The Damned

Released in the US as 'These Are The Damned' this is one of Hammer's rare forays into science fiction.  Most widely known for their horrors (50 of the studios 158 movies were in that genre) the studio occasionally veered sideways into sci fi often with very memorable results.  This darkly disturbing tale tells three sets of stories that weave in and out of each other before coming to a brutal and harrowing conclusion.

US tourist Simon (Macdonald Carey) is mugged in a Weymouth back street by a gang of leather clad "teddy boys" led by a very mod looking King (Oliver Reed) before running off on his boat with King's sister Joan (Shirley Anne Field) with the gang hot on their heels.  Meanwhile sculptor Freya Neilson (Viveca Lindfors) has moved into the cliff top home of beauraucrat Bernard (Alexander Knox) who works in the nearby facility and who seems to exert a level of power over various high ranking military officers.  And, locked in a bunker deep in the cliffs are a group of nine very polite but increasingly rebellious and ice cold eleven year old children who Bernard communicates with via closed-circuit TV.

Director Joseph Losey had been - and would be again - a director of art house movies who had studied under Bertolt Brecht and who would go on to create a close working relationship with Harold Pinter, and this background in non-mainstream film-making is on display here.  The film is an unlikely mix of teenage rebellion, cold war paranoia and European art-house that make for strange bedfellows.  Very few of the characters have any redeeming features whatsoever and nobody comes out of it well, Bernard because of his utter dedication to his beliefs and his cold detachment towards the cruelty he's inflicting, King's violent nihilism and his incestuous protectiveness towards Joan which has driven her into the arms of the much older, chauvinistic, father figure in the form of Simon simply because he had been nice to her by offering his arm at a crossing and Freya, possibly the only truly moral person here and doomed because of it.

There is, of course, an inherent question within the statement of the title as we have to ask just who are 'the damned' and in a movie that is populated with children, with rebellious "teens" (Reed was 25 at the time) and establishment figures, with artists and intellectuals and with the bourgeoisie and the proletariat coming to an inevitable collision there can surely only be one answer.

Buy it here - The Damned - or watch it below.



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Murder Mysteries

Neil Gaiman
P. Craig Russell
Dark Horse

A lonely man in Los Angeles is told a unique tale - a passion play that sheds light on the events before the creation of the world! Constructing the Universe is a vast task - and up in Heaven, God has allocated roles to all of his angels, even if the roles of some are more ineffable than others. But when a murder takes place - the first murder - an archangel is assigned to investigate...Teaming a story created by comics legend Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Miracleman, Harlequin Valentine) with an adaptation by acclaimed, multi-award winning artist P. Craig Russell (The Sandman, The Ring of the Nibelung), this is guaranteed to become an instant classic!

I first read this story years ago as a prose piece on one of Gaiman's collections and at the time it very much appealled to my inner goth who loves a tale of angelic violence and retribution.  This version is a graphic novel with the story illustrated by artist P. Craig Russell who has worked with the writer a few times over the years as well as with folks like Michael Moorcock (on Elric) alongside adapting older works by Oscar Wilde (Salome) and various operas.

The story here tells of the first murder and of it's investigation by Raguel, the vengeance of the Lord.  The majority of the book is set in Heaven so Russell gets to let his lovely art nouveau-esque style fly as he draws angels soaring on majestic wings amidst gleaming spires.  Outside of Raguel's tale there is a framing device set in LA that walks an almost perfect line between the sort of 70s and 80s LA serial killer vibe so beloved of movies and a Chinatown / The Long Goodbye neo-noir that is helped no end by Gaiman's outsider commentary.

It's a cool quick story with an interesting twist - several actually - on the usual.  I'm a fan of Gaiman's short stories and Russell is always worth a look.  His isn't the type of comic art I generally seek out - I prefer the more idiosyncratic art of folks like Kevin O'Neill, Eddie Campbell or Ted McKeever - but that doesn't mean I don't thoroughly enjoy it when I find it and it makes for as perfect a match here with Gaiman's words as it did years ago with Moorcock's.

