Space 1999: Black Sun

I’ve had a fair few pops at ‘Space 1999’ in the past, mainly because I see a lot of myself in it, i.e. it under-achieves and does stupid things. ‘Black Sun’, however, a Series One episode originally broadcast in November 1975, is not just good in series’ terms; it’s good in sci fi terms, too. Actually, it’s just good – no need for any further qualification.

When Moonbase Alpha finds itself drawn into the inexorable orbit of a black sun (that’s a thing, apparently) all they can do is sit around and wait to be crushed to death. Yes, Bergman rigs up a force field he hopes (but doesn’t really believe) will save them, and, yep, Helena and five others are chosen by the computer to be evacuated, but mostly the story is just a slow, patient, thoughtful countdown to inevitable destruction, which makes for enough drama that there’s no need for the usual pyrotechnics and poorly choreographed fights the show tends to use as filler in lieu of story. The lights on Alpha slowly go out and the doomed crew just sit together and think about what might have been, or noodle around on guitars and look wistfully at each other. Commander Koening and Profesor Bergman smoke cigars and get pissed up and philosophical on sixty year old brandy.

When Moonbase finally enters the black sun, things go weird and bendy wendy: the crew become transparent, and put on plastic old person masks and freak each other out. Then an ancient looking Koenig and Bergman have a chat with a nice lady God who gives them a few free pointers about the nature of existence. These scenes are silly, but because the story has slowly built up to them, they don’t seem ridiculous. It even makes sense in a way, even though much of it is nonsensical – a sort of contextual, logical daftness which the programme most often lacks.  

Too quickly, the trip through the psychedelic unknown concludes with the Moon safely exiting the black sun through the back door and everything goes back to normal, well, as normal as it can be when you've just tripped your its off and ended up in a completely different universe. Koening and Berman don’t even have a hangover.

As a postscript, the happy ending is made even happier when Helena and the rest of the evacuees come back in a surprise return that wasn’t actually possible, isn’t really explained and definitely doesn’t matter.
After all, as a tired and emotional Professor Bergman said the night before ‘there is a thin line between science and mysticism’ and, as usual, he was absolutely right.    

Don't Get Excited...

...but 'Space 1999' will be here at midnight!

He's Here To Freak You Out...Of This World!

Colchester, Essex, 1983 AD. I am at a party and have become quite heavily involved with a pretty young lady. The new romance comes to an abrupt end, however, when I check my watch and realise that ‘Dracula, A.D. 1972’ is about to start on Anglia telly. It’s a film I haven’t yet seen, but KNOW will be great, so I rather abruptly make my excuses and leave, leaving my paramour both tearful and furious. Thus, the pattern of a life is set.

‘Dracula, A.D. 1972’ is a supremely silly film. At times, it’s educationally sub-normal. But I love it. I love the middle aged kids and the groovy places they hang out where the sixties still cling to the décor like pot smoke to a pair of garish curtains, and I love, love, love the fact that Count Dracula is going to bite them all and turn their groovy scene to shit.

I love the fact that it takes Van Helsing ten minutes and a pad and pencil to work out that Johnny Alucard’s surname is Dracula spelled backwards. I love that you can now kill a vampire with a power shower, or a bush. I love Peter Cushing’s concession to hip, a moderately daring neckerchief. I love the music, even 'The Stoneground', but especially the electronic séance track by White Noise, from 'An Electric Storm', one of my favourite albums ever. I like the vacuity of the male characters, and the fecundity of the female cast, perhaps the foxiest, bustiest bunch of Hammer starlets in history (Stephanie Beacham is outstanding in this respect). Most of all, I love that Hammer are getting a bit desperate and trying something new and, for the most part, getting it wrong – and I love that it doesn’t matter because the dividing line between brilliantly awful and awfully brilliant doesn't exist in this context.    

