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THE LONGEST JOURNEY
The Longest Journey. March 20th, 2021, 08:58 pm. 3. The Grass is Greener (1960), dir. Stanley Donen. This was screened on Talking Pictures TV, but I watched it as part of a Zoom-based meet-up organised by Scalarama Leeds. We logged in and chatted for half an hour before the film, then switched the Zoom off to watch it in ourseparate abodes
8. BRAM STOKER (1902), THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA: STRANGE Though the book was published in 1902, the text specifies that the story is set in in 1897-1898 (i.e. just after Bram had finished Dracula ), and in those few short years the area had changed quite distinctly from a lonely fishing village to a fashionable holiday destination thanks to the opening of a 6. DAVID PINNER (1967) RITUAL: STRANGE_COMPLEX Although the final blood of sunset is two hours in the future, already the sky is a glass of honey. A fringe of cloud haunts the skyline of the sea. And the sea is searching out the secrets of the shells on the wet beaches. Seaweed, the clutch of the crab, and the starfish waitfor the next wave.
2. ANGUS HALL (1971), THE SCARS OF DRACULA: STRANGE Now I am going to attempt some book reviews. I am seriously behind on these. I read this particular book last February, and while that's not a problem in this case because it is a Hammer Dracula book, so I took detailed and obsessive notes about it at the time, that isn't true ofeverything I read
4. JOHN BURKE (1967), DRACULA This is the second Hammer Dracula novelisation I was able to get hold of, and I read it during my holiday to Romania in May / June . I took copious notes on it at the time, in a notebook which I was also using (in a different part of it) to record my experiences of the holiday asa whole. On the
PETER CUSHING LIVES IN WHITSTABLE: STRANGE_COMPLEX Peter Cushing (and, until her untimely death in 1971, his wife Helen), lived in this one: As you can see, it is adorned by a blue plaque, and it is notably the only one in that row to have large bushes growing in its front garden. Presumably living in a famous actor's former house is a mixed blessing for its current occupants. CURTAIN MATERIALS: STRANGE_COMPLEX This post is mainly an aide memoire for myself, and a convenient way of showing my Mum what kinds of designs I do and don't like. So the post is really addressed to her: others feel free to ignore if you wish, or comment if you want to! The context is that I'm going for an Art Nouveau look in my NEW WHO 4.1, PARTNERS IN CRIME: STRANGE_COMPLEX I've become increasingly nervous over the past few weeks about how this series of Who is going to pan out. I'd better not say why in too much detail for the sake of those who don't like to hoover up spoilers with quite the same glee as I do. But I think it's safe to say that the sheer quantities of 4. LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE (1946), DIR. JEAN COCTEAU: STRANGE 4. La Belle et la Bête (1946), dir. Jean Cocteau. A couple of weeks ago, ms_siobhan and I spent a very enjoyable evening at the Howard Assembly Rooms in the Grand Theatre building, Leeds. The first half of the evening consisted of a lecture by Christopher Frayling, roaming around the various topics of a book he has recently published, which 3. ZINDA LAASH, AKA THE LIVING CORPSE / DRACULA IN This is a Pakistani version of Dracula , based very heavily on Hammer's Dracula (1958). If that sounds like a tricky thing to imagine, this trailer may help a little: I watched it with ms_siobhan a couple of weeks ago, and it took us a while to get the measure of it. Neither of us had ever seen aTHE LONGEST JOURNEY
The Longest Journey. March 20th, 2021, 08:58 pm. 3. The Grass is Greener (1960), dir. Stanley Donen. This was screened on Talking Pictures TV, but I watched it as part of a Zoom-based meet-up organised by Scalarama Leeds. We logged in and chatted for half an hour before the film, then switched the Zoom off to watch it in ourseparate abodes
8. BRAM STOKER (1902), THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA: STRANGE Though the book was published in 1902, the text specifies that the story is set in in 1897-1898 (i.e. just after Bram had finished Dracula ), and in those few short years the area had changed quite distinctly from a lonely fishing village to a fashionable holiday destination thanks to the opening of a 6. DAVID PINNER (1967) RITUAL: STRANGE_COMPLEX Although the final blood of sunset is two hours in the future, already the sky is a glass of honey. A fringe of cloud haunts the skyline of the sea. And the sea is searching out the secrets of the shells on the wet beaches. Seaweed, the clutch of the crab, and the starfish waitfor the next wave.