Buy it here -  UK /  US

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The City of the Dead

Known in the US by the much more relevant name 'Horror Hotel', 'The City of the Dead' was made in 1960 by the production team of Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg who would, just two years later, go on to form the legendary Amicus studio.  Written by 'Night of the Eagle' screenwriter George Baxt, funded in part by Nottingham Forest FC and featuring Christopher Lee and Valentine Dyall (Doctor Who's 'The Black Guardian' and the voice of 'Deep Thought' in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) this British made movie, featuring predominantly British actors was set in the US with the cast adopting American accents (with various degrees of success) in order to maximise the movies appeal overseas.

It opens in the town of Whitewood, Massachusetts in 1692 where Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessel) is being burned as a witch whilst simultaneously cursing the town.  Along with her fellow devil botherer, Jethrow Keane (Dyall), she survives into the 20th century where she runs the mist wreathed towns sole mist wreathed hotel and sacrifices young, nubile virgins - women only, no men need apply - twice a year on two dates that seem peculiarly close together.  Into that hotel comes a young student working on her thesis on the devil worshipping witches of misty Massachusets who, while lying around in her negligee reading ancient tomes, begins to hear scary chanting from beneath the floorboards and surprisingly cool jazz from the hotel lobby before being dragged to her stabby, devily doom.  Hot(ish) on her mist wreathed heels comes her brother and boyfriend wondering why she hasn't been in touch for 2 weeks and it's not long before they too are caught up in the evil mist wreathed antics.

There's some lazy direction, watch out for two almost identical scenes in the mist wreathed street one featuring our doomed student Nan (Venetia Stevenson) and the other, her brother, Richard (Dennis Lotis), and the movie is generally a fairly sluggish affair. It does though look nice despite being seemingly entirely filmed in a studio,  the mist wreathed street and graveyard of Whitewood appearing suitably dilapidated and I've always thought there was definite Lovecraft-esque vibe to the movie no doubt a result of its American scriptwriter and his decision to locate the movie in Massachusets; the university could easily be Arkham's Miskatonic University and mist wreathed Whitewood could certainly pass for Dunwich and it's a shame he went with old fashioned witchery rather than fully committing and adding in an 'Old One' or two.

It's very much a transition into the Amicus aesthetic, with the mist wreathing, the aged buildings and the graveyard they are still firmly embedded in the gothic trappings that worked so well for Hammer but its contemporary setting, the focus on liberated(ish) young women, the university campus and the jazz soundtrack all show the nascent stages of a new sensibility and offer glimpses of the direction Subotsky and Rosenberg were going to push their brand of horror movie in once their new production company was up and running and as such what we get is an intriguing mish mash of slightly missed opportunities that is never less than watchable but equally is never more than either.



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The Children of the Pool and Other Stories

Arthur Machen
Tartarus Press

In his room in Gray’s Inn, London, at the end of the nineteenth century Arthur Machen had one of the most memorable mystical experiences of his life: ‘the wall trembled and the pictures on the wall shook and shivered before my eyes, as if a sudden wind had blown into the room.’ For days afterwards he went about in ‘a rapture of delight’. This encounter with another order of things reinforced his conviction that there is a world beyond the one where we usually walk.

The six stories in The Children of the Pool, reflect in their different ways this lifelong belief. The bookish recluse in ‘The Exalted Omega’, the kabbalistic artist in ‘Out of the Picture’, the holiday¬makers in a Welsh resort in ‘Change’, all encounter the truly uncanny, and cannot emerge unchanged. And in the other three stories Machen explores the edges of that unknown terrain, the human mind.


'The Children of the Pool' was (I think) the final work of Arthur Machen's long writing career.  It's a collection of 6 stories that all touch on the various preoccupations of his work that followed him through the years with the possible exception of 'The Tree of Life'.

'The Exalted Omega' that opens the book is the story of a lost and dispirited man who in his lonely digs (Machen's own) begins to hear voices and see flashes of light that offer tantalising glimpses into what appears to be the planning of a murder.  In the middle of this we are treated to a short diversion into the world of spiritualism.

The title piece is much anthologised and is an odd piece that like much of Machen's work tells of a thin place between the worlds that Machen spends much of the story explaining away.  I like these sort of stories, my habit is always to lean towards the supernatural explanations but I like the over earnest defences for rationality he makes.

'The Bright Boy' is a much more straight forward tale, if you can call a tale about the crimes of a morally repellent, seemingly unaging man with the physical appearance of a 7 year old boy (like an evil Gary Coleman) hiding in plain sight with his fake parents straightforward.  It's a story I've read before, and one I didn't think much of then or now.

