Here he plays an egomaniacal theatre director at the 'Théâtre de Mort' - a loosely disguised Théâtre du Grand-Guignol - where he is moulding a young actress with a tragic past 'Nicole Chapelle' (Jenny Till) into a star. Untrusting of both his intentions and his bullying manner are the fragile former ballerina 'Dani Gireaux' (Leila Goldoni - 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers') and her damaged police doctor 'Charles Marquis' (Julian Glover in one of his first starring roles and only a year away from becoming 'Colonel Breen') who also happens to be assisting in the investigation of a spate of murders.
Playing with Hammer-esque gothic pretentions along with hypnotism, vampirism and the occult - it even manages to crowbar in some near naked voodoo too - this is a film that never quite manages to fulfil its promises - like the murder victims it's remarkably bloodless - or make the most of the various narrative threads it hints at - everyone is just about damaged enough to be the culprit - but American director Samuel Gallu injects some nice giallo inspired stylistic flourishes and manages to hold everything together keeping us guessing as to the culprit all the way to the reveal and the final result is flawed and a little underwhelming but still an entertaining way to spend 90 minutes.
NB - at the end of the video below there's a short snippet of Christopher Lee talking about the movie.
"Dark matter makes up 85% of the universe. Recent scientific theory suggests dark matter is information—a fifth form of matter—and that we can wake it up. But waking it up can let dark things out.
James Callis is Dr. John Carnack. Five years ago, his dark matter experiments led to tragedy. His redemption is working for the Department of Midnight, investigating dangerous dark matter experiments, trying to prevent further disasters. But there’s a pattern.
I adore audio plays and so one written by one of my favourite authors revolving around the types of themes and settings we champion here on Wyrd Britain is a very good thing indeed. Warren has never been shy of celebrating his influences and the shadows of 'Doomwatch', 'Quatermass' - Nigel Kneale himself the author of numerous wonderful radio plays - and William Hope Hodgson's occult detective Thomas Carnacki loom large here and those with a familiarity with Warren's work will feel the immediate kinship here with the 'Injection' comic series he does - note the present tense, I'm ever the optimist - with Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire that plays with classic British heroic archetypes and folkloric themes.
The cast are perfectly suited, James Callis (Battlestar Galactica) has that perfectly detached post traumatic British persona that mixes duty and weariness with a barely suppressed mania and Alicia Witt (Dune) - obviously I'm only talking about episode one here - is deliciously bonkers entirely inhabiting the role of being entirely inhabitated.
It's a really strong and intriguing introduction to this world, and I'm very excited to see where they take this.
Episode One: The Cold Spot Dr. John Carnack is an investigator for the Department Of Experimental Oversight. Responding to a whistleblower call, he arrives at a lab to discover Dr. Sylvie Bestler’s personal experiment: to see what’s on the other side of the universe. Starring James Callis and Alicia Witt.
Episode Two: Jack in the Box John Carnack’s old friend is being kept in a plastic cell. There’s a contamination issue. He tripped over something when he discovered his employer’s body. But Carnack is concerned that something darker is going on…Starring James Callis and Gildart Jackson.
Episode Three: Song to the Siren On the death of Carnack’s mentor, her daughter asks him to examine the death scene. They find out too late that she died of very unnatural causes. Starring James Callis and Adrianne Palicki.
Episode Four: The Red House The university bought a derelict house out in the middle of nowhere for this experiment. When Carnack arrives to shut them down, everyone thinks he’s crazy, but he knows what the Red House really is. Starring James Callis and Nolan North.
Episode Five: The Devil Runs Out A routine examination of a dark matter lab turns into a race against time, as Carnack is forced to pursue a face from his past intent on human sacrifice. Starring James Callis and Brett Dalton.
Episode Six: Judgement In the season one finale, John Carnack faces the board of the Department of Experimental Oversight, interrogated by a prosecutor. Now he must be held accountable for his actions. And for the sins of his own past. Starring James Callis and Carla Gugino.
All six episodes are included in the playlist below.
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First shown on October 15th 2003 this episode of Timeshift explores (some of) the work of legendary screenwriter Nigel Kneale.