2. ANGUS HALL (1971), THE SCARS OF DRACULA: STRANGE Now I am going to attempt some book reviews. I am seriously behind on these. I read this particular book last February, and while that's not a problem in this case because it is a Hammer Dracula book, so I took detailed and obsessive notes about it at the time, that isn't true ofeverything I read
4. JOHN BURKE (1967), DRACULA This is the second Hammer Dracula novelisation I was able to get hold of, and I read it during my holiday to Romania in May / June . I took copious notes on it at the time, in a notebook which I was also using (in a different part of it) to record my experiences of the holiday asa whole. On the
PETER CUSHING LIVES IN WHITSTABLE: STRANGE_COMPLEX Peter Cushing (and, until her untimely death in 1971, his wife Helen), lived in this one: As you can see, it is adorned by a blue plaque, and it is notably the only one in that row to have large bushes growing in its front garden. Presumably living in a famous actor's former house is a mixed blessing for its current occupants. CURTAIN MATERIALS: STRANGE_COMPLEX This post is mainly an aide memoire for myself, and a convenient way of showing my Mum what kinds of designs I do and don't like. So the post is really addressed to her: others feel free to ignore if you wish, or comment if you want to! The context is that I'm going for an Art Nouveau look in my NEW WHO 4.1, PARTNERS IN CRIME: STRANGE_COMPLEX I've become increasingly nervous over the past few weeks about how this series of Who is going to pan out. I'd better not say why in too much detail for the sake of those who don't like to hoover up spoilers with quite the same glee as I do. But I think it's safe to say that the sheer quantities of 4. LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE (1946), DIR. JEAN COCTEAU: STRANGE 4. La Belle et la Bête (1946), dir. Jean Cocteau. A couple of weeks ago, ms_siobhan and I spent a very enjoyable evening at the Howard Assembly Rooms in the Grand Theatre building, Leeds. The first half of the evening consisted of a lecture by Christopher Frayling, roaming around the various topics of a book he has recently published, which 3. ZINDA LAASH, AKA THE LIVING CORPSE / DRACULA IN This is a Pakistani version of Dracula , based very heavily on Hammer's Dracula (1958). If that sounds like a tricky thing to imagine, this trailer may help a little: I watched it with ms_siobhan a couple of weeks ago, and it took us a while to get the measure of it. Neither of us had ever seen a 5. CORRIDOR OF MIRRORS (1948), DIR. TERENCE YOUNG: STRANGE Mangin is a classic tragic tormented hero who wears cravats, rides around town in a hansom cab and turns out to own a vast faux-Renaissance Venetian palace full of ancient jewellery, fine dresses and the titular corridor of mirrors. That night, he woos society girl Mifanwy Conway (Edana Romney), taking her to his home, introducing her to his CURTAIN MATERIALS: STRANGE_COMPLEX This post is mainly an aide memoire for myself, and a convenient way of showing my Mum what kinds of designs I do and don't like. So the post is really addressed to her: others feel free to ignore if you wish, or comment if you want to! The context is that I'm going for an Art Nouveau look in my 3. QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1967), DIR. ROY WARD BAKER Soon after lockdown began, lady_lugosi1313 and I worked out a basic way of doing a virtual film-watch together. We use FB messenger for it, starting off with a video-chat to say hi, catch up and get ready for the film, then switching to text-based chat while the film itself is on, and finishing up 6. PETER TREMAYNE (1977), DRACULA UNBORN: STRANGE_COMPLEX 6. Peter Tremayne (1977), Dracula Unborn. This is a terrible-brilliant book about Vlad as Dracula, and the first of a trilogy. It's one of many written following the publication of Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally (1972), In Search of Dracula, which took their (rather over-egged) argument that Stoker's Dracula was based on a profound and ROMANIA PHOTO POSTS 1: THE HISTORICAL DRACULA: STRANGE This is the first in a series of photo posts, aimed at sharing the highlights of my Romania holiday. I've written an overview of the holiday itself here. We begin with the historical Dracula, because while Hammer's Dracula and Bram Stoker's Dracula are both very exciting, and their imaginative use of the Romanian landscape certainly shaped the way I saw it (see future posts on this), still in CLASSIC WHO: NIGHTMARE OF EDEN: STRANGE_COMPLEX I'm rather behind with my Who write-ups, for fairly obvious reasons. I've been needing to watch quite a lot of Who recently, but haven't felt entirely up to writing about it, so that I currently have a back-log of five watched-but-unwritten stories, and have started on a sixth. I'm now starting on 4. TAM-LIN (1970), DIR. RODDY MCDOWALL: STRANGE_COMPLEX The Tam Lin figure is not exactly hard to spot - he's called Tom Lynn (played by Ian McShane) and begins the film as Micky's favourite lover, but incurs her wrath when he meets and falls in love with the beautiful and virginal Janet Ainsley (Stephanie Beacham). Stephanie, incidentally, isn't the only connection this film has with Hammer's FOR WE ALL LIKE FIGGY PUDDING: STRANGE_COMPLEX I spent the weekend sleeping, marking, and making Christmas pudding. Since I don't do proper cookery very often, and indeed have never made a Christmas pudding before, I took a few pictures of the process: Sixpences boiling merrily on the stove Some (but not all) of the ingredients The mixture at TV: MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION (ABC / THAMES TELEVISION, 1966 Mystery and Imagination is a Gothic anthology series broadcast on ITV in the late '60s. It originally consisted of five series. The first three, produced by ABC, offered several 30-minute episodes usually based on short stories, and the final two, produced by Thames Television, tackled whole ELECTORAL SERVICES QUESTIONNAIRE: STRANGE_COMPLEX Interesting. I've just reconfirmed my eligibility to vote in elections in Leeds, prompted by a letter about it which arrived yesterday. I did the actual confirmation online, and after I'd done so a text popped up asking me to fill in a survey on my experiences of the electionprocess in Leeds.
