Beasts: Buddyboy

'Buddyboy', the third episode in Nigel Kneale's 1976 ITV series 'Beasts' is probably the least believable of the series, and, as its story concerns the vengeful ghost of a performing dolphin, it's possibly the silliest as well. Kneale's unbelievable and silly is still streets ahead of others logical and heavy, however, and, as usual, he's absolutely right - any dolphin dragged from the wide open sea and forced to do tricks in a tiny pool in a shitty part of London would be pretty ticked off, even beyond the grave.

Martin Shaw plays Dave, a bubble permed porn magnate in the making who wants the abandoned dolphinarium as the latest outpost in his burgeoning smut empire; Pamela Moiseiwitsch (great name) is the strange young woman seemingly possessed by the titular mammal.

Kamik Women's Jennifer Rain Boot

My thanks to Herbert M. Tanner for one of the most positive and encouraging comments made about this blog for ages --

'Fantastic post, very informative. I'm wondering why the opposite specialists of this sector do not realize this. You should continue your writing. I'm confident, you have a great readers' base already!'

His website is, apparently, selling 'Kamik Women's Jennifer Rain Boot' ('serious protection can also be stylish'), so hurry along there right now and enter all your details.

Thanks, Herbie! 

U-W.

Derren Nesbitt, Actor

In many ways, the defining role of Derren Nesbitt's career was as Gestapo Major Von Halpen in the classic 'Where Eagles Dare' (1968). If, for instance, you were talking to some bizarre person who didn't know who Derren was, I guarantee that they would remember him in this film (if they say 'what's Where Eagles Dare?', then just walk away - to hell with them). 

Derren does his really rather good German accent, and, despite being the most ruthless, arrogant Nazi you can imagine who would clearly do truly awful things in the name of the Fuhrer, he also manages to be quirky and interesting and, well, sort of charming, up until the very second that dead-eyed psycho Clint Eastwood shoots him in the head.

Living Laser Beam

Professor Paul Steiner is a brilliant, pockmarked scientist working on a teleportation ray. It works on inanimate objects, but guinea pigs hate it. Due to some behind the scenes machinations (the purpose of which is not divulged) Steiner is in danger of having his funding removed, despite the incredible nature of his work (surely governments would pay very good money for a machine which makes people disappear? The re-materialisation is an optional bonus). When a demonstration is sabotaged, Steiner flips out and repeats the experiment with only the ditsy office secretary to assist him. The silly girl aborts the process half way through, making Steiner reappear miles away, horribly disfigured, filled with fatal electrical energy and, frankly, massively pissed off.

Excellent for about forty minutes, ‘The Projected Man’ builds up to Steiner’s calamitous experiment very well, but gradually falls apart after this pivotal event, becoming episodic and unfocused and, despite a rising death toll, rather boring. One of the things I particularly like about the first half is that (as a non-scientist / idiot) the science seems to make sense, and grown up explanations are given for what takes place; I also like the garish colours, the attractive and intelligent female lead (Mary Peach) and good support work from Mr. Smooth himself, Ronald Allen (David Hunter from ‘Crossroads’ for our elderly readers).

Much of the horror is derived from Steiner’s ruined face, a horrible, half made up mess of raw sinews, exposed teeth and a large, clouded over eye, and the rest from his habit of zapping people to death with a mutated claw like hand. He even kills Sam Kydd, and what harm did Sam Kydd ever do anybody?

So - a game of two halves, I suppose, but that’s okay, they mostly are in this line of business.

The Projected Man

Secret Of The Dummy

Ventriloquist’s dummies have been a staple of the horror genre ever since film makers realised that the majority of people found them really creepy. ‘Devil Doll’ is patchy and occasionally amateurish but, at its best, it’s really quite astonishing.

The Great Vorelli (Brent Halliday) is an intense hypnotist with a penchant for humiliating his subjects by making them fear for their life or strip off their clothes at his suggestion. This deeply unethical man with a stick on beard culminates his performance by bringing out Hugo, an ugly ventriloquists dummy with whom he has an extremely uneasy relationship. The act is not so much ‘gottle of geer’ as ‘Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?’ – they bicker and bitch, engaged in a bitter battle of wits which always ends with the browbeaten Hugo standing up and walking towards the audience to apologise for his bad behaviour. There’s not a dry seat in the house.

Vorelli, a first rate cad who was once a doctor but was struck off in mysterious circumstances, ‘studied in the mystic east’ and, it transpires, used mind transference techniques to put the soul of his assistant into the hideous wooden doll. Why? Well, we never get to that but, presumably to see what it would be like. The answer, of course, is creepy, incredibly creepy. What’s more, the evil Vorelli has his eye on voluptuous heiress Marianne (played by the gorgeous Yvonne Romain), hypnotising her to become a twist expert and then, in a nasty turn, his sex slave. Ultimately, Vorelli fancies transferring her soul into a female doll, and having all her money for himself, the bastard.

Can anyone snatch Marianne from the nefarious Vorelli’s mentalist clutches? Well, certainly not her elderly and ineffectual boyfriend – but luckily forty two inches of angry wood containing a tortured soul is on hand to save the day in a tremendous dummy vs. man battle royale.