There're some serious omissions - 'Beasts', 'Murrain' - that need to be discussed in a future more comprehensive exploration of his work but with contributions from fans like Mark Gatiss, Jeremy Dyson, Kim Newman along with some great archive footage of Kneale and his wife, the writer and illustrator, Judith Kerr, it's an easy and affectionate tribute to one of the people who defined what we think of as Wyrd Britain.
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Taken from the BBC Four Timeshift documentary series and narrated by Richard Ayoade with contributions from, the perhaps inevitable, Stuart Maconie, author Kim Newman, critic Roz Kaveney and various others this is a playful look at the phenomenon of the parallel world.
Originally screened in 2007 it is somewhat dated by many of it's reference points with the likes of 'Sliders' - which even at that point was 7 years forgotten by most folks - getting far more mentions than necesssary, as well as 'Buffy', 'Red Dwarf' and 'Futurama'. It's essentialy a piece of fluff but some interesting points are made and in our current MCU dominated world it's interesting to see how many of the identified tropes have proven to be so resilient.
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Adapted by director Richard Curson Smith from J.G. Ballard's short story 'The Enormous Space', Anthony Sher stars as 'Gerald Ballantyne' who decides to cut himself off from the outside world and live off the contents of his house.
We follow Gerald through his slow transformation / degredation via his video diary and in the more traditional manner as he destroys many of the trappings of his former life, navigates hunger and as the house expands and reveals it's hidden dimensions to him.
"Are you on drugs, Gerald?"
Obviously Ballard has a fondness for using buildings as microcosms - as in High-Rise - and there is an obvious ecological metaphor here as Gerald voraciously consumes the limited resources of his 'world'. Essentially a one man play - peppered with occasional visits from the outside - Sher is fantastic as the deteriorating Gerald, pragmatic in the face of hunger, fearful of intrusions from the terrifying outside world and astonished by the revelations being presented to him. It's a performance that elevates what is already a bold and artful creation made with love on an obviously limited budget that Curson Smith has simply to great effect allowing us to share, at both first and second hand, Gerald's experiences.
NB - I'm not much for trigger warnings but cat and worm lovers beware.
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Thank you to everyone who has supported Wyrd Britain over the last decade.
With 845 posts and over 2 million views on the blog and countless posts on social media it's been a busy 10 years.
Thank for reading, thank you for donating, thank you for buying from the shop and from the label, and thank you for being part of a vibrant, positive and supportive community both here and over on the Facebook and Instagram pages.
Loosely based around H.P. Lovecraft's 'The Colour Out Of Space', 'Die, Monster, Die!' finds American 'Stephen Reinhart' (Nick Adams - 'Rebel Without a Cause', 'Invasion of Astro-Monster') called to the home of his fiance, 'Susan' (Suzan Farmer - 'Dracula: Prince of Darkness'), in the village of Arkham, where, shunned by all the villagers, yokels and doctors alike, her father 'Nahum' (Boris Karloff) is conducting experiments using a meteor that has landed in the grounds. Unortunately Nahum's experiments are having catastrophic effects mutating plants, animals and, inevitably, people.
The film is a bit of a mish mash of Hammer horror gothic pretentions - the faded grandeur of Hammer's own Oakley Court, mist wreathed graveyards and skeletons hanging from chains in cobwebby cellars - with Lovecraftian science fiction but Karloff is a reliable figure around which the story revolves, his deluded experiments as he attempts to revive the family's fortunes and banish memories of his diabolic father providing a sympathetic - if underdeveloped - core but Adams' brash personality - and ill fitting clothes - make him an unlikable lead, especially when cold-cocking Susan's mutated mother (Freda Jackson - 'The Brides of Dracula') with a candelabra.
It is however a fairly pacey romp that never really takes a breath and is often quite pretty to look at and, provided you don't think too hard about the plot, makes for a fun, and all too rare, Lovecraft adaptation.
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'Dark and sinister forces invade an archaeologist's home as he investigates a mythic folklore about an ancient oak tree on his land.'
Starring Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark and directed by Daniel Kokotajlo, Hurley's folkloric rural horror looks to be in good hands with the trailer offering an intense experience that bodes well for the finished film.
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It's been a while since we heard from our friend Grey Malkin (formerly known as 'The Hare And The Moon') here on Wyrd Britain but this new EP made in collaboration with 'Fogroom' provides the perfect opportunity to reacquaint your ears with his music.
Shoreline Ritual comes with the enigmatic note that it...
might be a narrative.