THE LONGEST JOURNEY
The Longest Journey. March 20th, 2021, 08:58 pm. 3. The Grass is Greener (1960), dir. Stanley Donen. This was screened on Talking Pictures TV, but I watched it as part of a Zoom-based meet-up organised by Scalarama Leeds. We logged in and chatted for half an hour before the film, then switched the Zoom off to watch it in ourseparate abodes
8. BRAM STOKER (1902), THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA: STRANGE Though the book was published in 1902, the text specifies that the story is set in in 1897-1898 (i.e. just after Bram had finished Dracula ), and in those few short years the area had changed quite distinctly from a lonely fishing village to a fashionable holiday destination thanks to the opening of a 6. DAVID PINNER (1967) RITUAL: STRANGE_COMPLEX Although the final blood of sunset is two hours in the future, already the sky is a glass of honey. A fringe of cloud haunts the skyline of the sea. And the sea is searching out the secrets of the shells on the wet beaches. Seaweed, the clutch of the crab, and the starfish waitfor the next wave.
2. ANGUS HALL (1971), THE SCARS OF DRACULA: STRANGE Now I am going to attempt some book reviews. I am seriously behind on these. I read this particular book last February, and while that's not a problem in this case because it is a Hammer Dracula book, so I took detailed and obsessive notes about it at the time, that isn't true ofeverything I read
4. JOHN BURKE (1967), DRACULA This is the second Hammer Dracula novelisation I was able to get hold of, and I read it during my holiday to Romania in May / June . I took copious notes on it at the time, in a notebook which I was also using (in a different part of it) to record my experiences of the holiday asa whole. On the
PETER CUSHING LIVES IN WHITSTABLE: STRANGE_COMPLEX Peter Cushing (and, until her untimely death in 1971, his wife Helen), lived in this one: As you can see, it is adorned by a blue plaque, and it is notably the only one in that row to have large bushes growing in its front garden. Presumably living in a famous actor's former house is a mixed blessing for its current occupants. CURTAIN MATERIALS: STRANGE_COMPLEX This post is mainly an aide memoire for myself, and a convenient way of showing my Mum what kinds of designs I do and don't like. So the post is really addressed to her: others feel free to ignore if you wish, or comment if you want to! The context is that I'm going for an Art Nouveau look in my NEW WHO 4.1, PARTNERS IN CRIME: STRANGE_COMPLEX I've become increasingly nervous over the past few weeks about how this series of Who is going to pan out. I'd better not say why in too much detail for the sake of those who don't like to hoover up spoilers with quite the same glee as I do. But I think it's safe to say that the sheer quantities of 4. LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE (1946), DIR. JEAN COCTEAU: STRANGE 4. La Belle et la Bête (1946), dir. Jean Cocteau. A couple of weeks ago, ms_siobhan and I spent a very enjoyable evening at the Howard Assembly Rooms in the Grand Theatre building, Leeds. The first half of the evening consisted of a lecture by Christopher Frayling, roaming around the various topics of a book he has recently published, which 3. ZINDA LAASH, AKA THE LIVING CORPSE / DRACULA IN This is a Pakistani version of Dracula , based very heavily on Hammer's Dracula (1958). If that sounds like a tricky thing to imagine, this trailer may help a little: I watched it with ms_siobhan a couple of weeks ago, and it took us a while to get the measure of it. Neither of us had ever seen aTHE LONGEST JOURNEY
The Longest Journey. March 20th, 2021, 08:58 pm. 3. The Grass is Greener (1960), dir. Stanley Donen. This was screened on Talking Pictures TV, but I watched it as part of a Zoom-based meet-up organised by Scalarama Leeds. We logged in and chatted for half an hour before the film, then switched the Zoom off to watch it in ourseparate abodes
8. BRAM STOKER (1902), THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA: STRANGE Though the book was published in 1902, the text specifies that the story is set in in 1897-1898 (i.e. just after Bram had finished Dracula ), and in those few short years the area had changed quite distinctly from a lonely fishing village to a fashionable holiday destination thanks to the opening of a 6. DAVID PINNER (1967) RITUAL: STRANGE_COMPLEX Although the final blood of sunset is two hours in the future, already the sky is a glass of honey. A fringe of cloud haunts the skyline of the sea. And the sea is searching out the secrets of the shells on the wet beaches. Seaweed, the clutch of the crab, and the starfish waitfor the next wave.
