The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes

Charles Gray as Eugene Valmont, the French Detective.

Fashions Of The Indoor League

I'd like to share some images from the first ever episode of 'Indoor League', a pub sports show which ran from 1973 to 1977. It's hypnotic, and I'm obsessed with it, although only the first series has been released on DVD to date.

The premise was straightforward: hire a hall in Leeds (first the Queens Hotel, then the Irish Centre); fill said hall with punters; organise darts, arm wrestling, table football, billiards and skittles tournaments; film the results and stick it on telly. Fred Trueman introduced, pint and pipe in hand, the mutton chopped embodiment of working class sportsman made good.

Nearly forty years on, it says some interesting things about working class life in the nineteen seventies, not least in the way the majority of people look: lumpy, pasty, tired, old. The 'fashions' are a long way from Mr. Fish, too: Glam never rubbed any sparkle over 'Indoor League', and the delicate touch of Vidal Sassoon is entirely absent. I find it fascinating, especially as I recognise most of the looks from my own childhood.

Here's Mr. Trueman in action. His ensemble, if I may call it that, is extraordinary: an ill-fitting symphony in browns. His hair hasn't seen a brush for a while, just the heavy stroke of a ham like hand dipped in Brylcreem or Suarfega. Fashion? He couldn't give a toss.

The young athlete at the Skittles Table is Philip Senior from Barnsley, a 'right young upstart' who is showing the older generation a thing or two. His shoulder length hair is his first challenge to authority, but his outfit, which features three variations on olive, is more conservative.We'll come back to Mr. Senior, I think.

I also like the judge to the right, wearing the regulation 'Indoor League' officials uniform of a double breasted bottle green blazer and a chunky yellow polo neck. The kid in the middle of the audience appears to be wearing a rainbow patterned knitted tie, which I like very much; the young man to his right may be wearing an open neck shirt and neckerchief, a very daring move indeed in this company.

These two sets of herberts are deadly table football rivals, Messrs Crane and Kelly and De Mauro and Elliot, respectively. Crane and Kelly are students, so look like shit, with sheets of thick, unkempt hair. They've both rolled up their acrylic sleeves to get on with the job - it's the most work they've done for a while. Elliot is sporting big glasses and a hand knit jumper, but it's De Mauro that catches the eye. Perhaps its the continental roots his exotic surname hints at, but his Dennis the Menace meets 'The Prisoner' is something almost approaching a fashion statement. The big blue Yorkshire TV badge should have a number on it, really.

Finally, meet Charlie Ellis from Bradford. Physically somewhere between Robert Shaw and Big Daddy, Charlie is rock hard enough to make a splash with big, bold primary colours: a rusty red airtex cardigan and a lemon sherbet long sleeved tee. Out of shot, some manly chunky gold finger wear. His striking fair hair hints at comb over, but his eyes dare you to fucking mention it.

We'll be back on the pub game catwalk soon. You can't say I didn't warn you.

I Will Be King

In 1972, about five minutes before 'Ziggy Stardust' came out, Marc Bolan said of his sort of mate David Bowie: "I don’t think that David has anywhere near the charisma or balls that I have. Or Alice has. Or Donny Osmond has got. He’s not gonna make it, in any sort of way."

Five years later, in what would have been a humiliating reversal of fortunes for anyone less insanely egotistical than Bolan, Bowie appeared on 'Marc' and promptly blew everything and everybody else that had appeared on the show so far into tiny shards of insignificance. David's presence always reminds me of royalty visiting a youth club, then cajoled into playing table tennis or deejaying for the press. The difference is, of course, that Prince Charles can’t DJ but David can, most assuredly, sing.

Mimes Gone By

I know I'm supposed to find David Bowie's early work laughable, but I never have. All I hear is clever, catchy songs with interesting arrangements and quirky, amusing lyrics. Most of his work of this era is not remotely cool, of course, and perhaps therein lays the problem - that, and the mime.

'Love You Til Tuesday' was made in 1969 to showcase Dave and his many talents. I think it's bloody good, and I'm surprised he didn't get a TV show out of it, I mean, he's a billion times better than Lulu. and she was on telly all the time.

Here he is performing 'When I'm Five'. It's all cutesy and cloying on the surface, but terrifying just underneath, with Bowie giving an excellent, extraordinarily creepy performance, perhaps inspired by Hywel Bennet's similar turn in 'Twisted Nerve' the previous year. 

