes, William Franklyn and Sid James who was also appearing at that time in his breakthrough TV role in Hancock's Half Hour whose presence lighten the load.

The film concludes with a finale that while undoubtedly spectacular with it's 200ft tall blob monsters is somewhat of a let down after the intrigues of the film and leaves something of a bitter aftertaste that it was just another monster movie but that aside it is a movie with a solid premise, reasonably well executed and with an intriguing message at it's core that perhaps deserves to be better regarded than it is.

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Holy Ghosts: Classic Tales of the Ecclesiastical Uncanny

Fiona Snailman (ed)
British Library Tales of the Weird

Churches, monasteries and convents have long been associated with sanctuary: sacred spaces should offer protection from evil in all its forms. This new anthology raises questions about the protection offered by faith, bringing together a collection of tales in which holy places are filled with horror; where stone effigies come to life and believers are tormented by terrifying apparitions. In a host of uncanny stories published between 1855 and 1935, Holy Ghosts uncovers sacrilegious spectres and the ecclesiastically eerie. 

The British Library continues apace with it's collections of the strange and the supernatural with a collection of stories based around churches and those who inhabit them.  These collections have on the whole been pretty solid and some indeed have been excellent - the Pan and the occult detective collections spring to mind - this one is somewhere in the middle.

Theme wise it seems strange that it's taken them this long to get around to a churchy collection and I'm glad they have as there were a couple of stories in here that I didn't know and enjoyed very much.  Sheridan Le Fanu opens the book strongly with the temptations of 'The Sexton's Adventure' and John Wyndham's rather slight 'The Cathedral Crypt' is good pulpy fun to finish the book.  In the intervening pages both Amelia B. Edwards' 'In The Confessional' and Robert Hichens' 'The Face of the Monk' provide engaging stories of redemption and I'm reminded that I need to further explore Hichens who was the author of one of the great strange tales, 'How Love Came to Professor Guildea'.

While we're on the subject of classics, there's a line in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's 'Good Omens' about how every cassette left long enough in a car will eventually turn into 'Best of Queen' well, I'm making a corresponding prophecy that into every unsuspecting supernatural anthology will eventually appear Edith Nesbit's 'Man-Size in Marble'.  I'm pretty sure the number of copies of this story I have in my collection far exceeds the number of books I have.  It's fabulous and deserves it's reputation but by god it's also ubiquitous and it is, of course, here.

Most of the other stories here are quite readable but perhaps not re-readable such as Edith Wharton's devious but obvious 'The Duchess at Prayer' and Mrs Henry Woods' equally obvious 'The Parson's Oath' but Elizabeth Gaskell's 'The Poor Clare' is far, far too long for it's scanty plot and Marguerite Merington's 'An Evicted Spirit' is sentimental claptrap rescued by an occasional enjoyably pithy phrase.

In summary a solid but stolid collection that I can't help but think would have been enlivened by replacing Gaskell's 70 pages with something a little more maverick like 'The Cicerones' by Robert Aickman or enigmatic like Arthur Machen's 'Opening the Door'.

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Dream Fox and Other Strange Stories

Rosalie Parker
Tartarus Press

The humans who inhabit Dream Fox and Other Strange Stories seem destined to test the limitations of rational existence. Some have accidentally strayed into no-man’s land, such as the narrator of ‘Bipolarity’ who must decide how to learn to live (or not) with her mental illness; or the protagonist of ‘Beguiled’ who may be forced by family attitudes into social obscurity; or, in ‘School Trip’, unpromising June’s unexpected discovery of her own ‘special powers’. Other stories, such as ‘Home Comforts’, are more playful, although the uncanny is never far away.

Over the last few years of Wyrd Britain I've had the pleasure of reading a couple of books by Tartarus Press co-publisher Rosalie Parker and have found them to be a wonder of the strange and the sublime and this most recent collection - the first of hers from the publishing house she so expertly oversees - is no different.

In previous reviews I've made mention of how the essences of Rosalie's literary influences are occasionally apparent in her stories which gave them roots in stories past and which showed the vigour that remains in the work of those authors to inspire new and unique creations of such quality but, with the exception of the two stories originally written for a Zagava homage to L.A. Lewis, her stories here, while still springing from the same soil, feel like they come from a more distinctly individual place.

In stories that are as likely to speak of love as they are of loss and of hope as much as of despair and where the strange or the supernatural is often only suggested we find ourselves beguiled by the tantalising glimpses Rosalie allows us into her worlds.  There is an empathetic delicacy to her writing that infuses these stories of place, of love lost and found and of family in it's many and varied forms with a feminine focus that imparts a sinuous and thoughtful subtlety to the underlying frisson of the strange.  