‘Dracula, A.D. 1972’ is ninety minutes of everything I love and cherish and admire and am obsessed with about British horror films, and I can categorically say that leaving the party and the girl and rushing home to watch it all those years ago had an enormous effect on me, an impact that has reverberated every day since, and, for better or worse, has directly led to this blog and all the stuff attached to it. And it was worth it. It was all worth it.   

Dracula, A.D. 1972

Coming Soon...

The Golden Age Of Top Of The Pops

001: Dandy

Interesting Postcards

I’ve been to Hunstanton a couple of times and never noticed it’s resemblance to Portmeirion or, indeed, how much the beach looks like the irradiated coast where David Bowie filmed the ‘Ashes to Ashes’ video. I’m not as observant as I used to be. Bloody Coalition.

I also like the distinction between Hunstanton and New Hunstanton, and the inclusion of the cliffs in the latter category, as if they are a relatively recent addition.

Indoor League A La Mode

I love ‘The Indoor League’ so much it’s on my permanent medical record. The first, Yorkshire-centric series was an unexpected teatime success in a number of ITV regions, so series two introduced a raft of new things to appeal to a national audience, like arm wrestling, pool, southerners, black people and, ulp, women...

Fiery Fred Trueman, of course, was unphased. He's been all over the world, and as long as he's got his pipe and a pint to pretend to drink he doesn't give a jot. His outfit here is interesting, a musty coloured suit of armour topped off with a helmet of jet black hair. His trousers and shirt are taupe, but his thick cardigan is somewhere between mould and mustard. Freddie can't wait to see the ladies darts, which he describes as 'two lasses showing us what their right arms are for'...

This 'lovely little lady' (as the commentator insists on calling her) is Mrs. Loveday-King from down in Cornwall, 'Daphne du Maurier country'. Her outfit is deceptively simple, but her choice of colour, imperial purple, sets the tone for the way she will sweep her opponents before her. 

Here we see Mrs. Loveday-King's darting stance. Text book. As the commentator says 'if you think that all a woman can throw is spuds into a sink, then take a look at this'. I've highlighted the semi-hirsute man to Mrs. L-K's left not just because he is looking at her as if he's wondering what kind of a fit her flayed skin would be, but because I am entertaining the idea that, if you search closely enough, you will find pictorial and photographic evidence of this man at every major event in history, holding a pint and leering at the goings on. I might have to wait until I retire to pursue that project - or at least remember which telly programme I unconsciously nicked the idea from.

Mrs. Anne Westbrook is pretty mod in comparison to the simple elegance of her opponent, but her Vidal Sassoon hair style, big yellow collar and suedette jerkin with vague Native American stylings can't stop her slipping behind almost immediately. She's clearly nervous,but eventually starts to get some decent scores. After all: 'most of these women play with the men - and not just with their affections - they play 'em at darts!'. 

There's that bloke again. I'm pretty sure he's one of the figures at the base of a Brueghel crucifxion, I'll have to get my modern apprentice to look into it. Mrs. Westbrook soon discards the jacket, instinctively realising that something heavy and tight around the arm holes is not an ideal uniform for organised sport.

To me, this shot says everything about the tense, combative nature of darts, a sport where you are up against yourself as much as your opponent - where all you can do sometimes is watch your adversary take their turn and hope for the best - or worst. 

Mrs. Loveday-King is flanked by her rather sharp in an 'I teach at the Technical College' way husband, as well as her surprisingly hip parents (that said, they're probably in their early forties - these days, they'd be on skateboards). To Mrs. Loveday-King's right is a lady in a black sleeveless cardi and a melange of purples with a huge collar. She's part of Team Loveday-King, but looks a little old to be her daughter. Younger sister, perhaps? Anyway, that's irrelevant, and merely serves as a way of avoiding addressing the pachyderm in the Irish Centre, her fringe - part pudding bowl, part Frankenstein's monster. Mind you, her expression hints at experimental brain surgery. If so, sorry.  