A cautious exchange.
A bridge between here and there.
It could be about strange occurrences along the coast,
or old dreams, loss and the sea.
It feels fragile, nebulous, adrift and elegant. It's a spell cast into the wind, a message carried by the waves and it's mesmerising.
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Recently used as the theme to the cavalcade of shallow excess that is the Met Gala this promotional chapbook (heralding a new series of reissues) of Ballard's short story - originally written in 1962 - of the death of beauty amidst the inexorable advance of the masses and their crass consumerist ways was a delightful read.
The story of a husband and wife holding back the inevitable by plucking the flowers of time from their garden in a knowingly futile attempt to delay the advancing hordes. These immaculate but anachronistic lovers, with their elaborate clothes, beautiful music, and perfectly curated collections, fearful of change and trapped in the amber of an unchanging, untainted, romanticised past, are eventually swamped by the advance as time marches ever on, trampling all before it except, perhaps, love.
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Amicus' 1977 direct sequel to 1974s 'The Land That Time Forgot' returned us to Edgar Rice Burroughs' dinosaur riddled antarctic island, 'Caprona' where Doug McClure's 'Bowen Tyler' had been stranded at the end of the previous movie. Last seen trudging over snowy mountain peaks in the company of Susan Penhaligon's 'Lisa Clayton' to throw the message in a bottle into the sea that has spurred his chldhood friend 'Ben McBride' (Patrick - son of John - Wayne) to mount a rescue mission. Accompaying him into the unknown are photographer 'Lady Charlotte 'Charly' Cunningham' (Sarah Douglas - 'Ursa' in the first 2 'Superman' movies), paleontologist 'Norfolk' (Thorley Walters), his mechanic 'Hogan' (Shane Rimmer) and, along the way, a cave-woman named 'Ajor' played by singer Dana Gillespie.
Directed, as was 'The Land..', by Kevin Connor - who also sent McClure to both Atlantis and 'The Earth's Core' - this one is every bit as flawed and fun as it's predecessor. The story is flaccid, the dinosaur effects are risible and the cast are poor (except McClure - I won't have a word said against McClure) with Wayne being boorish and bullying and an unlikeable lead, Douglas overplaying her role, Walters and Rimmer acting as comic relief and Gillespie providing the cleavage.
Written by future 'Amtrak Wars' author Patrick Tilley it's a pretty by the numbers adaptation that was the last gasp of the Amicus studio but when I was a kid Doug McClure was my absolute favourite and to this day his three Amicus monster movies rank amongst my favourites although I'll admit this one is solidly in third place.
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Stephen Ellcock Thames & HudsonA darkly evocative compendium of images exploring natural, constructed, imaginary, and subconscious underworlds, curated by renowned image collector and social media figure Stephen Ellcock. Underworlds takes readers on a captivating visual odyssey to the underbelly of everything, beginning with depictions of life and natural systems existing beneath the surface of the Earth and ending with imagery that emanates from the depths of our subconscious. Work by world-renowned artists―from Peter Paul Rubens and René Magritte to contemporary artists such as Kara Walker and Roger Ballen―is featured alongside recently unearthed images from archives around the world.
Split across five chapters - 'Beneath the Surface', Human Habitation and Exploration', Underwter Worlds', 'Imagined Underground Worlds' and 'Subliminal Realms' - this beautiful book explores humanities obsession with what lies below. Exploring burial chambers and mines, caverns and Charon, Hells, hallucinations, hollow Earth and hermits Ellcock takes us on a fascinating visual journey of everything underneath.
My own interests lean towards the fictional so those chapters on caves, crypts, sewers, quarries and the like were of less interest than those exploring our imaginative relationships but throughout Ellcock has chosen images that present a sumptuous feast of art and photography that encapsulates the creative interplay between the real and the imagined in our eternal need to explore the unknown and the hidden, and our obsessive search beneath and beyond.
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I've never really properly dug into Dunsany's writing before beyond an anthology short or two but this collection called to me (despite it's hideous cover art) and proved to be something entirely wonderful.
The title sums up the book concisely and almost perfectly except it could potentially have utilised the word 'Tiny' as most of these tales are very short indeed - between half a page and three pages each. Most are written as a morality fable of sorts, often with an environmental theme, and read as a block they get to feel a little preachy but spaced out, a couple at a time, they proved to be miniature imaginative marvels with some absolute gems amongst them like, 'The Tomb of Pan' and 'The Prayer of the Flowers' that made for a perfect introduction to the worlds of Dunsany's imagnation.