The aforementioned 'Tree of Life' is a real anomaly as it's ostensibly the story of a bedridden land owner dictating the use of his land to his estate manager that has a rather lovely twist in the tail.

'Out of the Picture' is one I'm surprised I've not seen before.  It harks back to Machen's early love of Robert Louis Stevenson with a tale redolent of Jekyll and Hyde that I enjoyed it very much and, as I said, am surprised it's not been more widely anthologised.

The book ends with another hark back in the story 'Change' where we are witness to a tale of child abduction a la  'The Shining Pyramid' but with a more folkoric changeling twist to it.

It's a solid and engaging collection from a writer who knew his glory days were behind him but was still willing to put pen to paper and try to find a new angle and a new tale and it's always a joy to read that.

Available as an ebook from the publisher here.
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Doomwatch

If you were science fiction fan in the very early 1970s then there was a very good chance that you were one of the up to 13.6 million people who tuned in each week to watch 'Doomwatch'. Running for three series on BBC1 between 1970 and 1972 at which point Tigon Films stepped in and made a movie adaptation starring newcomers to the show Ian Bannen and Judy Geeson, written by future 'Survivors' scriptwriter Clive Exton and directed by Hammer regular Peter Sasdy (Taste the Blood of Dracula, Countess Dracula) who would also direct Nigel Kneale's 'The Stone Tape' that same year.

Created by the writing partnership of Gerry Davis and Dr Kit Pedler who had first teamed up on Doctor Who where the former was story editor and the latter the show's scientific advisor for which they created the iconic Cybermen who closed out the tenure of William Hartnell as the First Doctor in 'The Tenth Planet'. 

The Doomwatch group or the 'Department for the Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work' as they wisely avoided calling it was an agency tasked with investigating the excesses of science often in stories with a distinctly environmental slant. The movie continues that tradition as Dr. Del Shaw (Bennen) is sent to investigate the effects of an oil spill off the island of Balfe but once there he disovers a conspiracy to cover up a much more profound problem.

As was too often the case at the time the BBC in their infinite wisdom wiped the original tapes and so only 24 of the 38 episodes survive thanks to its Canadian broadcaster or as telerecordings and these are currently available as a box set here - Doomwatch - Series 1-3 The Remaining Episodes [DVD].

The movie is essentially a standalone feature and despite being made and released after the show had ceased broadcasting is a great introduction to a series whose themes have only increased in relevance over the years and is surely due a reappraisal if not a remake (other than the one made and then seemingly forgotten by Channel 5 in the late 90s).



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Home

'Home' is an episode of the late 80s ITV series 'World's Beyond' which told stories based on the archives of the Society for Psychical Research.  We've featured another of their stories, 'The Haunted Garden', here in the past but unfortunately that video has since been taken down.

Written by Chris Menaul this is a haunted house tale starring Samantha Holland who some may know from her role in another similar story that we featured recently, 'Interference', and 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest's' Nurse Ratched, Louise Fletcher.

Karen Earl (Fletcher) is visiting her troubled daughter Perdita (Holland) who is home from school and staying with her grandmother Alice (Rachel Kempson) in a country cottage from which Karen wants to take her away.  Karen's arrival seems to trigger all manner of unpleasantness at the house - fires, flickering lights, smashed crockery and slammed doors.  Creeping around in the background is farm worker Joe (Warren Clarke) and local witch Miss Robertson (Brenda Bruce) who is entirely convinced that Perdita is at the mercy of 'forces'.

It's an odd sort of programme that at its end leaves you feeling like they've missed out a chunk of the story.  I suppose we can put the blame for this on a desire to remain true to the Psychical Society's reports but one has to wonder why the writer didn't make more of it and present a more coherent story arc but we are left with some interesting unanswered questions about motive and mindset to ponder while the credits roll.



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Damage

Rosalie Parker
PS Publishing

Each of the stories that make up Damage represent a new take on the theme of difference and strangeness in human life. There are elements of traditional horror, fantasy and the supernatural, but also of beauty, humour, compassion and love.
Damage explores the fragility of life and love and how they can sometimes survive against the odds, despite the damage that is done to them. 

