Poor Girl

Adapted from the short story by Elizabeth Taylor (the author not the actor) by Robin Chapman, who also transposed M.R. James' 'Lost Hearts' for the BBC, 'Poor Girl' is the story of Florence Chastity (Lynne Miller) hired as governess to the odd and precocious Hilary Wilson (Matthew Pollock) who finds herself beset by visions of lipstick marks, necklaces and a young couple in incongruous clothing whilst trapped in an unloving and strange haunted manor house.

The second and final episode of ITVs 'Haunted' thread, following 'The Ferryman' starring Jeremy Brett, was shown on December 30th 1974 and unlike Brett's episode opts for a period - late Victorian / early Edwardian - setting in keeping with the ghostly tradition of the BBC's more established annual spooky Christmas fare that it was shown in oppostion to.

There are distinct shades of Henry James' 'Turn of the Screw' / 'The Innocents' here as the reserve and the resolve of the adults begins to crumble and the libidinous pull starts to take hold but Taylor's story has an altogether different aim as the spectres of two different types of masculinity fight for dominance within the house, of the vainglorious, lascivious father or of the gentler, loving son and the man he'll grow to be.  It's all a little slow and tentative but with a strong performance by Pollock as the odd and old beyond his years child and it's slowly unfolding narrative it makes for a gently satisfying watch.

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MOVIE NEWS: The Quatermass Xperiment Ltd Collector's Edition

Nigel Kneale's magnificent science fiction classic 'The Quatermass Xperiment' is available for the first time in 4K UHD and Blu-ray on June 9th with pre-orders from 25th April from Hammer Films.

According to the website (and subject to possible change) the release includes...

• Five discs, including two UHD and three Blu-ray, with the Hammer content duplicated across both formats. English, French, Italian, Spanish, German subtitles on all versions of the film.
• The existing episodes from the original BBC television series. 
• Three iterations of The Quatermass Xperiment: the widescreen 1.66:1 UK Theatrical Version, the fullscreen 1.37:1 As-Filmed Version and the widescreen 1.85:1 US Theatrical Version re-titled The Creeping Unknown.
• A rigid inner box featuring new artwork by cult favourite artist Graham Humphreys. 
• A double sided poster of original one-sheets
• Eight act cards featuring facsimiles of the original UK cinema lobby cards.
• 180 page booklet featuring new and reprint articles and reproductions of original publicity. 
• 56-page comic featuring a reprint of the comic strip from legendary 1970s magazine The House of Hammer.

The discs feature:

• New commentary with actor and comedian Toby Hadoke, Nigel Kneale’s biographer Andy Murray and Wayne Kinsey, writer of numerous books on Hammer. Stephen R. Bissette, artist and film historian, filmmaker and Hammer expert Constantine Nasr and writer/producer Dr Steve Haberman plus archive 2003 commentary with director Val Guest and Hammer expert Marcus Hearn.
• The Legend of Nigel Kneale: The Creeping Unknown. Who was Nigel Kneale? Toby Hadoke investigates the man and his influence in part one of a brand-new two-part documentary.
• Unstoppable: Unleashing The Quatermass Xperiment. A close look at the making of The Quatermass Xperiment, with contributions from Jon Dear, Stephen Gallagher, Toby Hadoke, Wayne Kinsey, Andy Murray and Stephen Volk.
• Patient Zero. Award-winning actor and writer James Swanton, who played Carroon in the live, 70th anniversary production of The Quatermass Experiment, examines the life and career of Richard Wordsworth.
• Monstrous! Stephen R. Bissette talks briefly about Phil Leakey and the make-up effects used in the film, for a section trimmed from the audio commentary.
• The Eric Winstone Bandshow. A musical short from Hammer that played alongside The Quatermass Xperiment at the August 1955 UK premiere.
• The Kneale Tapes. A 2003 BBC documentary that explores the career of Nigel Kneale, arguably one of the most significant writers of the post-war generation.
• Cartier and Kneale in Conversation. From the 2005 BBC DVD. Writer Nigel Kneale and producer Rudolph Cartier reminisce about their work on the seminal Quatermass series.
• Making Demons. From the 2005 BBC DVD. An interview with Jack Kine and Bernard Wilkie, visual effects pioneers at the BBC.
• Val Guest 2000 interview from the Festival of Fantastic Films archive.
• Val Guest 2003 interview from original UK DVD release of The Quatermass Xperiment.
• Exhuming The Quatermass Xperiment. A look behind-the-scenes at how the new 4K restoration of The Quatermass Xperiment was made.
• Original trailers, foreign titles, Super 8 cut-down versions and the original BBFC censor cards for both The Quatermass Xperiment and The Eric Winstone Bandshow.
• Extensive image gallery of stills and publicity material, alongside tracks from James Bernard’s score.
• Quatermass and the Pit Omnibus Titles. From the 2005 BBC DVD. The bespoke titles used for the omnibus repeat edition of the third Quatermass TV series.
• TV Series Photo Gallery. From the 2005 BBC DVD. Rare photos of the original BBC productions.

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Happy Birthday Spike.

