War Games With Caroline

The inaugural series of the long running kids drama show Dramarama revolved around - happily for us here - 'Spooky' stories. We've featured episodes from the series on Wyrd Britain before - see here and here - and this episode, 'War Games With Caroline', was the one that launched the series.

It's 1982 and Kevin (Wayne Norman) is obsessed by war and war games and with a desk full of 'Warlord' comics who is once again in trouble for it and stuck in detention with his sniffly teacher Mr Lilly (Adam Bareham).  Visiting the teacher to prepare for Founder's Day is an old teacher Mrs Rawley (Faith Brook) whilst Kevin gets visited by a student, Caroline (Lucy Durham-Matthews), who insists it's 1944 and who's worried about an imminent German doodlebug attack on the school.

While some of the acting is of the usual drama school type and the story is a little obvious there's much to like here especially thanks to director John Woods who conjours up some nicely spooky vibes through his simple but effective use of a very mobile camera, some unusual camera angles, a fabulously bizarre corridor scene that would have felt very much at home in an episode of Sapphire and Steel and some great use of shadows that make this ghostly timeslip tale well worth a watch.

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Raptor

Dave McKean
Dark Horse Comics

I've always been more inclined towards words than pictures and so chose my comics based primarily on who the writer was but there are a few comic artists whose work I just can't resist, Eddie Campbell is one, Kevin O'Neill and Ted McKeever too and Dave McKean is most definitely another. 

Like many it was his eye-popping cover art to Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics - which incidentally I got to see in the really real at an exhibition and they were astonishing - as well as books like Violent Cases, Signal to Noise and Arkham Asylum - that introduced me to his work.  In the years since his art and his designs have also graced films (including 'Mirrormask' and Harry Potter's 'Dementors'), books (such as John Cale's autobiography 'What's Welsh for Zen' and Iain Sinclair's 'Slow Chocolate Autopsy') and numerous album covers ( by folks like Dream Theater, Front Line Assembly and Alice Cooper).

Raptor is the latest in a line of creator owned works he's produced and is presented in a beautiful large format and sumptuous edition that allows his paintings the space they deserve.  The story is split across two realities featuring 'Sokol', a monster hunter in a fantasy land, and a newly widowed Welsh writer of supernatural stories named 'Arthur'.  

As should be expected from McKean it's stunning to look at and filled with beauty. Storywise I think it could have done with a little more space to develop but as a tale of loss, grief and the corrupting influence power it was certainly intriguing and Mckean makes fine use of the medium blending perspectives and bleeding the two realities into each other as Arthur strives for just one more glimpse of his recently deceased wife in what made for a fascinating read that touched on Machen, A.E. Waite and the Golden Dawn.  

Buy it here - UK / US.

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It! (Curse of the Golem)

What do you get when you cross Hitchcock's Psycho with a Universal Monster movie?  Well, according to star Roddy McDowall (The Ballad of Tam Lin) the answer lies in the 'SH' he added to the film's title when he gifted a copy of the movie poster to his co-star, Jill Haworth.

McDowall plays Arthur Pimm the assistant curator of London Museum who keeps his dead mother in his apartment and steals jewellery from the collection for her to wear.  Following a fire at the museum's warehouse and the death of the curator the sole surviving artifact, a giant stone Golem, which according to the workmen tasked with installing it, is "full of 'ate!" is put on exhibition.  Pimm soon learns how to control the Golem and sends it off to do his nefarious bidding.

Roddy McDowall, Paul Maxwell & Jill Haworth

So the obvious question to be asked has to be was McDowall - and co star Haworth (The Haunted House of Horror, Tower of Evil) who also hated it - correct in his renaming of the movie? Well, kind of.  It's pretty much trash but personally I like it very much.  McDowall is far too likeable to be taken seriously as the villain and the excellent Haworth is inevitably relegated to eye candy but there's a lightness here and an understated acknowledgenment of the absurdity of the subject matter that culminates in the daftest of finales. 

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Stewart Lee on Arthur Machen

Here's a lovely little snippet from The Verb on BBC Radio 3 on 26th May 2017 featuring the official 41st best stand up ever Stewart Lee telling poet /  presenter Ian McMillan about his love of the bard of London's byways and back streets Arthur Machen and reading an extract from 'Far Off Things' one of Machen's volumes of autobiography and discussing one of his (and mine) favourite Machen novels the much maligned 'The Green Round'.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

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