Rosalie Parker is the co-publisher of Tartarus Press (along with her partner Ray Russell), the editor of their regular anthology series 'Strange Tales' and the author of three collections of short stories, two from Swan River Press and this one from PS.  I've only ever read one of her stories before and have long been intrigued to read more.

The overall impression I got from the book is that Rosalie is definitely the co-publisher of Tartarus Press as throughout I kept flashing on various writers that they have championed over the years such as Robert Aickman, A.E. Coppard, Arthur Machen (of course) and others.  Now I say that to show that her writing shares a kinship with those not to imply any sort of unoriginality.  Like Aickman the strangeness in Parker's stories is normalised within the events or makes a sudden and decisive apprearance. Like Coppard there is a love of the rural and the bucolic, a hankering for the wild spaces and like Machen there often seems a bleed through from elsewhere, of thin places where the natural and the un-natural coexist.

The stories are fleeting and focussed never taking any longer than they need to tell their tale although I was left occasionally wishing they would linger slightly longer and tell a wider story.  Her writing is neat and sparse and the specificity of her prose allows her tales to unfold at an easy unhurried pace that made the book a joy to read

Damage is available at the link above and also from their much cheaper clearance site here which is where I bought mine from.  Be aware though I've read that some people have reported that the copies they received were damaged in some way but the three books I bought were pristine.

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Night of the Eagle

Based on the Fritz Leiber novel 'Conjure Wife' with a screenplay by legendary 'Twilight Zone' writer Charles Beaumont, 'I Am Legend' author Richard Matheson and 'Circus of Horrors' writer George Baxt, 'Night of the Eagle' (or 'Burn, Witch, Burn!' in the US) is the story of Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde) a college lecturer and belligerent non-believer railing against belief in magic and the supernatural who discovers that his wife Tansy (Janet Blair) is a practicing witch who claims their perfect life is all down to her conjurings.  After forcing her to burn her paraphenalia he soon comes to regret his position as his life rapidly falls apart.

From the opening credits featuring a sole  staring, unblinking eye this is a singularly confrontational movie.  Accusations of favouritism, of cheating, of sexual assault, of violence, of naivety abound from the moment that Norman destroys Tansy's magical wards.  He's under constant attack, whether he believes it or not, from the very outset of the movie and it's only as his rationalist view of the world crumbles around him that he begins to tentatively accept that there are other forces at work but even then he tries desperately to cling to his scientific bias and attributes events and actions to hypnosis rather than magic.

Blair is more than a little histrionic as the devoted and terrified wife and Wyngarde in his first and only movie lead role has yet to fully develop into the flamboyant character he was to become by the end of the decade but makes for a convincing action hero if not a particularly convincing sociologist.  It feels a very loud movie due to the performances of both leads and the exhausting, overly insistent music but it builds it's atmosphere of menace with a stealthy ease and a measured pace that is simply irresistible.  When the titular night does finally arrive what could have been quite a silly ending is simple and effective (even if you can quite clearly see the birds lead at one point).

It's a real shame that this film has been overlooked so much by genre fans - I wonder if, like I did for a long time, many have looked at the title and written it off as a war movie in the vein of 'The Eagle Has Landed' or 'Where Eagles Dare' - because it has much to offer.  The magic in the film is subtle and the practitioners are shown to be entirely modern women not 'witchy' caricatures who are acting on entirely modern (for the era) impulses and the film itself has been crafted with care and attention to producing a story that leans heavily on the supernatural but retains just enough of an enigma to it that you leave still with questions left tantalisingly unanswered.

Buy it here - UK /  US - or watch it below.



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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

Zyklus - Gumbo Gulag

Zyklus is one of a number of nom de plumes adopted by Buried Treasure's head honcho Alan Gubby perhaps better known to Wyrd Britain readers as the person behind one of our favourites, Revbjelde.

This newest release is a lockdown compilation of some of Alan's older recordings, a collection of various tunes and tinkerings from the early 1980s through to the early 2000s.  The music here is considerably more synth led (dominated) than his more recent projects with a more overtly industrial vibe of the Cabaret Voltaire, early Coil and the harder edged synth pop varieties rather than the Throbbing Gristle soundscapes or Einsturzende Neubauten scrap iron clattery.  Equally I picked up a library music vibe and at various points of listening I could imagine this gracing the soundtrack of a dystopian early 90s cyberpunk movie and at others you can hear the influence of Alan's beloved BBC Radiophonic Workshop as the music offers a hazy glimpse of a futuristic technopolis of neon signs and milk bars.