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The play makes some slight framing differences to the orignal, having an elderly Wells tell the story as true, as well as including the story's excised ending but it's generally a faithful and well construced adaptation that offers a welcome return to a classic.
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This documentary was made by comedian Stewart Lee after far-right fundamentalist Christian groups whipped up a frenzy of protests about 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' that he co-wrote and produced organising protests at theatres, against the BBC showing and against Maggie's Centres, a cancer charity providing palliative care, to which the production had made a donation. Lee's documentary takes these protests as his starting point to present a fascinating and funny investigation into religious intolerance and its impact on the arts via interviews with folks like Alan Moore and Polly Toynbee.
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Standing stones, stone circles, tumps, barrows and ancient clearings still remain across the British Isles, and though their specific significance may be obscured by the passing of time, their strange allure and mysterious energy persist in our collective consciousness. Assembled here in tribute to these relics of a lost age are accounts of terrifying spirits haunting Stonehenge itself, stories of awful fates for those who impose modernity on the sacred sites and grim tales in which unwitting trespassers into the eternal rites of pagan worship find themselves part of an enduring legacy of blood. To represent the breadth of the sub-genre, authors include Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood and Rosalie Muspratt alongside lesser-known writers from the periodicals and journals of the British Library collections.
It's been a little while since I dug into one of the Tales of the Weird series but this one had the perfect subject matter to lure me back.
The book opens oddly with an extract from the wonderful 'Ringstones' by Sarban, the pen name of British diplomat John W. Wall, a story I thoroughly enjoyed when I read it in the Tartarus Press edition a few years back and it doesn't deserve to be experienced in this diminished manner.
Through the rest of the book we are provided with the usual array of authors of note - Algernon Blackwood, E.F. Benson, Arthur Machen, H.R. Wakefield and Nigel Kneale - and those who are unfamiliar. There are a number of standouts. The quintet metioned are all well represented with Wakefield's 'The First Sheaf' being a long time pulpy fun favourite. Whilst, of those lesser known, Frederick Cowles' 'Lisheen' proved to be a devilish read and Mary Williams' 'The Dark Land' was a poignant tale of the power of the land.
For the most part this is a solid read and lovers of a stone circle or a standing stone will find much to enjoy here and the collection has a number of highlights but it's odd beginning, a stuttering ending and some thematic repetition between the stories means I'm left with a slight feeling of incompleteness and I'd love to see the series revisit the topic in a more definitively wide ranging fashion.
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Made in 1987 a long time after the studio's heyday this is an affectionate look at the golden years of Hammer Film Productions - the later TV work is ignored.
Featuring some of Hammer's greats alongside the behind the scenes folks who made them so and lots of rare footage of them all working at Bray studios it makes for an engagingly nostalgic watch.
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Made and released in conjunction with the Peter Cushing movie 'Island of Terror', 'The Projected Man' has scientist Dr Paul Steiner (Bryant Haliday - 'Devil Doll' 'Tower of Evil') over-reacting to his funding being pulled by testing his teleportation device on himself and getting all burned and murdery with his new electric hand of electro death.
Taking it's queues from such sci-fi classics classics as 'The Fly' and 'The Quatermass Xperiment' this is a fantastic flop of a film. Haliday's gruesome make up and some entertainingly cringy dialogue aside there's little to recommend here with its cliche riven script, it's wooden cast and dreadful climax it's a bad movie but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The prosperous town of Lud-in-the-Mist is situated at the confluence of the rivers Dapple and Dawl on the edge of Faerie. The staid little town, proud of it's rational, traditional and mercantile nature and fearful of the influence of it's neighbour, is beset by an influx of 'Faerie Fruit' and it's up the the mayor, Nathaniel Chanticleer, to investigate, an investiation that is to profoundly change the town.