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Absalom

Spinning off from the 2000AD series Caballistics, Inc - which happily got a 'complete' story reissue recently - Absalom is the story of Inspector Harry Absalom who polices the agreement between the respective ruling powers of Britain and Hell known as 'The Accord' and he's not entirely happy about it.

For Caballistics, Inc. writer and artist Gordon Rennie and Dom Reardon created a recognisably current shared world setting where characters and events we know from core Wyrd Britain texts such as Quatermass and the Pit and the formative eras of Doctor Who were canon. In Absalom, Rennie along with artist Tiernen Trevallio, further developed this world adding some venerable British cops including Harry Trout from the Dr Phibes movies and the tea loving Inspector Calhoun from Death Line to the story world.

The story of Harry and his associates ran between 2011 and 2019 in the comic and has since been reprinted in three collections that tell of the ups and downs of supernatural coppering alongside the slowly building story of Harry's bigger plans; a distinctly personal quest. Harry is an old school 1970s style copper very much in the tradition of Regan and Carter, always ready with a handy quip, a well deserved slap or a pint down the boozer and with the proverbial heart of gold underneath his shabby trench coat.

"He's not so bad, once you get used to him, old Harry.  Actually, that's bollocks. He's a god awful old git most of the time but he'll never let you down."

To keep him on the job he's been given a nasty form of cancer that is held in abeyance as long as he tows the magical line and which he deals with using an ever present hip flask filled with a heady mix of booze and laudanum.  Supporting him are an unlikely crew of coppers, spies, church sponsored vigilantes, vat grown homunculi, occultists, a psychic pavement artist and a partly mechanical - formerly demonically inclined - Victorian valet.

It's beautifully drawn with a gritty dynamism by Trevallio who looks like he's having fun with it but not as much as Rennie who is channelling his inner Gene Hunt filling Harry's mouth with unrepentantly un-pc dialogue while encouraging his characters to punch as many racists, toffs, demons and racist toff demons as he can fit in the pages whilst telling a story of regret, rebellion and redemption.

As I said the Absalom story has been issued as three trade paperback collections - Ghosts of London, Under A False Flag and Terminal Diagnosis – and are hugely recommended (as is Caballistics, Inc) and anyone with a love of the type of movies and TV shows we feature here on Wyrd Britain or of an occult detective romp in the vein of Garth Ennis' run on John Constantine, Hellblazer will find much to love here.

Finally, as a taster to the series 2000AD released a two minute animated prequel to the strip which you can watch below.  It's missing the characterful black and white art from the books and it's more cartoony renderings don't quite have the required level of grit and grime but it makes for a fun watch nonetheless.

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The Road

The Road is one of the lost television plays of Nigel Kneale. Originally filmed in 1963 for the BBC's First Night series no copies are known to exist, thanks to the corporations trigger-happy delete and reuse policies, with only the script to remind us of what was, The Road has long been a Holy Grail for Kneale fandom.  Whilst 'lost' recordings do still appear occasionally from the dim, dark recesses of production and distribution company vaults the chances of ever getting to see these missing shows are slim to say the least so it was with excited trepidation when, in 2018, news was received that a new version was in production with writer and comedian Toby Hadoke given the go-ahead by both the BBC and the Kneale estate to take a run at remodelling the script as a radio drama.  

Making only minor adjustments and assembling a small, strong cast Hadoke and director Charlotte Riches make a solid go of telling the story of a night in the woods in 1768 as amateur scientist Sir Timothy Hassall (Adrian Scarborough) and renowned philosopher Gideon Cobb (Mark Gatiss) along with Hassall's wife Lady Lavinia (Hattie Morahan - the daughter of the original lost play's director, Christopher Morahan), Cobb's educated slave Jethro (Colin McFarlane) and others investigate strange noises amongst the trees.

It's a convincing adaptation of a solid and fairly typical Kneale story that exists in that hinterland between horror and science fiction that he made his own and has similarities with his more famous works, The Stone Tape and Quatermass and the Pit.  As ever Kneale makes good use of his opportunities to comment on the vicissitudes of our times and his pessimistic outlook on the future.  The ending, whilst generally easy to anticipate, hits suitably hard and the whole thing is helped along by some uncovered, archive recordings from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop that had been used in the original play.

