Dead of night

So, it’s the 31st October and the temporary signs are up in the local Co-op: ‘No eggs / flour sold to anyone under 16’ while at the same time the shelves are crammed full of tacky over-priced crap which is only valid for use one night a year.  What’s that all about?  Back in my day (oh, here we go…) we just draped old sheets with cut-out eyeholes over ourselves then ate baked potatoes before a game of Murder In The Dark (which I never really understood how to play, to be honest).  We didn’t dare venture outside (for fear of too many real ghosts).  

Today I will venture outside, in fact I am daring to venture down to London, to meet a stranger in a strange place (all in the name of work, you understand) just as dusk falls on the city and its streets no doubt fill with people rushing home from their jobs, perhaps to change into Hallowe’en costumes bought from Tesco.  I just hope I don’t encounter too many of them on the train home.  There’s something special about central London after dark for me, though: ghosts of a different kind.  I still find the city exciting, it's full of nuanced memories and part of me will wish I could extend my visit to have a few drinks and go to see a band maybe, before flopping down on an unfamiliar bed in a high-up hotel room, a parallel world away from my quiet rural existence - but I can't!

Anyway, as a mere nod to the date and hopefully as an antedote to all the crass commercialism surrounding it, here’s a little snippet from one of my favourite old films, Dead Of Night (1945).  If you've never seen it, it's a classy portmanteau style horror comprising five disparate stories, all linked through being experiences or tales told at a gathering by each guest in turn.   And there's a twist ending, of course.  It’s exquisitely English, exquisitely 1940s and exquisitely chilling in the most perfect, understated way. 

Don't be a dummy

Goth but not forgotten

A shock horror true confession

Aarghh!  This is a bit like therapy.  “My name is… and I was a goth”. Well, I’m saying that for effect really, as I was only a little teensy-weensy bit of one, for a rather short while, and a very long time ago.  It all seems far too earnest and po-faced for me looking back now but, hey, I was a young art student at the time.  (It’s amazing how much you can excuse with that line…)  Having touched upon the subject of horror in some of my previous posts, it seems rather fitting that I felt a fair amount of it when I uncovered some pictures from one of my first college photography briefs in the early ‘80s, so I’ve decided to exorcise those devilish demons here.  Then I’ll never touch the stuff again. Honest.

Firstly, a bit of background. These photo projects required you to load fiddly reels of film into your big, manual (and usually ancient, second-hand) camera, fuck about with focus settings, aperture and shutter speeds, take pretentious arty-farty pictures (never anything spontaneous – you were too busy twiddling knobs) and later develop your shots personally in the darkroom.  The college darkroom was a sacred place, with its ‘Do Not Enter’ sign on the door and a characteristic chemical smell, where you worked in the duskiness of a dim red light, preferably alongside a student of the opposite sex with whom to practise some coy flirting. As anyone who still uses a darkroom knows, it was quite a long-drawn out process (and I’m not just talking about the flirting…) but there is a huge amount of satisfaction to be found as you watch your earlier vision start to become real in its tray of development solution – just seeing it appear and get gradually clearer like something supernatural is quite magical.  I’m reminded of scenes from detective series and films like ‘Blow Up’ –  the moment a picture starts to form on the paper is so exciting and sometimes surprising. Luckily there was nothing macabre lurking in any of these images, although in the case of this project I might have been grateful for it (purely for aesthetic reasons, you understand…)

I like the way the tear in the photo looks like a lightning bolt…

So yes, these were the times of a very early interest in, well, I seem to recall that nobody actually labelled it ‘goth’ back then, perhaps just occasionally ‘gothic’ - but there were a lot of references to the associated music being ‘post-punk’ (and it seemed like a natural progression from my earlier punk days) - even the term ‘positive punk’ was used.  ‘Positive punk’ does sound ironic considering most songs were so dark and doomy… We liked bands such as Bauhaus, the Danse Society and Sisters of Mercy, and people who wore a lot of black and looked a bit vampiric.  Vampiric and gothic is not an easy look to achieve when you’re fair-haired and have a tendency to go pink (it’s far too healthy looking) but cosmetics help and I think I probably got through a whole eyeliner pencil just for the make-up here: Siouxsie-style eyebrows, Alice Cooper-ish death-mask eyes and black lips too.  It also came in handy for drawing that logo which was for a (non-existent) band.  C H stood for Critically Headless, which is pretty good as far as goth band names go, you must admit!  As so often is the case it’s much easier to think up a name than to write or play an actual song…  Oh dear.  And being the ‘model’ here I could at least get someone else to fiddle with my calibrations and press my camera button. I should also add that this wasn’t my usual daily look for a trip to the corner shop to buy a packet of Trebor Mints.  (I’d have put a top on.)