The family are overcome with joy as Mrs. Loveday-King triumphs, and Mum gets to show off her bold brown and light blue paisley print dress, which reminds me a bit of Coventry FC's notorious second away kit of the late seventies. The lady on the far right seems to be a better candidate for 'the sister', and her skin tight floral all in one and thick glasses make her look like Olive from 'On The Buses' after a a crash diet and a shampoo and set. Hubby's pleased. She'll be getting some tonight. Briefly.

Finally, a grudge match between 'the world number one' Jean Smith ('in the red Paras beret' and housecoat) and Kay Bradfield, who looks like Sheila Keith and, inexplicably, has come dressed as an extra from 'The Sound Of Music'.  

Mrs. Bradfield wins with a virtuoso display of furious darts that 'even the men would be proud of'. Her victory comes after a shaky start for both of them, when the commentator stated that they were 'feeling nerves' and wondered if 'the port and lemons were taking their toll'. Sexist pig.

'Indoor League' will be back soon. In the meantime, Freddie says something incomprehensible along the lines of catching you all later. 

Back, From Outer Space

"Good news, fans of internet sensation ‘Island of Terror’: 

internet sensation ‘Island of Terror’ has returned!" And EARLIER than scheduled!

I won't be posting every day, but instead I will be concentrating on providing a seventies style three day week. All you have to do is sit back and watch the rubbish pile up.

There will be old favourites and new additions, with the usual focus on the best and worst of British - horror, sci fi, film, telly and disco. Lots of disco. You should have changed that stupid lock. You should have made me leave my key. Right, let's get (re)started.

Oh, and if you're in Bradford on Saturday or Sunday, pop into the National Media Museum, as I will be there introducing some classic Hammer films as part of the BFI's Gothic season. Come and say hello, I will be the one in the white suit, black shirt and silver medallion.

Cheers!

Paul

Sex, Death & British Horror

Further to my recent Sheffield based film shenanigans, I will be at the National Media Museum in Bradford on Saturday 15^th and Sunday 16^th of February to introduce a weekend of Gothic along with Dr Helena Ifill and Dr Matt Cheeseman from the University of Sheffield.  More details here.

Apart from the obvious joy of seeing three incredible Hammer films on the big screen, there will also be the rare opportunity to take a look at some of the Museum’s archive of British horror artifacts and memorabilia, including a wealth of production sketches, stills, plaster casts and a set of blood pumping plastic fangs worn by Christopher Lee in ‘Dracula’. 

Look out for me, I’ll be the one receiving medical treatment for over-excitement.

Oh, and 'Island of Terror' will return on the 2813th February.

Notes On Ghosts

001 I don’t generally like anything that starts with a dictionary definition, but I was curious to see how ‘ghost’ was described. The OED answer is –

1. An apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous being – OR –

2. A slight trace or vestige of something – OR –

3. A faint secondary image produced by a fault in an optical system.

At least one of those answers also speaks volumes when questioning what a ghost is, not just what we mean by the word. I don’t know which one is right, but I’d probably say two with a touch of three, but I’m not sure how, in this context, you could have two without one.

002 I’ve never properly seen a ghost, but then I’ve never looked very hard. I once went to the site of Borley Rectory with some friends and we all got stupidly scared at standing on a patch of grass that once apparently had a haunted house on it but it was very dark, we were quite drunk and we were expecting to be frightened, so frightened we were. I have subsequently heard the tale re-told to include a mysterious floating light which could have been a ghost, but I have no recollection of that whatsoever. I was probably peeing up a tree at that point, although you think someone would have said ‘oh, by the way, while you were urinating we saw a ghost’. On a tangential note, why do men insist on pissing up against things? If there is a single tree in an acre of bushes, you can bet that it will be singled out for a visit. Is it shame, safety or the primeval urge to mark your territory? Our animal instincts always assert themselves in intensely personal situations. I need the toilet now.