This BBC Radio version of Hope Mirrlees' fabulous novel was adapted by Joy Wilkinson (who, for television, has provided scripts for 'Doctor Who', 'The Watch' & 'Lockwood & Co') and is narrated by Olivia Poulet with an appearence by Mirrlees superfan Neil Gaiman whose own 'Stardust' owes an obvious debt to Mirrlees' creation. It's a bold attempt at adapting the novel but not an entirely successful one. It's too short and much has been omitted that both colours the world and drives the plot so it's missing some of the magic of the novel but it's an interesting attempt. I love the original novel so this would have needed to have been perfect to convince me but it's an enjoyable enough attempt.
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Established at the same time as the nascent punk movement in the UK, 2000AD tapped into the same anti-authoritan zeitgeist. It was big, bold, bloody, beautiful and bonkers and for the best part of five decades this weekly anthology comic (and it's various spin offs) has been providing us with work from some of the worlds top comic creators. The role call of contributors is mind blowing, Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill, John Wagner, Pat Mills, Alan Grant, Brian Bolland, Bryan Talbot, Simon Bisley, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Dan Abnett, Grant Morrison, Mike McMahon, Dave Gibbons and so many more. All of these guys - and it was almost exclusively guys, women creators have always been horrendously under-represented in comics generally and 2000AD in particular - would go on to define how comics looked and what they said from the late 20th century on.
Between them they gave life to hordes of classic characters, future teen Halo Jones, dystopian cop Judge Dredd, alien freedom fighter Nemesis, mutant bounty hunter Strontium Dog, Celtic warrior Slaine, genetic soldier Rogue Trooper, alien teenage delinquents DR & Quinch, pop culture superhero Zenith, the list goes on.
It also provided us with the single greatest panel in comics...
two Dredd films of varying quality (we heartily recommend the Karl Urban one) and an upcoming Rogue Trooper one.
Over the years I've been an occasional reader of the weekly comic but am an avid reader of the graphic novels. Many of the classic 2000AD stories have been collected together in phone book (anyone remember phone books?) sized collections and the publisher - Rebellion - continues to issue nicely produced collections of more recent stories.
This documentary was released in 2014 and features contributions from many of those mentioned above, some of whom are sadly no longer with us, as well as fans such as Geoff Barrow, Alex Garland, Scott Ian and Karl Urban, and is a fascinating and informative watch that tells much of the creation of a great British cultural institution.
(In the interest of clarity, a version of this post has appeared here before celebrating the 40th anniversary of the comic, but I wanted to update it to include this excellent documentary.)
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Published 8 years after it's predecessor, 'The Dark is Rising', returned Susan Cooper to her Arthurian world but relocated the action from Cornwall to the Thames Valley.
The story of Will Stanton, last of 'The Old Ones', is another episodic quest as the newly minted magician comes into his power by locating lost artifacts. What elevates this beyond that first book however is Cooper's commitment to developing a coherent, mythic storyworld that is interwoven with icons of folkloric Britain, something she would continue to elaborate on across the rest of the series.
This excellent adaptation was made for Radio 4 in 1997 and unfortunately was the last one they made which was a real shame as it's from the next book, 'Greenwitch', that entwines the characters from the first two books that the series truly shines but don't let that stop you listening as this is fabulous.
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Susan Cooper published 'Over Sea and Under Stone', the first in what would become known as 'The Dark is Rising Sequence' through Jonathan Cape in 1965. It's the story of the Drew children, Simon, Jane and Barney, visiting with their great uncle Merriman Lyon in the (fictional) Conish town of Trewissick where, following their discovery of an old map, they become involved in a hunt for the Holy Grail.
I first read Cooper's series as an adult and shorn of the wonder of a child I've long been of the opinion that this first book is definitely the weakest of the five, far too firmly entrenched in the Enid Blyton tradition of children's books whereas the others increasingly embrace a more complex Alan Garner-esque mythic storyworld and are all the better for it. This adaptation made for Radio 4 and broadcast in 1995 is the first time I've revisited it since and I enjoyed it far more in this format. An entirely sympathetic dramatisation with a strong cast it works well in this format with the tension kept at a peak as the three kids race around the village.
Unfortunately only the first two books of the sequence were dramatised (I'll return to the second soon) which is a real shame as the others - particularly books 3, 4 & 5 - really are quite wonderful and I'd have loved to hear what they would have done with them.
Algernon Blackwood's 'Ancient Sorceries' was first published in 'John Silence' the 1908 collection of five stories featuring Blackwood's titular occult detective. The story revolves around the tale of meek and mousey Arthur Vezin who after impetuously disembarking from a train somewhere in France finds himself curiously disinclined to leave the sleepy little village of surreptitiously watchful people. With Silence sidelined for the majority of the story we get is a fabulous, slowly unfolding story of a man entangled in history.
