Clackers

Some more shots of 1973 Clacton On Sea.

FYI, you can no longer ride your motorbike onto the pier; the Ghost Train is long gone; the Steel Stella rollercoaster burned down only a few months after the show was filmed, and the Dolphinarium closed in the nineteen eighties. When I went last year, I sought out / trespassed into the abandoned Dolphinarium and found it slowly decaying, barred to the public but still intact, concrete seats,  half-empty pools and all, although I believe they have plans to do something with it this year.

Here's an aerial shot of how it looked a couple of years ago. I didn't take it: I don't like heights. The green square is the pool.

Thank you for your attention.

The Tomorrow People: The Vanishing Earth

'The Vanishing Earth' is a 1973 story from the second series of 'The Tomorrow People'. The four episodes take place during a time of increased natural disasters, which turn out to be aftershocks from illicit 'magmanite' mining activity conducted by aliens Sandor and Spidron, a ruthless dolly bird and a sibilant root / humanoid hybrid dressed in a Torquemada outfit respectively.

It's all pretty silly, but I find it irresistible simply because much of it was filmed in Clacton On Sea, exactly sixteen miles from where I was brought up. In the seventies I'd go there to pick up sweets from the grabbers and shells from the beach; in the eighties I went to try and pick up girls; in recent years I've taken my own family and picked up the cost.

The pier and the beach surrounding it is one of my favourite places, so it's great to see it recorded in this way, especially at a time when I was getting to know it and it still seemed like one of the most exciting destinations on Earth.

Valerie Leon, French Violinist

Valerie Leon made her screen debut in 'To Kill A Saint', a 1967 episode of the long running 'Saint' series. In the first two shots she appears to be one of the over-dressed participants in a three way but, as the bottom snap depicts, it was all one of Simon Templar's cunning, smug ruses.

The third picture also highlights one of Valerie's most endearing acting quirks: she quite often looks directly into the camera and gives the viewer a secret smirk. Christ, I hope she does, because otherwise I might need some sort of psychiatric intervention.

Not A Bummer

The last clip from ‘Marc’ for now features his dancetroopers ‘Heart Throb’ jiggling about to the current T-Rex single ‘Celebrate Summer’. It’s a dull routine with a boring backdrop which nevertheless contains some elements that the girls quite obviously struggle with, particularly the sudden backwards arching hand to hand shift that accompanies the ‘summer is heaven in 77’ segment.

I feel a bit sorry for them, really, and for Marc as, despite featuring this song virtually every week on a popular television show, it didn’t chart. Oh, and then he died.

Nowadays, of course, his passing would have catapulted the single to Number One, but people were a lot harder in the olden days.

Derren Nesbitt, Actor

Derren Nesbitt as leather clad heavy Lucas Guardino in 'Dead Man's Shoes', an episode of 'Man In A Suitcase' (1967).  

More Fashions Of The Indoor League

We're back at The Queens Hotel, Leeds, 1973, for the second episode of 'Indoor League'. The fashions are our focus, and what a lot of fashions there are: the green, the brown, and the ugly.

This is Keith Naylor from Scunthorpe. He's 26 (!), married, but his wife hates darts. The red shirt is a bold statement, and I believe that the top button must be done up at all times lest his huge collar and large ears catch a draft and carry him off balance.

Interesting ensemble on the Robert de Niro / Bobby Darin hybrid: the cardigan is a shade of chocolate perhaps best described as 'coffee enema', yet his aqua marine shirt and yellow tie show some dash. His trousers appear to be pulled up extraordinarily high. His friend seems to like this. The gentlemen with the hair is either mentally undressing someone or adding them to his shit list. It's a real list, written in shit.

This is Malcolm Rider, but I think he looks more like a 'Ted' or a 'Dick'. Everything about Malcolm is careful, including his Bar Billiards playing. Neat but nondescript jacket, matching shirt, and even a vaguely paisley tie in a mouldy green. His hair is immaculate. Strange, then, that he should have forgotten to put his teeth in. He must have known he was going to be on the telly.

I could probably write 5,000 words on this shot alone, a study in concentration. 4,500 words would be about the couple on the right. I think that they're engaged, but they haven't done it yet. This one does look like a Malcolm, the sort of man who sees a rust coloured jumper and thinks 'I'll get that, it will go under my itchy jacket'. His fiancee (she looks like a Brenda) is a knitter, and her torquoise cardy is a tribute to her art. They're saving up to get married, but they'll have to live with Brenda's Mum for a while until they can get on the housing list. I expect they're still together, and that this remains one of the highlights of their relationship.

Then, as now, students make for perfect TV audience members: they're easily entertained, have nothing else to do, and will travel enormous distances for a free buffet. This lot (all in their late teens / early twenties, remember) are pretty atypical 'Indoor League'-ers: they're quite attractive, for a start, and they're all dressed differently to each other. There's something slightly subversive and dangerous about them: the Baader-Meinhoff Gang watching a shove ha'penny tournament.

More soon, but for now - 'Ah'll see'thee'.

Girls and Boys Come Out To Play

'Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly' (to give it's Sunday name) is an interesting and intriguing film directed by 'Island Of Terror' pater familias, Freddie Francis. It's one of the most unusual films he made in his long career, a strange hybrid of drama, horror and surrealism with Pinter-esque dialogue and a streak of very black humour.

The title characters are all members of a disturbed and dysfunctional family who live in a large mansion in Regent's Park and are permanently engaged in 'The Game', an elaborate and strict psychodrama of their own devising based on role playing and the hierachy of the household. Every now and again they send out the comely Girly (Vanessa Howard) to entice 'new friends' back into the house. The new friends become part of, or rather victims of, The Game, as they invariably break the rules and suffer the consequences.

When Girly picks up hardened hustler Michael Bryant, however, he decides to start his own game, with his own rules...

An excellent film, full of surprises, it's now on DVD after many years of undeserved obscurity, and, if I weren't me, and didn't already have it, I'd definitely get it. 

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly

F*** Me, It's Freddie

FMIF as David Curry in weird swinging incest murder drama 'Goodbye, Gemini' (1970). As a special bonus, and because I like their expressions so much, here he is with Mike Pratt.

When I Kill, You Kill

'Goodbye Gemini' (aka 'Twinsanity') is a complex and occasionally confusing tale about the unhealthy relationship between twins and the even less salubrious relationships they have with others. The film addresses such adult issues as incest, transvestism, drug use, male rape, murder and suicide and places them all in the milieu of London as it swings decadently into the seventies. Virtually everyone in the film is either a lunatic or a scumbag, sometimes both. It's not a particularly uplifting film, but it has some striking moments, great music and a very cool cast.

Judy Geeson and Martin Potter play the freaky twins, Jacky and Julian. Potter has one of those faces that is unwholesomely handsome: his features are well formed, but there's something sickly and slightly creepy about it (no offence, Mart, Christopher Walken had / has the same look). The cast is rounded out by the incredibly annoying Alexis Kanner, Sir Michael Redgrave, the great Mike Pratt (aka Jeff Randall, the non deceased detective) and your friend and mine, Sir Freddie Jones.

Here's some music from a critical point in the film: 'Ritual Murder',  by Christopher Gunning.  

Goodbye, Gemini

Ace of Wands

'Ace Of Wands' is a show I never watched, most of which has now been wiped. What a crappy post. Fantastic stuff tomorrow, promise.