003 When I was 10, my Nan died. It was terrible, and I took it badly. My Dad tried to make sense of it for me (and perhaps for himself, she was his Mum) by saying that ‘death is just a part of life, and no-one really knows what happens next. Maybe she is in another place, and can see us now – maybe she’s here, sat over in the corner – but we just can’t see her’. It was the single most terrifying thing I had ever heard. It still is, I think. I have to say that I do sometimes believe that my house is haunted, but I think it’s more likely in need of better draught excluders. In any respect, I’m okay with the ‘ghost’ – I’ve lived there for ten years and whatever the intermittent late night presence is, it hasn’t yet tried to touch me up or take me over, so I’m not bothered. Perhaps I’m not its type.

004 Ghosts always seem to me to be figures not of fear, but intense sadness. I mean, what sort of life is that for a dead person? Tied eternally to a single spot, compulsively re-enacting the same rituals, walking the same battlements, rattling the same chains? It’s horrible. And everyone you encounter is scared of you. Perhaps ghosts are like a bad scratch on a record or a locked groove, doomed to repeat the same few seconds over and over again - or like a goldfish, by the time they realise what they are doing they forget what they are doing. I hope ghosts lack consciousness, or at least sentience: the idea that they know that they are ghosts is too awful to contemplate.

005 You may have noticed that I write about ghosts as if they are real. I think they are real. I don’t necessarily think that they are ‘an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous being’ but they are something, perhaps psychological, perhaps psychogeographical, perhaps a natural phenomenon that we haven’t discovered yet. But then I watch a lot of horror films and TV, I read a lot of horror books, so a ghost to me is like true love for a romantic novel reader, magic for a Harry Potter fan. That said, I don’t believe that vampires or werewolves exist. Mummies, yes.

006 There’s a great deal to say about ‘A Ghost Story For Christmas’, but I’ve run out of steam a bit so I’ll just say that it is one of the greatest things the BBC ever did. These Ghost Stories are not just for Christmas, they’re for life.

007 ‘Ghost Stories for Christmas’ debut at the Showroom Cinema on Tuesday 3rd December with ‘Whistle & I’ll Come To You’, ‘Lost Hearts’ and ‘Stigma’. If that doesn’t excite you, check your pulse, you may be a ghost yourself. On Tuesday 17th December it’s ‘A Warning To The Curious’ and ‘The Ash Tree’. White sheets are optional. More HERE and HERE.

Notes On The Gothic

001 I used to go out with a Goth. She drank Pernod, and only wore purple and black. Her hair was extraordinary, crimped and crenelated and blow dried upside down. The funny thing was how funny she was. I had expected that Goths would be miserable, but, for her, it was exciting, like riding the Ghost Train, or watching a Hammer film or reading a scary book late at night and having to put the big light on: morbid, perhaps, but not maudlin. But Goth girlfriends are not really what we’re talking about.

002 The original Goths were a Germanic tribe who sacked Rome. We’re not talking about that, either. We’re also not discussing architecture, although that has an integral role to play. Our Gothic is a literary style which became a cultural sensation and then a way of life. This Gothic is a heady combination of horror and romance, a kiss before dying. It flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries, where love was inextricably linked to death and to loss – a place where life was constantly threatened by a myriad of illnesses and conditions that medical science couldn’t yet cope with, where every person who survived beyond birth was automatically entered into the lottery of surviving to adulthood.

003 The signifiers of Gothic are many, and some have become clichés, a short hand for fear: a desolate or deserted place, an innocent heroine, a tyrant or a monster, a hero; candles and cobwebs, cellars and hidden passages, lives in peril, surrender, succumbing, evil to be overcome. Think of the pale, frail things of Gothic literature – lives spent in shadow and solitude, in big gloomy houses and partially ruined castles; hard, doomed lives, with love or death as their only solace and, sometimes, a love beyond death.

004 There is not always a supernatural element, but there is always a sense of the unnatural: you don’t need a ghost to be haunted; you don’t need a vampire to get your neck bitten.