This adaptation was made for the BBC in 2005 and is, for the most part, beautifully read by Philip Madoc although his French accent has a distinct whiff of 'Allo 'Allo about it.
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Although published in 1952 it was the Hitchcock movie adaptation eleven years later that thrust Daphne du Maurier's short story of a world held hostage by angry avians, 'The Birds', firmly into the wider public consciousness and gave every sighting of a flock a degree of menace.
Unlike the movie du Maurier's original story revolves around the family of a disabled farm labourer, recently returned from the war, and struggling to find work in Cornwall and this adaptation by Melissa Murray for Radio 4 , featuring Neil Dudgeon ('Midsomer Murders') and Nicola Walker ('The Last Train'), keeps that premise whilst making some judicious changes to the narrative, both narrowing it's focus and widening it's scope, but retaining the essential character of the original in a bleakly claustrophobic story.
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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John Bolton is a British artist known for his work, predominantly in the horror field, for British comics like 'Look In', 'House of Hammer' & 'Warrior', US comic publishers such as Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, card games publishers Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf, his paintings of vampiric ladies and, perhaps most crucially to Wyrd Britain readers, for his drawings of the ghouls in the graveyard in the movie 'The Monster Club'
The film is presented as a roughly cut documentary, fronted by Marcus Brigstocke, focussed on the first gallery exhibition of Bolton's vampire paintings. Bolton - who appears in the film as an interviewee at the exhibition launch - is played by actor John O'Mahoney, and is shown as socially awkward and reticent of both the gallery show and the film eventually relenting to allowing Brigstock access to his studio located in the crypt of an old church at the centre of a suitably gothic graveyard.
Developed from his own fictionalised biography ('Drawn in Darkness') this mockumentary written and directed by Neil Gaiman - who's worked with Bolton several times on stories such as 'The Books of Magic' & 'Halequin Valentine' - is, in his words, "an investigation into where artists get their ideas from". Gaiman's status as a novice film-maker works to his advantage here and the occasional clumsiness plays to both the mockumentary form and the 'unfinished' nature of the documentary and the end result is a fun, tongue in cheek tribute to Bolton and his influences that owes a debt to H.P. Lovecraft’s 'Pickman’s Model'.
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Graphic designer and musician David King met future Crass drummer Penny Rimbaud and artist Gee Vaucher at college in the 1960 and later moved into the Dial House commune with them and many of the other Crass members. Once there he designed, what became, the bands iconic logo that has adorned a milliion bus shelters and underpasses, a design that mixed a cross, the ouroboros, the Union flag, and a swastika.
Whilst this short film predominantly focuses on King and his logo it would be as remiss of me as it was of the film makers not to highlight the importance of the work of Gee Vaucher, the visual artist to the Crass music. Vaucher's designs for the group were every bit as essential to the experience as the words and the music. As profound as they were provocative and as insightful as they were incisive her artwork was the perfect visual catalyst to the musical storm. They provided a visual element that enhanced and deepened the listening experience and I cannot even begin to quantify the amount of time I have spent lost in her work.
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Newly weds Michael (Jonathan Cake) and Phyllis Watson (Saira Todd) have, via his job for the English Broadcasting Company (EBC), intermittent front row seats at the beginning, middle and end of the end of human civilisation as they know it as they pursue the apocalyptic theories of the vilified scientist Dr. Alistair Bocker (Russell Dixon) with regard to the arrival and intent of the extraterrestrial visitors who have taken up residence at the bottom of the ocean.
This BBC Radio 4 adaptation of John Wyndham's alien invasion / monsters from the deep / ecological disaster classic was made in 1998 but sounds far, far older which is testament to the care of the creators but does give it quite a dated feel. It is though a solid performance of what I personally think to be a prescient but fairly stodgy book as Wyndham weaves a slowly unfolding story of goverment misinformation and misdirection and the general public's inability to react appropriately in the face of an obvious threat. Some narrative corners are cut, not entirely successfully, particularly in the middle when Michael 'goes on holiday', but they tell the story concisely, conclusively and enjoyably if perhaps just a touch too reverentially.
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