I've a fair bit of Alan's music in my collection both from his Buried Treasure label and his previous Nanny Tango label and this one came as a real - and very pleasant - surprise.  My listening tastes are pretty eclectic now but I grew up listening to grindcore, anarcho punk and industrial so a darker edge is always welcome and it's definitely here. With the exception of Coil, who are never far from my CD player, I haven't really taken a stroll down these particular streets for a good long while and it was great fun to do so.



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Future Tense - The Story of H.G. Wells

This very short documentary was made by the BBC in 2016 to commemorate 150th anniversary of Wells' birth.  Long regarded (along with Jules Verne) as the father of science fiction Herbert George Wells was a novellist, social commentator and futurist who contributed key works to the sci-fi canon - 'The War of the Worlds',  'The Time Machine', 'The Invisible Man' to name just three - and also, inadvertently, to the creation of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was based on his 1940 progressive, humanitarian manifesto 'The Rights of Man'.

I love a documentary but I'm not going to lie to you, it looks like they knocked this one out in a hurry.  It's a ridiculously brief overview of a career that lasted some 60 odd years and produced so many pivotal works.  Its brief to the point that unless I blinked and missed it they didn't even talk about 'The Invisible Man' which you'd imagine would rate a mention or two but, much like the ghost story documentary I posted here the other week, as a quick fix it does the job and if you've no more than a passing knowledge of the life of this most important of authors then this will add a detail or two.



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Ringstones and Other Curious Tales

Sarban
Tartarus Press

Ringstones and Other Curious Tales ‘have a curiously-imparted quality of strangeness; the feeling of having strayed over the border of experience into a world where other dimensions operate.’ So said one of the original reviewers of these unique stories, first published in 1951.

John William Wall was a British diplomat who worked in various Middle Eastern contries and who published three books under the pen name Sarban.  'Ringstones' was the first of the three and collected five stories , two set in the Middle East, one in Greece and two, including the title piece, set in the UK.

I'd been intrigued to read Sarban for a while having first discovered him by accident having uncovered a hideously lurid paperback edition of his 'The Sound of His Horn' with a drawing of a cross-eyed cat lady on the cover.  Indeed the cover art was so bad that I found I couldn't read it and so traded it in and used the proceeds to buy two nicer Tartarus Press editions.  Memories of the awful art are still too fresh so I decided to delve into Ringstones first, with the thought of a stone circle helping make my decision.

Opening the book is the quick and slight 'A Christmas Story' about a pair of Russian aviators stuck in the middle of nowhere as winter starts to bite who have a close encounter with a creature of some sort.  For me the framing device here was of more interest than the story and felt a little more considered than the story within.

'Capra' is a far more interesting prospect that builds slowly from an almost unconnected opening act into a nifty little tale of vapid society life and old gods.  It's filled with vibrant characterisations and a real sense of crushing inevitability.

The surprise gem of the book proved to be 'Calmahain' a beautiful, bittersweet tale of two children taking refuge from the restrictions of their home life in a deeply imaginative fantasy.  I was however much less enamoured of 'The Khan' which while boasting the delightful prose I've come to now expect was just a weak and unexceptional tale, particularly after the wonders of its predecessor.

The book's title piece, also its longest, proved to be another wonder.  Sarban seemed to be at his strongest when dealing with stories that embraced the myths and legends of, not necessarily his homeland, but those he would have grown up with.  Here a young lady is hired for the holidays to act as tutor and governess for a trio of children at Ringstone Hall.  Over the course of a preternaturally sunny summer she is slowly drawn under the spell of the young boy and embroiled more deeply in his play until the actuality of her dilemma finally dawns.  It's a wonderfully enchanting piece spoiled somewhat by a coda that seemed heavy handed and unnecessary.

As a whole though the book turned out to be a revelation.  Wall's prose is captivating and his ideas are gently terrifying and occasionally achingly beautiful.  There is a common theme of confinement and of being trapped that runs through the stories that one can't help but relate to the writer inside the diplomat but it's very pleasing to know he did occasionally break free.

Buy it from the publisher at the link above.