005 I always meant to write something about the 1,225 episodes of extraordinary US goth soap ‘Dark Shadows’, but then Jonny Depp and Tim Burton came along and ruined it all. Those two need shooting. Or at least stunning. Perhaps they’ll then make a film that has a spark of something in it that isn’t all flip, facile, ironic hipster bullshit.

006 Gothic is easy to parody, indeed, it parodies itself. It has a sense of humour, it needs one, in case it becomes overwhelmingly grim. Gothic is popular, so it renews itself from generation to generation – it’s always the new black. It fulfils the primal instinct to reach out into the darkness, never knowing quite what your fingertips will touch first.

007 The Gothic Season starts at The Showroom Cinema, Sheffield, in November. ‘Hammer Bites’ starts on the 1st of December with a screening of ‘The Curse Of Frankenstein’. ‘Dracula’ and ‘The Mummy’ follow on the 8th and 15th. I will be presenting the films, with Gothic expert Andrew Smith on hand to stop me banging on about my ex-girlfriends. On the 15th of December, there will be records played in the bar, and I will be debuting my soon to become world famous horror themed disco set. Beware, I have a record called ‘Sexy Dracula’ to play.

Notes On A Certain Tendency In British Films, 1961-1967

001 The Kitchen Sink was a watershed for British cinema, as well as a crucible in which a number of great careers were forged. Would a watershed put out a crucible, do you think? In any event, wet or hot, it was a big deal. Within a few years, however, these films exchanged youthful defiance for decadence and, finally, disillusionment. In this, they reflect the arc of the sixties, which started so brightly and optimistically but, in the end analysis, turned out to be more complex and dark than popular cliché would allow.

002 ‘A Taste Of Honey’ is a film which resonates with love and kindness, not least in its ground-breaking choice of main characters (a teenage single Mother, a homosexual, a black man) and the compassionate, sympathetic way they are presented and played. The film that launched a thousand Smiths songs, it is, ultimately, a hopeful film, especially given that, outwardly, the circumstances and surroundings are so grim. Rita Tushingham is great, and Murray Melvin is brilliant. He always is. The sixties worked for Rita Tushingham, and she worked the Sixties. In a previous decade, her options would have been limited: even assuming that she could have made it into films, her career would have perhaps been confined to playing a succession of comedy barmaids, or silly housemaids, perhaps the odd murder victim. But – in the sixties - she is a star. Funny looking, gawky, unashamedly Northern, unapologetically working class, very talented, Rita took her chance and surfed the zeitgeist to Hollywood. She came back, of course, most did, but what a ride it must have been.

003 The Swinging Sixties! Oh, for a time machine and a few hundred quid in old money. You jump in your MG and cruise to Carnaby Street to buy some new gear: you’re going out tonight – you go out every night. But the reality is that for millions the Swinging Sixties only swung for others. And what props up the dream for the select few? What underpins their new liberties, new freedoms, the new opportunities for a few lucky people at the epicentre? Alfie might be having a ball, but he does it at the expense of his girlfriend’s, who he treats like shit. In ‘Smashing Time’, Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave arrive in London from t’North and spend a frantic few weeks at the vanguard – they model, make records, have sex, get fucked; used up, worn out, they get the next bus home. Alfie ends up feeling like shit, too, like a little boy who has eaten too many sweets. Charlie Bubbles knows that feeling, and Joe Lampton, and Diana Scott and George Best and Tara Browne and Brian Jones and Marianne Faithfull. By the end of the 60’s, a great many people will have tummy ache.

004 ‘The Knack (& How To Get It)’ is a very swinging film – fast, wacky, hip, stylish – but the main theme is threat, with Rita Tushingham as Little Red Riding Hood and Ray ‘Mr. Ben’ Brooks as the big, bad wolf. His character wears leather gloves, for fuck’s sake, like a mod Dr. No . Brooks is at the epicentre of his own scene, but he needs a constant supply of mugs, victims, consumers, consumables – he’s not fussy, they are disposable items, there’s always more where they came from. He’ll wear himself out, eventually, but not before he’s worn out everyone else around him.