2. ANGUS HALL (1971), THE SCARS OF DRACULA: STRANGE Now I am going to attempt some book reviews. I am seriously behind on these. I read this particular book last February, and while that's not a problem in this case because it is a Hammer Dracula book, so I took detailed and obsessive notes about it at the time, that isn't true ofeverything I read
4. JOHN BURKE (1967), DRACULA This is the second Hammer Dracula novelisation I was able to get hold of, and I read it during my holiday to Romania in May / June . I took copious notes on it at the time, in a notebook which I was also using (in a different part of it) to record my experiences of the holiday asa whole. On the
PETER CUSHING LIVES IN WHITSTABLE: STRANGE_COMPLEX Peter Cushing (and, until her untimely death in 1971, his wife Helen), lived in this one: As you can see, it is adorned by a blue plaque, and it is notably the only one in that row to have large bushes growing in its front garden. Presumably living in a famous actor's former house is a mixed blessing for its current occupants. CURTAIN MATERIALS: STRANGE_COMPLEX This post is mainly an aide memoire for myself, and a convenient way of showing my Mum what kinds of designs I do and don't like. So the post is really addressed to her: others feel free to ignore if you wish, or comment if you want to! The context is that I'm going for an Art Nouveau look in my NEW WHO 4.1, PARTNERS IN CRIME: STRANGE_COMPLEX I've become increasingly nervous over the past few weeks about how this series of Who is going to pan out. I'd better not say why in too much detail for the sake of those who don't like to hoover up spoilers with quite the same glee as I do. But I think it's safe to say that the sheer quantities of 4. LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE (1946), DIR. JEAN COCTEAU: STRANGE 4. La Belle et la Bête (1946), dir. Jean Cocteau. A couple of weeks ago, ms_siobhan and I spent a very enjoyable evening at the Howard Assembly Rooms in the Grand Theatre building, Leeds. The first half of the evening consisted of a lecture by Christopher Frayling, roaming around the various topics of a book he has recently published, which 3. ZINDA LAASH, AKA THE LIVING CORPSE / DRACULA IN This is a Pakistani version of Dracula , based very heavily on Hammer's Dracula (1958). If that sounds like a tricky thing to imagine, this trailer may help a little: I watched it with ms_siobhan a couple of weeks ago, and it took us a while to get the measure of it. Neither of us had ever seen a 5. CORRIDOR OF MIRRORS (1948), DIR. TERENCE YOUNG: STRANGE Mangin is a classic tragic tormented hero who wears cravats, rides around town in a hansom cab and turns out to own a vast faux-Renaissance Venetian palace full of ancient jewellery, fine dresses and the titular corridor of mirrors. That night, he woos society girl Mifanwy Conway (Edana Romney), taking her to his home, introducing her to his CURTAIN MATERIALS: STRANGE_COMPLEX This post is mainly an aide memoire for myself, and a convenient way of showing my Mum what kinds of designs I do and don't like. So the post is really addressed to her: others feel free to ignore if you wish, or comment if you want to! The context is that I'm going for an Art Nouveau look in my 3. QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1967), DIR. ROY WARD BAKER Soon after lockdown began, lady_lugosi1313 and I worked out a basic way of doing a virtual film-watch together. We use FB messenger for it, starting off with a video-chat to say hi, catch up and get ready for the film, then switching to text-based chat while the film itself is on, and finishing up 6. PETER TREMAYNE (1977), DRACULA UNBORN: STRANGE_COMPLEX 6. Peter Tremayne (1977), Dracula Unborn. This is a terrible-brilliant book about Vlad as Dracula, and the first of a trilogy. It's one of many written following the publication of Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally (1972), In Search of Dracula, which took their (rather over-egged) argument that Stoker's Dracula was based on a profound and ROMANIA PHOTO POSTS 1: THE HISTORICAL DRACULA: STRANGE This is the first in a series of photo posts, aimed at sharing the highlights of my Romania holiday. I've written an overview of the holiday itself here. We begin with the historical Dracula, because while Hammer's Dracula and Bram Stoker's Dracula are both very exciting, and their imaginative use of the Romanian landscape certainly shaped the way I saw it (see future posts on this), still in CLASSIC WHO: NIGHTMARE OF EDEN: STRANGE_COMPLEX I'm rather behind with my Who write-ups, for fairly obvious reasons. I've been needing to watch quite a lot of Who recently, but haven't felt entirely up to writing about it, so that I currently have a back-log of five watched-but-unwritten stories, and have started on a sixth. I'm now starting on 4. TAM-LIN (1970), DIR. RODDY MCDOWALL: STRANGE_COMPLEX The Tam Lin figure is not exactly hard to spot - he's called Tom Lynn (played by Ian McShane) and begins the film as Micky's favourite lover, but incurs her wrath when he meets and falls in love with the beautiful and virginal Janet Ainsley (Stephanie Beacham). Stephanie, incidentally, isn't the only connection this film has with Hammer's FOR WE ALL LIKE FIGGY PUDDING: STRANGE_COMPLEX I spent the weekend sleeping, marking, and making Christmas pudding. Since I don't do proper cookery very often, and indeed have never made a Christmas pudding before, I took a few pictures of the process: Sixpences boiling merrily on the stove Some (but not all) of the ingredients The mixture at TV: MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION (ABC / THAMES TELEVISION, 1966 Mystery and Imagination is a Gothic anthology series broadcast on ITV in the late '60s. It originally consisted of five series. The first three, produced by ABC, offered several 30-minute episodes usually based on short stories, and the final two, produced by Thames Television, tackled whole ELECTORAL SERVICES QUESTIONNAIRE: STRANGE_COMPLEX Interesting. I've just reconfirmed my eligibility to vote in elections in Leeds, prompted by a letter about it which arrived yesterday. I did the actual confirmation online, and after I'd done so a text popped up asking me to fill in a survey on my experiences of the electionprocess in Leeds.
