Day Of The Long Knives

A traditional sword dance from North Skelton in Cleveland. Note the ever present menace of the terrifying bearded bumpkin. I'm pretty sure that this is the Betsy, or Fool, and he's wearing a costume especially for the dance, but you can never be sure and, in any case, he would make a great horror film villain. Imagine that outside your window.

Dance Away

English folk dances demonstrated and captured on a Kinora, a home movie camera which effectively produced a flicker book reel which could then be viewed by cranking a handle.

The dancers are Maud Karpeles, her sister Helen, Cecil Sharp and (with the moustache) George Butterworth. Sharp was the driving force behind the folk song and dance revival of the Edwardian age, travelling the country collecting and preserving a dying tradition. The Karpeles sisters were frequent collaborators, especially Maud, who became the executor of Sharp's work after his death in 1924.

George Butterworth is one of the greatest classical composers Britain has ever produced. Two years after this joyful film was made WW1 broke out; two years later George was killed by a German sniper.

The Power & The Glory Of The Who

Has there ever been a more effective and exciting rock group than The Who in their pomp? Their recorded output may have seemed a bit flat in comparison to their kinetic, auto-destructive live shows, but they left some brilliant stuff behind. & they always looked great.

Here's the moment in 1968 when Moon the Loon bribed stage hands on 'The Smothers Brothers' show to pack his bass drum with a huge amount of flash powder leading to a massive explosion, and permanent damage to Pete Townshend's ear drums. Nice one, Keith.

Derren Nesbitt, Actor

Derren Nesbitt fights the law and the law wins in 'My Name is Sergeant Bergerac' a 1990 episode of, yep, 'Bergerac'.

Blood On The Moon

'Killer's Moon' is a terrible film, but it does pose the interesting question of what would happen if a group of psychotic murderers and rapists high on LSD escaped from an asylum and ran into a girls school choir. The answer, of course, is that it all gets a bit messy.

It would be pointless for me to detail just why 'Killer's Moon' is so bad, or the myriad ways it doesn't make any sense because, ultimately, why should it be any good? Why should it make any sense? It's not that sort of film. It exists to show us violence and sex, and it certainly does that, often, and occasionally in a prurient, lingering way which is unpleasant given the subject matter. The most memorable characters are the well-spoken, high on acid escapees (Messers Smith, Jones, Trubshawe and Muldoon), who believe that they are in a dream therapy session and are free to exercise their base desires. In the hands of better actors they could be really creepy, but here they just seem like a right bunch of arseholes.

For all that, there's something compelling about the film, whether it be the unintentionally funny dialogue, or the intentionally funny dialogue inserted at inappropriate junctures. Perhaps most charming of all is how little any of this matters to the film makers - they're not here to give us a nuanced epic, they're here to give us a film where a frightened teenage girl, seconds away from being strangled by a drug crazed psycho, backs away from the killer only to rip her nightdress on a random nail and expose her ample bosom. Now that's exploitation.

Killer's Moon

A World Of Psychotic Turmoil

Any reasonably with it person will guess the 'twist' in 'Schizo' after about ten minutes, only to then have to sit through another hour and forty minutes of slackly paced drama interspersed with three or four gruesome murders.

Is it worth it? Well, sort of, if only for the various attempts to keep the viewer guessing long after the surprise has been blown, i.e. making everyone act really shiftily at all times and, in poor old Jack Watson's case, getting him to gurn like a nutjob at every hand and turn. The most astonishing scene comes at a spiritualist meeting where, for a few minutes, this run of the mill slasher film suddenly turns into a supernatural shocker, plastic eyes, disembodied voices and all - although the bit where Queenie Watts gets a knitting needle through the back of her head is also worth a look.

Giallo-ish in form and similarly demanding in terms of suspension of disbelief, 'Schizo' isn't a totally worthless film, it's just limp and far too long but, even as I write this, I'm already starting to feel rather fond of the stupid thing.  

Schizo

The Outcasts

Speaking of bikers as outsiders, here's a BBC documentary about a Norfolk Hell's Angels gang called The Outcasts. Originally shown in 1985, it has its share of odd images and amusing characters, but is shot through with a dark seam of real life horror which is only fully exposed right at the end.

Black Leather Rock

Perhaps befitting their status as folk devils and leather clad outsiders, bikers mostly feature as a threat in British horror films, although their self-consciously tough image is just as often the subject of mockery, parody or homoerotic innuendo in other genres.