005 ‘Charlie Bubbles’ is perhaps the personification of what I’m fumbling around trying to say – working class talent is recognised, leading to fame and riches. But, for Charlie, it’s just not all it’s cracked up to be, the playground has become a prison cell. Not of the new world, no longer of the old, Charlie ends up slumped in a chair, barely a thought in his head apart from to try and get away somewhere – anywhere. From delight to disillusionment: it’s slightly too dramatic to say that the dream has become a nightmare, but it’s certainly become a massive pain in the arse.

006 Films that could have made the arc a little clearer: ‘Billy Liar!’, ‘Darling’, ‘Life At The Top’, ‘Alfie’, ‘Nothing But The Best’, ‘Smashing Time’, ‘Straight On ‘til Morning’. Just watch them at home in date order and draw your own conclusions, perhaps staging a Q & A with your family acting as an enquiring audience. Don’t forget to use the word ‘zeitgeist’.

007 Subverse Britannia 2 takes place at The Showroom Cinema in Sheffield on consecutive Sundays from the 10th of November, and will feature ‘A Taste Of Honey’, ‘The Knack’ and ‘Charlie Bubbles’, plus Q + A’s and records. Full details HERE.

Notes On 'Night Of The Demon'

001 Director Jacques Tourneur is something of a hero of mine, having directed a number of film noir and horror films which rank amongst my favourites. Nothing in ‘Cat People’ or ‘Out Of The Past’ can prepare you for ‘Night Of The Demon’, however. Whereas Tourneur normally gets his effects through subtlety and suggestion, shapes in the shadows, here the producer rode roughshod over his tendency to ambiguity and inserted a stop motion demon. Tourneur hated it, but I rather like the way it sets out the stall and lets you know immediately that black magic is real, monsters are real, Satan is real, Hell is a real place and, if you’re not very careful, you’re going there.

002 There’s something very persuasive about fictional worlds where witchcraft and magic are real, everyday things. In ‘Night Of The Eagle’ (1961), for instance, Peter Wyngarde finds that his academic career has been furthered by his wife’s mystical interventions, then finds out that all the faculty wives are doing the same. In ‘Cast A Deadly Spell’ (1991), magic is a mundane affair and people live alongside zombies, demons and other assorted monsters as if it were the most natural thing in the world (Fred Ward plays a private investigator called Philip Lovecraft, by the way. It’s an interesting film, check it out). In ‘Night Of The Demon’ a children’s party can instantly turn into a black magic battleground, just as the good old, cosy old British Library can become a weird, hallucogenic place of great psychic danger.

003 With regard to the demon whose night it is, it may not seem particularly scary now (in fact its face could best be described as ‘goofy’, it’s execution as ‘clunky’) but it is a real demon, not a mental suggestion, a will o’the wisp or trick of the light. The demon may resemble a hairy cousin of the animated monster from the old ‘Chewits’ advert (“He ate the Taj Mahal…”), but he is a supernatural creature who snatches up people and stomps them to death, a stone cold killer, an occult hit man from beyond our ken.

004 I’m all for scientific scepticism, but how long does it take Dana Andrews to cotton on that he is dealing with fanatics not fakers? That his soul really is in the balance? How much proof does he need? Like Brian Donleavy in the ‘Quatermass’ films, Andrews was supposed to have been drunk in pretty much every scene, but it’s hard to tell. What a trouper. The film has a great cast: Andrews, Maurice Denham, Peggy ‘Gun Crazy’ Cummins, Brian ‘Mr. Barraclough’ Wilde, Niall McGinnes, Reginald Beckwith…I’d like to think they were all drunk in pretty much every scene.