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The Longest Journey
90% of Problems are caused by delivery of Nodding Dogs __ __Previous 20
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NEW WHO 12.3 ORPHAN 55 * Jan. 12th, 2020 at 8:15 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
I _really_ enjoyed this episode. I mean, massively more than _Spyfall_ parts 1 and 2, actually. They were fine and enjoyable, but this one had me really rapt with the story structure and contents. It was a genre of story I utterly love (base under siege / bottle episode / cabin fever story), and absolutely delivered on the things I want from that kind of narrative - people rising to the occasion, discovering their courage, and revealing their core priorities. The moment when Bella suddenly and unexpectedly turned on the rest of the group was mint. (She was also absolutely red hawt, which did nothurt.)
It also had two nice clear themes - just the right amount to give the story direction and structure without overloading it. One was the eco-horror, complete with the reveal that It Was Earth All Along - andI am guessing
MISS_S_B
in particular appreciated the way that the Russian subway sign which attested to that referenced Six's _The Mysterious Planet_. My mind went to climate change as soon as the Doctor started talking about how there is always an elite who evacuate out in 'societies that let this happen', and then got confused when people later started talking about nuclear winters, thinking it had all gone a bit old-school. But of course, as her speech about how the food chain collapses and then there is mass migration and war spelt out, it's all linked together. I also really appreciated the fact that the closing note for the episode was an explicit exhortation not to let this happen in our Earth's future. That felt in the spirit of the Pertwee era to me, and part of what I think _Doctor Who_ jolly wellshould be doing.
The second big theme was family relationships. This popped up in the very first few lines of dialogue, about how the companions didn't know it was 'the mating season' for whatever they were having to clear up in the TARDIS, and then bubbled gently along throughout. It's in the episode name, Benni's belated marriage proposal, Ryan and Bella swapping their experiences of parental death, the relationship between Sylas and his father, and the evolution from humans to Dregs, and of course pays off in plot terms in this episode in the central conflict and then resolution between Bella and Kane. But it was _such_ a Thing that I wonder whether it might not prove to extend beyond this episode alone, and be related to the Big Secret which the Master found in Gallifrey's history. I also felt it was visually well designed. I thought the early shots of the Dregs, when they first appeared in the Spa and were threatening Ryan and Bella in particular, were very nicely done - good use of mists, silhouettes and partial glimpses to make them really scary. I also noticed at this stage that they were visually likened to another human character trying to escape them and running his hand along the wall in the same way as they did - a link which retrospectively proved to have been deliberately set up for us, once the reveal came about who they 'really' were.Wikipedia tells me
that the writer for this story was somebody called Ed Hime, who has only previously contributed one other _Doctor Who_ story, _It TakesYou Away_ (the
one with the hypno-toad in an isolated Norwegian cabin), which I also really liked. So that's a name to keep an eye out for in future - though we won't see his work again in this series, apparently. Footnotey disclaimer - I've no idea how anyone other than the main characters' names were spelt, as there is no Wikipedia page up for this episode yet and the end credits went too fast for me. I reserve the right to amend my current guesses as and when there's better information available. Edit - the Wikipedia page is up now, and I've corrected some names accordingly (Cain > Kane, Silas> Sylas).