'Devil Doll’ is the work of Canadian director Lindsay Shonteff. Shonteff specialised in quirky genre films on a shoestring budget, but was also a creative and occasionally surprising director. There are lots of odd shots and effects in ‘Devil Doll’, but they are used intermittently and, as such, the look of the film is slightly uneven. The script is full of holes, of course, but sticks to its rather silly guns and doesn’t pull back from giving us a purely supernatural solution. Most of all, the scenes between Volari and Hugo have a horribly uncomfortable intensity, and the bits where Hugo wanders around are pure horror.

Here’s a clip where Vorelli convinces Hugo to murder his assistant, Magda. There is no strong narrative reason for this (she has only vaguely hinted that she might say something to somebody), but it does give the audience three cheap thrills: Magda’s fulsome breast; Hugo on the move, and an animated dummy stabbing a naked woman to death. The sparse score is particularly good, but I don’t know who it’s by. Anyone know?

As a final thing (for now - I feel that I might come back to this wonky masterpiece), please see this screen grab of William Sylvester (the nominal star, and the eldery and ineffectual love interest we talked about earlier) doing what he does best - nothing, with a drink in his hand. Take a look to his right - interesting and ironic entertainment on offer in London in those days...

Devil Doll

Fink Fink

The wonderful Jack Hargreaves looks at birds, specifically British Finches.

I had a non-British finch once, a Zebra Finch, to be precise. He took a chunk out of my finger, and later had a heart attack and died when next door's cat walked in through the sliding doors and jumped up at the cage. He could dish, but he could not take. Lightweight.

Trapped In Wax

A classic from the dark, dank cellar of Louis Tussaud's: Frankenstein's Monster. Note random head in background - I wonder who it used to be.

F**** Me, It's Freddie

FMIF as Thufir Hawat in David Lynch's adaptation of 'Dune'. As you will know, Thufir Hawat is the Mentat Master of Assassins serving the House Atreides. He also has massive eyebrows.

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.

Radiophonic of the Day

Paddy Kingsland: The Changes (Suite)

Music from 'The Changes', a 1975 BBC series for 'older children' about the aftermath of a technological breakdown. I didn't watch it at the time, as I was far too busy making machine gun noises in the woods.

Roll Up

'Circus Of Fear' is basically quite a slow crime film, where the proceeeds of a daring wage snatch (on Tower Bridge) are hidden at the headquarters of a travelling circus resting up for the winter. The mysterious man who hid it there is quite precious about his ill-gotten gains, and tends to chuck great big knives at anyone who gets close to it.

Rather dull and meandering, there are, however, some intriguing sub-plots, including a masked Christopher Lee as a lion tamer posing as his own horribly scarred brother, although these mostly come to nothing and the film ends quite abruptly and dishonestly. Most disappointingly, the killings are fairly prosaic and rarely exploit the myriad of murderous possibilities provided by the circus environ (see 'Circus of Horrors' or 'Beserk' for tips).

Klaus Kinski pops up in this, as he did in several British B pictures before he established himself as a sort of star. He isn't given much to do, but his extraordinary face is a welcome extra in a professional but not particularly exciting film.

Circus of Fear

Towering Terror

'Circus of Horrors' is one of those fantastically over the top Anglo-Amalgated horror films that so disgusted the Establishment and titillated audiences in the late fifties and early sixties with their relentless sex, perversity and sadism. This one is about an insane plastic surgeon who uses the anonymity and mobility of a big top show to continue his (actually pretty successful) experiments, pausing now and again to knock off people who might blow his cover. 

Fifty years on, it's more circus than horrors, more schlock than shock, although the acts (supplied, of course, by Billy Smart) are excellent, there are some very attractive ladies, an enjoyably manic performance from Anton Diffring and an interesting shared subtext with 'Peeping Tom' (another Anglo release in the same year) - that hideous disfigurement can be a bit of a turn on.

Here's the trailer. Sadly it doesn't really feature the stuffed bear that sees off Donald Pleasence, or indeed the man in a gorilla suit who causes a lot of problems for Anton Diffring, but don't let that put you off - it's very informative in all other respects. 

Circus of Horrors

Smart

Here's a great clip of Jon Pertwee's appearance on a 1974 edition of 'Billy Smarts Circus'.

There's a lot to like about it, but I particularly enjoyed: Gabriella Smart mouthing her brother's lines to him and then giving him stage directions (to be fair to David, he's under a lot of pressure for a seven year old); the audience's sudden delight when they realise that it really is Dr. Who; Jon Pertwee's charm and obvious enjoyment at being there and, finally, the Whomobile jerking around as the Doctor tries to drive off. Lovely.

Trapped In Wax

Louis Tussaud's rarely gets new figures these days and, when it does, they tend to be rather slapdash. This is, apparently, HRH Prince William.

Valerine Leon, Model

Valerie Leon as model Juanita Wayne in 'Sinister Sounds', a 1974 episode of 'Special Branch'.