005 There is a séance scene in which medium Reginald Beckwith speaks with the voice of a small, dead girl. I have become somewhat hardened to horror over the years, i.e. repeat use has left me difficult to scare. However, all of that means nothing in the face of a middle aged man speaking in the voice of a small, dead girl, which, for some reason, I find terrifying. I would also find a small girl speaking like a middle aged bloke scary. I suppose I just don’t do disembodied voices very well, especially if they sound rather plaintive and confused.

006 The scenes with or about Rand Hobart have a sickly, oppressive feel, the sensation of dreaming that you are caught in quicksand. Tourneur draws a picture of unspeakable depravity with the merest of suggestions, a brilliant counterpoint to the explicit horror of rampaging Chewit monsters.

007 I will be presenting ‘Night Of The Demon’ at The Showroom Cinema on November 2nd at 7pm in the company of my friend Matt Cheeseman from The University Of Sheffield . The screening will be followed by a DJ set from Adrian Flanagan, one of the electronic warlocks behind the excellent Eccentronic Research Council, whose Pendle Witch obsessed album ‘1612 Underture’ I should have recommended a long time ago. If you do come, come and say hello. I promise not to stomp you to death. More HERE.

The What and The Where and The When

 

Some dates for your diary. Well, actually, they’re dates for my diary, but you can come along too. I’d like that. My thanks to Matthew Cheeseman, a great facilitator who has made all this happen.

So, I will be at the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield for a fair proportion of November and December, introducing films and answering questions and playing records and generally enjoying myself by wallowing in all the things I love: British films, the sixties, horror, Hammer and scary old telly.

I’ll provide more detail as the events get closer but, for now, here’s a summary of where I will be at certain times. I feel like I’m setting up a series of alibis. Anyway, there’s more information and booking details, etc. HERE.

NOVEMBER 

Saturday, 2nd from 7pm: ‘Night Of The Demon’ (1957) + DJ Set from The Eccentronic Research Council 

Sunday, 10th from 2pm: ‘Subverse Britannia 2: A Taste Of Honey’ (1961) + Q & A 

Sunday, 17th from 2pm: ‘Subverse Britannia 2: The Knack’ (1965) + Q & A* 

Sunday, 24th from 2pm: ‘Subverse Britannia 2: Charlie Bubbles' (1967) + Q & A + themed records in the bar. 

DECEMBER 

Sunday, 1st from 2pm: ‘Hammer Bites: Curse Of Frankenstein’ (1957) + Q & A 

Tuesday, 3rd from 7pm: ‘Ghost Stories At Christmas 1: Whistle & I’ll Come To You + Lost Hearts + Stigma’

Sunday, 8th from 2pm: ‘Hammer Bites: Dracula’ (1958) + Q & A 

Sunday, 15th from 2pm: ‘Hammer Bites: The Mummy’ (1959) + Q & A + horror themed records in the bar.  

Tuesday, 17th from 7pm:  ‘Ghost Stories At Christmas 2: A Warning To The Curious + The Ash Tree’ 

*I won’t physically be at this one, so it will be twice as good. I will be sending good vibes, however.

Short Announcement

I know I’ve only just got back, but I have decided to put Island Of Terror on hiatus for a while. I seem to have less to say than I used to, and am saying it in a less interesting way, so I’m going to shuffle off for a bit and do a few other things. British horror and sci fi and all the rest of it are still massively important to me so, believe me, I will be back and we can carry on where we left off.

In the meantime, I will still be contributing to ‘Mounds & Circles’, the smut / art blog, as well as to ‘The Pseudoscientific World Of TOMTIT’, on which Fearlono and myself will shortly be presenting our first original audio works (we’re not calling it music). In addition, there is, or was, ‘Sub-Machine Gun’.

Please continue (or start) to follow this site for updates, especially regarding some interesting ‘Island’ related events coming up in November and December.

I’m not going to say too much more, as I will be coming back here and will be around elsewhere, but thanks for all your support and your interest over the last few years, it’s much appreciated.

TTFN,

Paul

Burn, Baby, Burn

Disco Inferno courtesy of 'The Bitch'.