-------------------------Dreamwidth version
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NEW WHO 12.2 SPYFALL, PART 2 * Jan. 5th, 2020 at 8:17 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
That resolved out pretty well. I'm kind of glad the Alien Menace wasn't Cybermen after all. It's nice to have something new. I liked Yaz reprimanding Ryan for getting carried away and telling Barton's men the plan, and then it not just being a joke line but an actual step in the plot which helped him to find them again quickly. I liked that they acknowledged that a Master who looked like Sacha Dhawan would find it difficult to 'pass' as a Nazi general, and offered some kind of explanation for it, because that had been bothering me until they did. I liked the nods to _City of Death_ (top of the Eiffel Tower) and _Logopolis_ (reference to Jodrell Bank). And I'm up for a season driven by deep secrets in Gallifrey's past. I'm an absolute sucker for anything Gallifreyan. I could have done without Ada and Noor Inayat Khan having their memories wiped at the end, though. That is a big squick for me in all fantastical fiction, and I know I've complained about it reviews of both _Doctor Who_ (e.g. what happened to Donna) and other stories (e.g. _Fantastic Beasts_) before. It feels like such a huge personal violation to take someone's memories away, and it made it even worse that Ada was actively protesting against it. It doesn't even seem consistently applied, either. The Doctor has left hundreds of historical figures with their memories intact before, and I don't see that the fairly brief and confusing things they had seen would be that much of a historical problem anyway - especially since no-one was ever likely to believe them when they talked about it. Anyway, basically OK, and I hope we'll be seeing more of Sacha's Master as the series goes on. -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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NEW WHO 12.1 SPYFALL, PART 1 * Jan. 4th, 2020 at 10:00 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
I voluntarily missed this on New Year's Day, as I wanted to concentrate properly on _Dracula_ first, so left it until today to catch up on it. I didn't seek out reviews for obvious reasons, but inevitably I saw a bit of passing chat on Facebook and Twitter, so knew the true identity of Sacha Dhawan's character before I began. A pity, as it must have been nice to experience that as a proper twist. I enjoyed the episode anyway, though. Doctor Who does James Bond _should_ be a pretty solid formula, because they both trade on the same balance of heroics, silliness and occasional solemnity, and this story fully embraced the possibilities. Seeing the 'fam' getting presented with cases full of hi-tech spy gadgetry, playing at the casino games and doing a car-motorbike chase across the fields was great fun, and casting Stephen Fry as Control was genius. (I meant, that C _has_ to be a reference to his _A Bit of Fry & Laurie_character
,
doesn't it? His utter oblivion about the fates of UNIT and Torchwood would suggest so.) Fab to have Lenny Henry on board too - both people who feel like they should have appeared in _Doctor Who_ long ago. I think it's a good thing for the series that we have a steady TARDIS team in place now. Because there are four of them, I felt it took quite a while to really get to know them all last season, but now I feel like I have a good handle on them all and can enjoy all their little character-moments. I was also glad I'd taken the opportunity to visit Swansea's Brangwyn Hall last summer when I was there on my final external examiner visit to their School of Classics, Ancient History and Egyptology, since it was very recognisably the location used for MI6 HQ. I was about to link to the post where I'd put all the pictures... but then I realised I never actually put them here, just on Facebook. Here's a couple uploaded now instead: The mysterious beings from another reality look kinda Cyberman-shaped to me, perhaps not readable by the sonic screwdriver or using any intelligible language known to the TARDIS because at the moment they are projections made out of pure data? But of course we'll find outtomorrow evening!
-------------------------Dreamwidth version
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INITIAL THOUGHTS ON DRACULA EPISODE 3 * Jan. 3rd, 2020 at 10:59 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
Hahhh, yeah... I was up for a modern setting. It's worth remembering that Stoker's novel departed from the early Gothic tradition in using what for him was a modern setting complete with all the latest technology (wax cylinders, telegrams, Kodaks, etc). And of course my love for _Dracula: AD 1972_ knows no bounds ( AND CAUSES SPOILERSCOLLAPSE
)
In the end, seen in toto, I think this is where this version of _Dracula_ sits for me: 1. The whole Hammer opus (including _The Unquenchable Thirst ofDracula_)
2. Stoker's original novel 3. The Northern Ballet version 4. The Mystery and Imagination version5. This version
And you know, that's not bad going given how many versions there are. Not bad going at all. -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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INITIAL THOUGHTS ON DRACULA EPISODE 2 * Jan. 2nd, 2020 at 10:39 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
I swore to myself I wasn't going to write about this one this evening, as I'm dog-tired and I need to work tomorrow. But it was just too good to resist... ( SPOILERY AS HELL AGAINCOLLAPSE
)
-------------------------Dreamwidth version
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INITIAL THOUGHTS ON DRACULA EPISODE 1 * Jan. 2nd, 2020 at 7:23 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
I've been back working today, so couldn't do this earlier, but wanted to scribble down some initial thoughts on the first episode of the BBC's new _Dracula_ while I can. This is the only time I'll be able to see it without the hindsight of the episodes which follow, after all. I'll put it all behind a cut, because I know it won't be available to viewers outside the UK for another couple of days. ( GLORIOUSLY SPOILERIFIC FROM START TO FINISHCOLLAPSE
)
-------------------------Dreamwidth version
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ANTICIPATING DRACULA * Jan. 1st, 2020 at 4:51 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
Fairly obviously, I am in a state of high excitement about the new adaptation of _Dracula_ which starts this evening on BBC1. But also a little nervous, because it's Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, and their co-productions often seem stylish and attractive at first glance but then collapse into insubstantial disappointment on closer inspection. The trailers look promising: Dracula is clearly going to be both extremely sexy and extremely evil, which is exactly what I'm after from him. It evidently won't be following the novel very precisely, but _Dracula_ as a story has enjoyed such success since its publication in large part because its adaptations never have done. In this case it looks like one change will be additional female characters with purpose and agency, which is good. (Maybe even a person of colour ditto, but it's hard to be wholly sure from the trailer.) And it's clearly going to be visually stunning - the sumptuous, gory logic of the Hammer aesthetic turned up to eleven and with the benefit of overseas location shooting and goodCGI.