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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

The Monster Club

The 1980s wasn't exactly what you'd call a golden era for British horror movies.  There were some good TV series and some good novelists but the horror movie industry in the UK mostly gave up and stayed home.  It did though occasionally pop its head out from under the bed and give us the goods.

Very loosely adapted from stories written by British horror writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes, 'The Monster Club' is, in the great tradition, a portmanteau featuring three tales told inside a framing story which in this instance involves a vampire named Eramus (Vincent Price) taking the human author also named R. Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine) that he's just chewed on for a drink at the titular club. 

In the club we and Chetwynd-Hayes are treated to four musical performances by The Viewers, B.A. Robertson, Night and The Pretty Things and three stories about a shadmock, a vampire and a ghoul.

Like the music the three stories vary wildly in terms of quality.  The story of the lonely shadmock (James Laurenson) with its murderous whistle being robbed by heartless villains Barbara Kellerman and Simon Ward  feels like a filler story that has fallen out of one of the Amicus anthologies which is hardly surprising given that this particular movie was produced by that company's founder Milton Subotsky and directed by the great Roy Ward Baker who'd made two of them ('Asylum' & 'The Vault of Horror').  The vampire tale is played strictly for laughs featuring a frumpy looking - if such a thing is possible - Britt Ekland and The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water himself Donald Pleasence as a civil service vampire hunter. The third story, and according to Chetwynd-Hayes the only one to resemble his source material, is the most effective and tells of a horror movie director searching for locations who happens upon a mist shrouded village where he is set upon by corpse eating ghouls and has to take refuge on holy ground all to a lovely, haunted synth tune called 'Ghouls Galore' by Alan Hawkshaw and some fantastic John Bolton illustrations.

'The Monster Club' was a flop on it's original release in 1981 and it's not hard to see why,  even at the time it was horrendously dated looking, the monster costumes laughably cheap and shoddy, the stories daft and the acting hammy but to me all those things sound like positives and I have long loved this film since I first saw it on my old black and white portable TV with both me and the television set hiding under the blankets because it was on late on a school night.

Buy it here - UK - or watch it below.



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Here and Now: Floating Anarchy

Here and Now were a band formed in the early 1970s that embraced the psychedelic, space rock and punk sounds and lifestyle and blazed an idiosyncratic path through that decade and beyond.  Armed with instruments and a bus the band toured extensively playing for free both as part of the nascent free festival scene and on their own count.  They toured and recorded with Daevid Allen as Planet Gong, provided bands such as The Fall and Alternative TV with early tours all the while occupying that truly interesting area between genres and way outside the mainstream.

Still active today and with a discography that is a diverse as it is elusive the band have recently been the subjects of this lovely little documentary made by Hayley Allardyce in memory of her father, synth player Gavin da Blitz, that offers a fascinating glimpse back to a time and a scene now sadly long gone. 



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Elric

Michael Moorcock
Grafton

Elric the albino emperor of Melnibone an island of decadent elven-ish sorcerors has long been the most beloved of Michael Moorcock's creations.  Armed with his black soul-eating sword Stormbringer  Elric is one of the aspects of Moorcock's Eternal Champion charged - whether they like it or not - to maintain the balance between order and chaos across the multiverse.

Apart from the first book (published in 1972) the stories were originally published in the pages of Science Fantasy magazine in the early 1960s as a series of novellas and then collected together into the series of books below with their iconic Michael Whelan covers in the 1970s.

My partner bought me the almost set of the Grafton Elric books for Xmas after we found them in a junk shop last November.  It was unfortunately missing the first book and it's taken me several months to track a copy down.  I've long had a hankering to re-read the full series and once I finally had the set in my hands I dove right in and read the lot in a week and thought I'd lay them all on you in one go.

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Elric of Melnibone

This is the tale of Elric, later called Womanslayer; of his love for Cymoril and of the rivalry with his cousin Yrkoon, a rivalry that was to bring the Dreaming City crashing in flames, destroyed by the reavers of the Young Kingdoms.
Elric, red-eyed, albino, the inheritor of waning powers, his strength precarious, sustain by arcane drugs. A hero seemingly unfit for his role. His story treats of monstrous emotions and high ambitions, of sorceries and treacheries, agonies and fearful pleasures - an adventure that Elric was to remember on in his darkest nightmares.