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Protect and Survive

Between 1974 and 1981, at the height of the Cold War, the British government engaged in a project of civil defence and readiness in the event of nuclear attack consisting of the production of pamphlets, newspaper adverts, radio broadcasts and public information films (PIFs) under the umbrella title, Protect and Survive.

Originally secret, but in May 1980, following letters and articles in The Times, yhe pamphlet was made available to the general public who could buy a copy from the Post Office for 50p.  The PIFs however were intended only to be broadcast within 72 hours of an imminent attack until they were leaked to both CND and the BBC and featured on an episode of the channel's flagship current affairs show, Panorama.

Richard Taylor Cartoon Films - makers of the 'Charley Says' PIFs - we're commissioned to make the 20 short films for which they employed Patrick Allen - a character actor well known in the UK for his voice-over work - to narrate and Roger Limb of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to provide the music.  Mixing animation with still photographs and looking like the bleakest possible episode of Play School the films include such episodes as...

• What to Do When the Warnings Sound - if outside lie down in a ditch.
• Make Your Fall-out Room and Refuge Now  - hide under a table covered with luggage.
• What to Put in Your Fall-out Room - don't forget string.
• Water and Food - don't forget your tin opener either.
• Sanitation - make sure your poop bucket has a lid.
• Fire Precautions - paint your windows white.
• Life Under Fall-out Conditions - remember to brush any fall-out off your wellies after going outside.
• Casualties - make sure your loved ones are accurately labelled when you bury them in the garden.

The entire Protect and Survive project has, since it became known, been the source of much well deserved rebuttal (E.P. Thompson's Protest and Survive) and ridicule (Raymond Briggs' When the Wind Blows, Threads, The Young Ones episode Bomb). As a cultural artefact it makes for fascinating viewing that'll satisfy every hauntological itch in your body and show just how depressingly close to the mark folks such as Richard Littler, Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz were when they created pastiches like Scarfolk and Look Around You but in real terms it's farcical, reeks of "Keep Calm and Carry On" and would be catastrophically useless in the face of what would be an apocalyptic event.

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The Open Doors

Made in 2004 this short film is very closely based upon 'The Open Window' by arch satirist of the Edwardian era Saki (Hector Hugh Munro). The story was originally published in 1914 in the author's 'Beasts and Super-Beasts' collection and follows that collections theme of human animal interaction with the title change being the only notable difference to the story as written.

Michael Sheen plays the fabulously named Framton Nuttel sent to the country to recover from his nervous exhaustion where, letter of introduction in hand, he calls on Mrs Sappleton, an acquaintance of his sister, played by 1990s coffee peddler and Excalibur's Guinevere, Cherie Lunghi but first meets her niece Vera (Ghosts' Alison, Charlotte Ritchie) who tells him of the loss of her uncle and cousins and the reason for the open French windows.

At only 12 minutes The Open Doors is exactly as long as it needs to be and not a second is wasted. Lunghi is calmly assured in the type of role she was made for, Ritchie, only 15 at the time, is a little drama school in her delivery but carries the story well and Sheen is at his comedic best, bumbling, wide eyed and twitchy, suddenly confronted by a tale of the supernatural and it all comes together in a hugely enjoyable adaptation

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Threads

Since it's first screening on BBC Two on 23 September 1984 Threads has taken on almost mythological status as the show that terrified a nation.  Focusing on young couple Ruth (Karen Meagher) and Jimmy (Reece Dinsdale) as they prepare for marriage in a Sheffield soundtracked by news reports of the escalating conflict between the US and Russia that eventually degenerates into nuclear war.

Sensitively written by Barry Hines (Kestrel for a Knave / Kes) for the most part Threads appears as a kitchen sink drama with the focus very much on the everyday lives of the protagonists as they become increasingly aware of the events spiralling out of control whilst also highlighting the utter ineffectiveness and woeful inadequacies of the British government's preparations.  Director Mick Jackson (Ascent of Man) who displays a subtle sleight of hand during the build up is unflinching in his depiction of the attack and its aftermath starkly showing the lie of a survivable nuclear war and the uselessness of available information such as the 'Protect and Survive' leaflet and film, the latter of which can be heard occasionally playing in the background as people remove the doors from their frames to build utterly ineffective shelters.

Almost 40 years after it's initial screening with tensions between the nuclear superpowers again at boiling point and with the unlikely reappearance of the name Threads in the popular consciousness the lessons of this powerfully unforgettable film, unlearned at the time, seem once again to be depressingly apposite as the film has lost none of it's power to shock.

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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.

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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' Nurse Ratched, 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 of 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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