Because this was meant to be an art project rather than just pure self-indulgence (and perhaps secretly a potential record cover for a future Critically Headless single, ‘Evil Dolls Are Eating My Flesh’..?), we were encouraged to be experimental, so this second photo was created by developing another picture over an over-exposed version of the first one.  The intention was to make it look, well, ghostly, of course. 

Yeah I know it’s crap but hopefully laughable crap…

The other picture was taken in an overgrown disused graveyard (well, naturally) - I’m sure that’s a discarded Tizer can or something showing through the undergrowth on the left.  I think that was the only surprise lurking in this image, so no ‘Blow Up’ storylines to be had here. With no such thing as Photoshop these pictures did turn out to be really bad, but I quite like the fact that the only clicking needed then was that of the camera button.  And the sound of the darkroom door closing tightly behind me as I waited to see what might develop.  Sadly, nothing much ever did.

Phew…. I feel better for that.  I think. 

The shame will pass.

(And finally – I just realised this does still sound good to my ears!  It’s short, choppy and upbeat.  Crack that whip!)

In the flat fields

I’ve been rummaging through my drawers again and found a few pictures I’d taken locally a couple of years ago which I quite like, especially as I’m so crap at photography.  If you’re interested in ‘60s horror films there is a little more to these meadows than first meets the eye.  This is Witchfinder / Matthew Hopkins country, and these photos were taken within the grounds of the manor house in which some scenes of the fabulous 1968 movie ‘Witchfinder General’ were filmed.  I feel incredibly fortunate to live literally around the corner from this stately home (even though I inhabit more of a god-what-a-state-ly home myself…)

It’s rather lovely just to imagine Ian Ogilvy galloping through the buttercups.

London loves, part one

I’ve been thinking about London a lot lately.  I haven’t lived there for any length of time that counts, only in an outer north eastern corner of it for the first three years of my life, about which I remember very little.  Oh, apart from a rather bloody incident involving the back of my head and a brick, from which just the memory and a faint scar on my scalp have remained.  (The moral of that tale is: toddlers, do not play games pretending to be a naughty child who won’t go to bed in which you and your friends use house-bricks for pillows). 

I was born in the London Hospital at Whitechapel, a big, rambling building with centuries of history, once home to Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, and (perhaps apocryphally) within the sound of Bow Bells, which apparently makes me a Cockney.  You won’t find me down the rub-a-dub rabbiting with the Pearly Queen about jellied eels, though… my family relocated to the sticks before I was four.   London, however, can still make me feel childlike in some ways as it holds a degree of magical appeal.   For me it’s a bit like a fairytale mixture of good, bad and ugly, as well as sometimes very beautiful: a place of contrasts.  Whenever I step off the train into Liverpool Street Station, where flocks of people in dark suits dash about purposefully in all directions like hungry starlings, I feel like I’m entering another world.  A metaphorical world of secret rooms in high towers, deep dark caves, scary ogres and charming princes, not to mention the genuine palaces, a real-life castle and some very much alive-and-kicking rats in underground tunnels.  I find our capital slightly unsettling at times yet often thrilling, full of people and things with the potential to fascinate, horrify, annoy or beguile me; it is big and different and legendary.  I know, it’s just a city – but it is an inspiring one.  And it is its legendary aspect that inspired this little magazine called One Eye Grey, ‘a penny dreadful for the 21^st century’.

Each edition of this pocket-sized publication is a spine-tingling collection of pieces based on traditional folktales, ghost stories and a sprinkling of urban legend, but what makes them so uniquely appealing is that they are retold in the context of modern London.   In the first three issues the stories, all written by the magazine’s creator Chris Roberts, are skilfully linked through a main character and his group of friends and this provides a sub-plot which enriches each individual tale very satisfyingly.  In subsequent volumes, discrete stories have been contributed by a number of different writers, but all are evocative and chilling enough.  I’ve long been a fan of a good scary story – adolescent memories of reading what seemed like an endless number of volumes of the Pan Book Of Horror are lodged deep within my psyche – so reading about apparitions, shape-shifters, witches and metamorphosing rodents is appealing.  But what enhances One Eye Grey is the contemporary setting, the more adult approach and content (some nice juicy helpings of sex, violence and modern slang) - and London.  I want to read each story and visit every associated location, then scare the pants off myself, not just by the price of a London pint but with imaginings of a shadowy female figure on Maiden Lane or the giant rat with eyes of different colours (the eponymous One Eye Grey) lurking near Cannon Street Railway Bridge.  These often specific geographical references make each account more vivid and help satisfy a teasing desire to believe in them.