My main niggling worry at the moment is about the use of quips. There's one in the trailer I've embedded above - Dracula with his cane self-consciously swaggering (even though he seems to be sitting down) and saying "I'm undead; I'm not unreasonable." This Conversationarticle
by Catherine Spooner (a Gothic literature specialist) who saw a preview screening of the first episode suggests there will be quite a few more. She gives some examples, and notes: "There are more zingers to come as Bang quips his way across Europe like an infernal JamesBond."
This could work. If set off effectively against Dracula's malign motivations and brutality, it could throw them into sharp relief and make them more effective, in a similar way (though with a different palette) to the contrast between Christopher Lee's suave, gentlemanly welcome when Jonathan Harker arrives at his castle in Hammer's _Dracula_ and his snarling hurricane of bestial rage later on. It might even reflect thought-provokingly on our own current climate of political discourse, in which superficial cleverness and deliberately-cultivated buffoonery seem to function as effective masks for power-hungriness and a disdain for the suffering of others. Then again, it might turn out to just be superficial cleverness in itself, there to distract us from other weaknesses in the script and only diluting the impact of Dracula as a character. I don't yet know, and I'm going to try to keep an open mind about it. Certainly, and again as Catherine Spooner notes in her Conversation article, comic relief has a long-standing place in Gothic horror, and in _Dracula_ stories in particular. Stoker put in plenty of it, particularly in his characterisations of people of lower social status than his main characters. This description, sent to Seward by a colleague he has left in charge of his asylum while he is away, of his encounter with two men who had been attacked by Renfield while delivering boxes of earth to Dracula's house at Carfax, always makesme laugh:
> The two carriers were at first loud in their threats of actions for > damages, and promised to rain all the penalties of the law on us. > Their threats were, however, mingled with some sort of indirect > apology for the defeat of the two of them by a feeble madman. They > said that if it had not been for the way their strength had been > spent in carrying and raising the heavy boxes to the cart they would > have made short work of him. They gave as another reason for their > defeat the extraordinary state of drouth to which they had been > reduced by the dusty nature of their occupation and the > reprehensible distance from the scene of their labours of any place > of public entertainment. I quite understood their drift, and after a > stiff glass of strong grog, or rather more of the same, and with > each a sovereign in hand, they made light of the attack, and swore > that they would encounter a worse madman any day for the pleasure of > meeting so `bloomin' good a bloke' as your correspondent. Hammer, too, in whose footsteps Moffat and Gatiss are clearly following at least as much as Stoker's, also have a grand tradition of comic relief characters. Their _Dracula_ gives us the easily-bribed Frontier Official who gets his toll barrier broken twice during the final climactic chase back to the castle, and Miles Malleson's wonderful absent-minded undertaker with a black sense of humour. That's quite a long way from having Dracula himself cracking the jokes, though. Stoker has Dracula mock and gloat at the human characters, but not indulge in knowing word-play. Hammer gave him the occasional ironic line, as in _Satanic Rites_ when he brushes off Van Helsing's enquiries about the deadly strain of plague bacteria which he has commissioned by explaining that he has political goals, and that "To lend weight to one's arguments amid the rush and whirl of humanity it is sometimes necessary to be... persuasive." Not quips, though. Still, Catherine Spooner is right that Bela Lugosi's most famous line - "I never drink... wine" - shows that Dracula can indulge in devilish self-conscious humour without undoing his menace. Let's hope that will remain true this evening. -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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GOTHMAS 2019: DRACULA BY THE NORTHERN BALLET * Nov. 10th, 2019 at 3:43 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
LADY_LUGOSI1313
and I booked our tickets for the Northern Ballet's _Dracula_ some six months before the actual performance, because we had both enjoyed it so much when they last did it in 2014 (LJ/ DW
).
( BALLET AS A MEDIUM FOR DRACULACOLLAPSE
)
( EROTICISM AND DRACULA AS A LIBERATORCOLLAPSE
)
( SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES COMPARED TO LAST TIMECOLLAPSE
)
( THE ENDING
COLLAPSE
)
Now that I have seen this version of _Dracula_ for a second time, it's confirmed the provisional opinion I had of it beforehand - that it is the second best adaptation of _Dracula_ I've ever seen, with only Hammer's cycle of Dracula films above it. As regular readers will realise, I have seen a lot of _Dracula_ adaptations, and Hammer's will always remain the ultimate interpretations to me - so that's the highest praise I can possibly give. This time, the performance we saw was filmed and transmitted live to various cinemas around the country, and I am really hope that also means it might be made available on DVD at some point, as I would love so much to be able to watch it again. And, since the casts changed from performance to performance during its run, I will record here that ours was as follows: Dracula: Javier Torres Old Dracula: Riku Ito Mina: Abigail Prudames Lucy: Antoinette Brooks-Daw Jonathan: Lorenzo Trossello Renfield: Kevin Poeung Dr Van Helsing: Ashley Dixon Dr Seward: Joseph Taylor Arthur: Matthew Koon The Brides: Rachael Gillespie, Sarah Chun and Minju Kang Well done and thank you so much to all of them! -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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GOTHMAS EVE 2019: NUNKIE AS M.R. JAMES, 'THE ASH TREE' AND 'OHWHISTLE...'