Happy birthday to Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan, comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor.

Spike was born in Ahilya Nagar, India on April 16, 1918 and died at his home on the remarkably named Dumb Woman's Lane in Rye, Sussex on February 27, 2002.
He'd told us he was ill.

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Onos.
We have cracked the midnight glass
And loosed the racketing star-crazed night into the room.
The blind harp sings in the late fire-light
Your hand is decked with white promises.
What wine is this?
There are squirrels chasing in my glass,
Good God! I'm pissed!

(From 'Small Dreams of a Scorpion')

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BOOK NEWS: Two new wyrd releases from the British Library.

April brings two new releases of interest to us here at Wyrd Britain from The British Library. 

The first is the latest addition to their 'Tales of the Weird' imprint with the cosmic horror of, 'Medusa: a Novel of Mystery, Ecstasy and Strange Horror' by E.H. Visiak.  First published in 1929 it's the story of a mariner’s search for his missing son, a search that soon finds his ship in very strange waters. 

Visiak (Edward Harold Physick) was a critic, poet and author, an authority on John Milton and a friend and champion of David Lindsay, writing the introductory note for that author's metaphysical science fiction masterpiece, 'A Voyage to Arcturus'. 

Also publishing this month is the latest of their hardback 'Gilded Nightmares' imprint, 'The Dead of Summer: Strange Tales of May Eve and Midsummer', edited by Johnny Mains who's previously edited the 'Celtic Weird' book for the same series.  Here he guides us through a selection of stories that reveal the wyrder side of the sunnier parts of the ritual year with stories from the likes of E. F. Benson, Joan Aiken and a host of others.

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Pan: The Great God's Modern Return

Paul Robichaud
Reaktion Books

Part-goat, part-man, Pan bridges the divide between the human and animal worlds. In exquisite prose, Paul Robichaud explores how Pan has been imagined in mythology, art, literature, music, spirituality, and popular culture through the centuries. At times, Pan is a dangerous, destabilizing force; at others, a source of fertility and renewal. His portrayals reveal shifting anxieties about our own animal impulses and our relationship to nature. Always the outsider, he has been the god of choice for gay writers, occult practitioners, and New Age mystics. Though ancient sources announced his death, he has lived on through the work of Arthur Machen, Gustav Mahler, Kenneth Grahame, D. H. Lawrence and countless others. Pan: The Great God’s Modern Return traces his intoxicating dance.

I've long had a quiet obsession with all things Pan, fed, over the years, by occasionally stumbling over another Pan based story or fleeting reference hidden in the pages of a supernatural anthology.  Of late though I've been spoiled by a couple of exemplary books focussed on the goat-footed God, Michael Wheatley's excellent collection for the British Library's Tales of the Weird imprint, 'The Horned God: Weird Tales of the Great God Pan' and now this fascinating study of the history and the many reinventions of Pan in art, literature, music and magic.

It's hugely recommended for anyone with even a passing interest and while I have to admit to skimming through a couple of parts that I wasn't particularly interested in - the section on Depth Psychology for instance - I poured over others filling several pages in my notebook with new treasures to seek out.  

Here, Robichaud explores Pan's origins and development, his place in history, and, of most interest to me, his roles in the literary works of Lord Dunsany, D.H. Lawrence, Kenneth Grahame, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Arthur Machen, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, and many others.  Robichaud has produced a wonderfully readable overview of the many masks worn by this most mutable of gods as his very nature has been reinterpreted to suit various ends, be he devil or benefactor,  avenging nature spirit or welcoming protector of the wild, coded expression of hidden sexualities or lusty old nymph chaser careening across the Arcadian landscape.  

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BOOK NEWS: Two Lost tales by Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker

Over the last few years Withnail Books of Penrith have released a mouth watering selection of limited edition chapbooks, several  of which I've been lucky enough to get copies of, including, 'The Slave Race', Philip K Dick's first published SF story and F. Scott Fitzgerald's story of a Lovecraftian witch cult, "Gods of Darkness'.

This weekend they announced their latest publications, two lost tales by Mary Shelley, 'The Ghost of the Private Theatricals' and Bram Stoker, 'Gibbet Hill'.  

Limited to just 250 sets, more information and ordering details can be found here. 

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BOOK NEWS: Tartarus Press to publish Charlotte Brontë's 'Book Of Ryhmes'.

In 2022 a tiny little 15 page book of 10 poems written in 1829 by a 13 year old Charlotte Brontë went on display at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire.  The book returned to its former home after being purchased from a New York bookseller, for £973,000, by the charity Friends of the Nation's Libraries.

Now, on 21st April 2025, "A Book Of Ryhmes By Charlotte Bronte, Sold By Nobody, And Printed By Herself', is finally being sold and printed by somebody else.  Tartarus Press have taken on the task of reproducing Bronte's book in both hardback and jacketed paperback editions for which pre-orders are now open here.  Both editions feature reproductions of the original pages presented alongside transcriptions of the poems and include an Introduction by singer, poet and book collector Patti Smith as well as essays by rare books specialist Barbara Heritage and author and antiquarian bookseller Henry Wessells.

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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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