If you want to scare the pants off yourself too, One Eye Grey is available from http://www.fandmpublications.co.uk/pages/pennydreadfulevents.htm

Unsurprisingly, I’m going to conclude this post with a London-themed song - I know it's obvious, and there are too many good ones to choose from! - but this could be the first of a few.

Man about the haunted house of horror

Who could possibly resist a 1968 film that contains all (yes, all) of the following:-

swinging London (Carnaby Street)

music by the Pretty Things/Electric Banana

mini-skirts and cut-through dresses

an American teen idol

blood

lots of blood

a seance

actors who were also in ‘Bless This House’ and ‘Get Carter’

Chesney Hawkes’ mum

a gothic mansion

and the star of ‘Man About The House’?

…I couldn’t!

From the moment the excellent, melancholy John Barry-esque theme tune (called ‘The Dark’ by Reg Tilsley) starts up you know you’re in for a bit of a period piece horror treat (and a bit of a laugh, too). ‘The Haunted House of Horror’ (or simply ‘Horror House’ as it was known in the US) is as corny as hell, and to contemporary eyes and ears the acting and dialogue are more hammy than a ham sandwich with extra ham.  It was one of the first slasher movies and after its rather long and fairly slow start when you really wonder if you’re watching the same film whose tagline at the time was 'behind its forbidden doors an evil secret lies', it suddenly gathers pace and gets all Evil Dead on you (or at least a bit Evil Not-Looking-Too-Healthy.)  Deadly weapons are wielded, blood is splattered and screams echo around the dark walls of a deserted Addams Family type mansion.

It does seem like it was trying be all things at once, which should make it fail really but somehow you want to forgive it for trying too hard and let it off for its over-zealousness.   Firstly there are plenty of period references amongst the youthful group of trendy friends in their groovy clothes, the subtext and dialogue hinting gently at various themes of the time like drugs, drink and sexual amorality. The obligatory party scene is lifted from being a rather dull affair by the soundtrack of the Pretty Things in their guise as The Electric Banana.  Great music.

Then there is an element of an Agatha Christie whodunit about it as you find yourself automatically trying to solve the riddle of who the killer might be, looking for clues, motives and wondering about double bluffs.

Whilst very tame there’s a slight undercurrent of sexual tension: one character tries to ditch her stalky (and frankly very creepy) older, married lover, and wants to get it on with one of the group (who is also willing) behind the back of the latter’s rather timid and unadventurous girlfriend.  Another character seems to want to keep her options open, even after the murders have begun, and even with a possible suspect.

Thrown in for good measure too is a scene in a restaurant where an inhouse band are playing something rather groovy, the group is in fact the Jasmin Tea who were an obscure pop band of the time.

And then there’s Carnaby Street, moonlit nights, a ghost story, jealousy, guilt, violence, suspense and… Frankie Avalon!  Yeah, it is perhaps the cast of this film that makes it endearing too.  Frankie looks out-of-place with his clean-cut looks and neatly brushed helmet hair, but his presence probably attracted some extra viewers.  You can also see Richard O’Sullivan before his days as Robin in ‘Man About The House’.  Older members of the cast include Dennis Price (from dozens of  films but, going through the list, I’ll make special mention of ‘Theatre Of Blood’, another great horror flick) and George Sewell, also of course well-known for many films of which one of the best must be ‘Get Carter’.  Going on to play the role of the son in the TV series ‘Bless This House’ a short while later, is Robin Stewart.  Plus Carol Dilworth, who married Len 'Chip' Hawkes from the Tremeloes, was a gameshow hostess on ‘The Golden Shot’ and later gave birth to the one and only Chesney Hawkes.

I also want to make special mention of the beautiful Jill Haworth, who was very striking in this for her acting, which seemed so much more natural, unaffected and believable (however dodgy the script got) than that of her colleagues.  Her character in this stands out too; she is cool and sassy with a nice line in sarcasm.  And great eye make-up.  Jill had a number of acting roles throughout her life, including parts in Burke’s Law, Rawhide and even a stint as Sally Bowles in the stage version of Cabaret which she saw as the peak in her career, but it seems she is mostly remembered for being a ‘scream-queen’ in low budget horror films.  Jill died on 3rd January this year, aged 65.

Finally, a piece of cultural trivia is that the original script was intended to be more psychedelic and that David Bowie was lined up to play a major role, which I think might have worked; it’s not hard to imagine him as the film’s most earnest and enigmatic character, Richard. But apparently there were concerns about Frankie Avalon’s presence in the same film – whilst David would have been the prettiest star, it was thought he might clash with the young American.