Suckers

‘Incense For The Damned’ is a film of contrasts: it’s annoying and boring. As a yardstick of just how badly it all turned out, Robert Hartford-Davis (the director of ‘Gonks Go Beat’) actually tried to have his name removed from it. In the end, it was delayed for a couple of years, re-edited (seemingly with a bread knife in the dark) by the studio and stuck out for a couple of weeks in 1970 as a supporting feature before disappearing, only re-emerging in the 1990’s as a BBC1 Friday night film favourite (I have a theory that the regular showing of this film is a Corporation in-joke).

Based on the book ‘Doctors Wear Scarlet’ by Simon Raven, ‘Incense…' (also known as ‘Bloodsuckers’) tells the story of a promising Oxford Classics student (Patrick Mower, the walking nostril) who has an illustrious academic career and a good marriage all mapped out for him by his mentor (Peter Cushing, wasted) until he embarks on a field trip to Crete where he becomes the mindless suck bag of a busty Mediterranean vampire, Chriesis (Imogen Hassall, slathered in so much fake tan that she looks like permanently dirty 'Playschool' doll Hamble).

Cushing sends two men to bring Mower home and, before you know it, there’s a whole lot of donkey riding, a papier mache rock slide and a near seven minute orgy scene with a freakbeat soundtrack that is probably the best part of the film but does not appear in all the versions. Ultimately, busty vampire dispatched, Mower is returned to Oxford, only to prove publicly and bloodily that vampirism is not cured by simply a good talking to and a change of scenery…

Not a good film by any standards, one can only hope that the cast and crew enjoyed their holiday. Here's the best bit...

Tomorrow Has No Idea

We've looked at psychedelic Beatles cartoons before, remember, and this one is for perhaps their most psychedelic song ever, the astonishing 'Tomorrow Never Knows'. John Lennon envisaged this song as a call to prayer from the Dalai Lama, echoing and reverberating through the Himalayas to the faithful below. At no point did he ever mention falling down a hole into the middle of the world whilst out on a ramble, go go dancing natives or dinosaurs, 'cause I would have remembered.

Strawberry Fields Whatever

I'm not a huge Beatles fan, by any means, but as a kid starting to learn about music, I was fascinated by their transition from cheery moptops to hollow eyed dope fiends and the desolate sounding psychedelic records they made whilst under the influence. At the time, I associated hallucogenic drugs with madness and darkness and all those newspaper taxis and fish and finger pies presented a world that unsettled me - perhaps not a bad trip, but certainly a very bad dream.

From 1965 to 1967, the Fab Four had their very own American syndicated cartoon. Produced by the King Brothers, it was pure cash in trash, and the group had virtually nothing to do with it other than lending their music and likenesses - but obviously not their voices which, as presented here, are fundamentally wrong in every respect. Each show was  loosely and crassly based around a Beatles song, and also featured a 'sing-a-long' where random images acompanied a tune as the lyrics ran across the screen.

Despite the group's real life evolution over the show's two year run, the cartoon Beatles remained resolutely stuck in 1964/65 - mop topped, sharp suited and with the individual roles they had created when they still cared about stuff like that - John the acerbic leader, Paul the boyish charmer, George the deep one / mystic (he is given what sounds like an Indian accent) and Ringo the loveable lackwit.

When faced with the disparity between their mass market, cheapo product and the increasingly sophisticated image and odder and odder music of its inspiration, King Brothers did what any production company would do - they went quietly mental...
  

I've always thought that there was something dead at the centre of 'Strawberry Fields Forever', anyway - a sort of blank, burned out horror and, somehow, this garish, childish, baffling cartoon seems the perfect accompaniment.

As cartoon John says in the show in his stupid half toff, half cockney voice: 'it's all in the mind, you know'. Nothing is real.