Elric, the fey albino king of a fading island power, Melnibone, is beset by challenges on all sides.  From without by the humans of the 'young kingdoms' jealous of Melnibone's wealth and vengeful for its past despotism and from within by his covetous cousin Yrkoon who believes Elric unfit to rule and it is he who drives the story.

As Elric strives to foil the usurper we are introduced to mythology that feels real and which is lacking in the tedious cod-Arthurian / Robin Hoodisms that make much fantasy literature such a bore.  The Chaos Gods seem suitably quixotic without being tediously evil and even at this early point there feels to be a fully developed and complete vision of all levels of the world.

The story itself is fairly slight and tells quite a straight forward story but that's not the joy here.  The joy is the invention and the bold vision that has created so singular a character as the albino king.

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The Sailor on the Seas of Fate

Leaving his cousin Yrkoon sitting as regent upon the Ruby Throne of Melnibone, leaving his cousin Cymoril weeping for him and despairing of his ever returning, Elric sailed from Imrryr, the Dreaming City, and went to seek an unknown goal in the world of the Young Kingdoms where Melniboneans were at best, disliked.

After rescuing Cymoril and rather stupidly placing his treacherous cousin on the throne of Melnibone Elric begins his year long odyssey to try and understand the new world.  Unfortunately fate has other plans for him as he finds himself aboard a strange boat alongside other incarnations of the Eternal Champion, Erekose and Corum.  It's a quest book but one with a bit of a difference as Elric is a truly unwilling participant especially after events take on a bafflingly cosmic turn.

The second of the trio of tales here is by far the weakest.  Indeed in the time between reading the book and writing this review I had completely forgotten about a large section of the story where Elric and his new companion Smiorgan rescue a young girl who may or may not be the reincarnation of someone from an ancient Melnibonean myth from someone who was actually there.

The book ends strongly with a journey into the history of Elric's race as he accompanies explorers to his race's ancestral homeland.  Again the story is a pretty linear journey, a from points A to B sort of deal, but one that feels like a crucial step in the development of the overarching story.

Another fun instalment with a not unenjoyable middle section buoyed up by the two very enjoyable tales either side of it.

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The Weird of the White Wolf

"We must be bound to one another then. Bound by hell-forged chains and fate-haunted circumstance. Well, then - let it be thus so - and men will have cause to tremble and flee when they hear the names of Elric of Melnibone and Stormbringer, his sword. We are two of a kind - produced by an age which has deserted us. Let us give this age cause to hate us." 
Imrryr, the dreaming city; Yyrkoon, the hated usurper; Cymoril, the beloved... all had fallen to the fury and unearthly power of the albino prince and his terrible sword. An Elric faced at last the fate that was to be his in this haunted era - that he must go forth, sword and man as one, and havoc and horror would be forever at his forefront until he found his Purpose that was yet obscured to him.

The third Elric book finds him suddenly heading back to Melnibone all tooled up with an army of Young Kingdom fighters at his back to exact revenge on his cousin who had been just as awful a ruler as everyone except Elric had predicted.  The raid has typically tragic consequences but a depressed Elric is soon drawn into another quest.

This time out he again tangles with the minions of chaos and makes a friend in the shape of Moonglum a cheerful little chappie who provides a perfect foil to Elric's morose nature.

Like the previous book this is essentially several novellas detailing adventures along the way of Elric's life which makes them fast and fun to read as they refuse to allow themselves to get bogged down and instead revel in their pulpy glory.

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The Vanishing Tower

Elric of Melniboné, proud prince of ruins, last lord of a dying race, wanders the lands of the Young Kingdoms in search of the evil sorcerer Theleb K'aarna. His object is revenge. But to achieve this, he must first brave such horrors as the Creatures of Chaos, the freezing wilderness of World's Edge, the golden-skinned Kelmain hordes, King Urish the Seven-fingered with his great cleaver Hackmeat, the Burning God, the Sighing Desert, and the terrible stone-age men of Pio. Although Elric holds within him a destiny greater than he could ever know, and controls the hellsword Stormbringer, stealer of souls, his task looks hopeless - until he encounters Myshella, Empress of the Dawn, the sleeping sorceress.