David apparently wore a wig throughout this production after cutting his hair short for an audition for the film of 'The Virgin Soldiers' (starring Hywel Bennett, funnily enough). He didn't get the part, but did appear as an extra with a whopping two seconds of background screen time. 

Turned On

‘The Sorcerers’ was Michael Reeves second film, and the first to have any kind of budget and distribution. Starring Boris Karloff and Reeves’ alter ego / fantasy figure Ian Olgilvy it tells of an elderly man who, aided and abetted by his even more cracked wife, invents a new form of hypnosis which allows the ageing and infirm couple to experience excitement and emotion through a much younger and more active subject (Olgilvy) who they manipulate like a lanky puppet. This being 1967, of course, there are many vicarious thrills to be had, including groovy dancing, making it with dolly birds, fast driving, drinking, drug taking, pushing girls off diving boards and, as kicks get harder to come by, violence and murder.  

It all ends badly, and Professor Marcus Montserrat (fantastic name) and his Missus soon learn that evil acts have consequences, even if you get a tall posh bloke to do them for you.

The Sorcerers

Disoriented

'Scream and Scream Again’ is a ridiculously confusing film which only (partially) comes together after an hour of disparate scenes set in various places with a raft of actors and actresses, many of whom later admitted they didn’t know what was going on either. For all its muddle, however, it’s very effective, and the individual story strands are very watchable, just don’t expect a neat and tidy conclusion.

Starring two Horror colossi (Cushing / Price) and Christopher Lee, the film was directed by Gordon Hessler, who had already made a couple of UK based AIP films with Vincent Price and would later go on to direct the greatest TV movie ever made, ‘KISS Meet The Phantom Of The Park’. The story was based on a 'novel' by pulp writer Peter Saxon (actually, a generic pen name used by several writers), who will be cropping up again on this blog sometime in the future.

Promotional activity at the time made a big deal of the fact that Fritz Lang had watched ‘Scream and Scream Again’ and, when asked his opinion, thought it excellent, although he was 80 at the time and may have misheard the question. Actually, that’s a cheap jibe: the narrative may be all over the place, but, overall, it’s good cinema, with some startling individual scenes.

Scream and Scream Again

Derren Nesbitt, Actor

Derren Nesbitt flashes some dentistry as Burke in 'Burke & Hare'.

Radiophonic Of The Day

Dick Mills: Adagio

Tomorrow's History

The 1974 Dr. Who Annual was one of my most treasured posessions when I was a kid, a book that I read until it literally fell apart. I got another one a few years ago, and as I flicked through, realised that I still knew every word and picture. I might have a copy cremated with me. In your face, collectors of the future.

Anyway, here's a nice PDF for you to download and have a look at.

My favourite non-Doctor bit? 'Malevolent Monsters'. I must have copied this rather scrappy drawing of a werewolf hundreds of times.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes

Douglas Wilmer as Professor Augustus S.F.X Van Dusen, 'The Thinking Machine'.

Man, It's...

Geoff Love wasn't just the permanently grinning musical arranger and arm waver on the endless and excerable 'SingalongaMax' series, you know. Under the pseudonym of Mandingo, he gathered many of the seventies finest session players together and gave them a simple brief: easy listening meets exotica meets afro rhythms meets mental.

Mandingo released four amazing albums, and here's your first sample: 'Mumbo Jumbo' from 'Mandingo III: A Story Of Survival'. Please ensure your socks are secured.

Stone Age Highway

'The Ridgeway' is a short tourist information film which was broadcast constantly on television up until the late eighties. A 5,000 year old man made thoroughfare which once stretched from Dorset to the Wash in North Norfolk, the 87 miles of The Ridgeway which weave between Avebury in Wiltshire and Tring in Buckinghamshire was opened as a protected national trail in 1973, and the promotional film was made shortly afterwards.

It's usual for films like this to place a strong emphasis on the echoes of history, but here the ghosts are shown literally, long dead figures which fade in and out of vision, but are indelibly recorded on the landscape.

I wasn't going to post the whole film (all two and a half minutes of it), but, now I think about it, it seems mean not to, so here it is.

Oh, and if you do have any queries, please don't write to the Countryside Commission as they ceased to exist in 1999 and their offices in Cambridge Gate have been converted to flats, albeit flats that cost £8,000,000 each.

The Many Moods Of Jason King

11/30

Scott Two