The fourth of Moorcock's Elric novels continues the albino's pursuit of the of the magician who had plagued him in the previous volume.  This time across the three novellas that make up the book Elric battles him at the world's end, in the city of the beggars and in Tanelorn the eternal city beyond the battle between chaos and order.

We get to meet several aspects of the Eternal Champion - Corum and Erekhose - and learn slightly more regarding Moonglum and the nature of his link to Elric.

As ever Moorcock delivers a super fast and very readable romp filled with hacking and slashing and soul stealing which is, as always, great fun.

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The Bane of the Black Sword

Elric returns to Yishana, and finds peace at last. Meanwhile, at the world's rim, dragging red horror in its wake, a horde unimaginable moves on the fabled, gentle, impossible city Tanelorn.

Continuing directly on from the fourth volume Elric is once again being plagued by the twin threats of the sorcerer Theleb K'aarna and his spurned once lover Queen Yishana a reckoning with whom brings the albino back in contact with the remnants of his former people.

The second story finds the albino falling rapidly in love with a stranded maiden, Zarozinia, in the hellish Forest of Troos where he and Moonglum are forced to fight the dead.

The third tale tells of a break in Elric's newly idyllic existence in the arms of his new lover as he is once again forced to take up his sword to defend his new home.

The book ends then with an epilogue that allows us to revisit the land of Tanelorn and those that live there as the beggars of Nadoskor march on the city to take it for Chaos.  It's a lovely little diversion from the Elric stories and gives us a glimpse of the wider world of the Eternal Champion that exists in Moorcock's mythos and the ways in which he thinks of the roles of Order and Chaos within his tales.

As with the other four books, these Elric novellas are fleeting and fun twists on the whole girded loins, hack 'n' slash brand of fantasy with the added extras of Moorcock's deliciously anarchic sensibilities at the helm.

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Stormbringer

The epic tale of Elric of Melniboné, albino prince of ruins, moves to its awesome conclusion - with the whole of the natural and supernatural world in mighty conflict - the final conflict, Armageddon. Elric holds the key to the future: the new age which must follow the destruction. To turn that key he must sacrifice all that he loves and risk his very soul.

Stormbringer is the final part of the original Elric stories and tells of the final battle between the albino misery guts and the forces of chaos that are rapidly turning the world into tentacles and ooze.

As with the other books in this run Stormbringer is split into several (four) novellas each telling another step in Elric's journey to the final reckoning

As an end to the series it's quite satisfying but there are a few hiccups along the way, two of the turning point battles are very much glossed over with both using unwielded floating magic swords to win the fights.  It does feel very much like Moorcock has lost interest in that side of things which I suppose is entirely understandable, I imagine there's only so many ways you can write about Elric stabbing someone.

It does though come to an entirely apt conclusion.  The end when it comes is definite and true to what has gone before and wrapped the legend of Elric up perfectly right up until Moorcock decided to write some more.

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Ghost in the Water

Based on the 1973 novel of the same name by Edward Chitham this ghostly tale was only ever screened the once on UK television - BBC1 at 4:40pm on New Year's Eve 1982 - and then disappeared into obscurity.

Directed by Renny Rye (who would later make 'Box of Delights') the story revolves around Tess (Judith Allchurch) and David (Ian Stevens) and their history project into the death of a young local girl named Abigail Parkes in the 1860s who begins to haunt Tess with visions of her life and ultimately of her death.

The two young and untrained actors are a delight helped in no end by a strong supporting cast and a script that delivers both on story and on quiet humour particularly from Tess' mum played by 'Last of the Summer Wine' regular (appearing in 273 episodes over 27 years) Jane Freeman.

Rye obviously has an eye for the supernatural, opening the film on a dark and rainy night with the two kids rooting around in a graveyard from which he cuts to a purpose made horror movie on the family television and including not one but two drowning sequences one of which features Tess simulating the experience in her bath which must have been an unexpected and shocking experience for anyone watching in its original tea time slot and not a scene you could imagine in any modern children's drama.

Drowning aside 'Ghost in the Water' is a fairly gentle film with a real warmth to it that plays off the relationship between the two kids, their classmates and Tess' family.  The narrative rolls along nicely and Rye makes good use of the limited run time to tell a concise story and one that is unexpectedly impactful and it's a real shame that this film has been mostly forgotten.

Buy it here - Ghost In The Water [DVD] - or watch it below.




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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