* Nov. 4th, 2019 at 8:34 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
The trouble with Gothmas (i.e. Halloween) is that so many awesome spooky shows of various kinds get put on at that time of year, and inevitably they all clash with one another, making it impossible to go to all of them. One of the two shows I went to this year only floated across my radar fairly late,but when
HICKEYWRITER
got in touch to say that Nunkie (aka Robert Lloyd Parry) was performing two M.R. James stories in Leeds Library on Gothmas Eve, I knew I should go. It nearly didn't happen because, with so much else on at the moment, by the time I went to the website to book tickets for me andLADY_LUGOSI1313
they had sold out! But luckily she is pally with the staff at Leeds Library, and there turned out to be a few no-shows anyway, so we got in. I was so glad we had! I have been to see Nunkie perform more times than I can remember now - a lot will show up via my M.R. James tag, but not all as I haven't blogged them systematically. Sometimes when a performance is coming up, at this point often of stories I've seen him do before, I wonder whether it's worth going again, but this show reminded me of why the answer is yes. It's not like repeatedly watching the same DVD recording (though I'm by no means against that) - he is a living, evolving performer who is just getting more and more out of the material as time goes by. This time, we had 'The Ash Tree' first, during which he drew documents out from an archival box to 'read' them to us as testimonies of the events reported, as utterly naturalistically as though this were a real endeavour, chattered cheerfully about the practice of the Sortes Biblicae and got incredible value out of his hand, a candle and a simple slap on the table to represent the hairy spider-creatures from inside the ash and the soft plump as they fell to the floor. Perhaps best of all, though, was his physical acting-out of Sir Matthew Fell's contortions in his bed, which in the dim light of the single candle looked genuinely almost inhuman to me. Then followed 'Oh Whistle And I'll Come To You', during which he elicited appreciative chuckles with his descriptions of golf and the various rather unlikeable characters of the story, before making us see perfectly the shape of the Templars' preceptory where the whistle is found, the shape and movements of the figure on the sea-shore and of course its crumpled linen face, helpfully represented by a pocket-handkerchief. I was on the edge of my seat in rapt attention and wonder throughout pretty much all of both stories, and will very definitely make sure I remember to keep coming back for more in thefuture.
-------------------------Dreamwidth version
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19. VAMPIRELLA (1975 / 2019), STAGED READING AT THE REGENT STREETCINEMA, LONDON
* Nov. 2nd, 2019 at 9:13 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
A General Election has been called, and I am the chair of a Liberal Democrat constituency party in a very, very winnable target seat. So I am unlikely to get much time for LJ / DW until after it has finished. BUT I've recently been to three very cool performances of different kinds, so I am damn well going to make the effort to record them before they entirely disappearfrom my memory.
This first one was another staged reading of an unproduced Hammer script held at De Montfort University's Cinema And Television History (CATH) Research Centre, similar to the ones I have been to before of _The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula_ (LJ/ DW
) and _Zeppelin v.
Pterodactyls_ (LJ
/ DW
. This time,
though, rather than being part of the Mayhem Film Festival in Nottingham, it was produced byKIERANTFOSTER
, who has just completed a PhD on the unmade scripts, and got some postdoctoral funding to put it on. He told me he would be doing this at the Vampire Festival I went to inJuly (LJ / DW
), so I kept a
careful eye out in the months that followed, leapt on the tickets when they came out and enthusiastically recommended it to all my horror-loving friends. Kieran even commissioned a special poster by Graham Humphreys just for the event:JOHNJJOHNSTON
was kind enough to offer me crash space at his flat in south London for the night, so we met up beforehand for a bite to eat, strolling through Soho past Hammer House (where the studio's offices once were) on the way: Then it was on to the cinema where more or less everyone who was involved with Hammer and is still with us was there - Caroline Munro of course, because she had a part in the reading, but also Judy Matheson, who had contribute a voice-over, and Madeleine Smith and Renee Glynne (script supervisor), I assume just because they wanted the fun of being at a Hammer performance, not to mention all the people who do Hammer art, and books, and run Facebook groups. The set-up for the reading itself was similar to the other ones I've been to - a cast of actors, most with one major part and a couple of minor ones, reading the script with appropriate body-language and accents, with occasional music and animations projected onto the screen behind them to help the story along. Here is Jonathan Rigby doing a bit of opening narration, before settling down into his major role for the evening of the ageing, alcoholic stage magicianPendragon:
Having read up a bit on the history of the script and its various woes before the performance, I found that the most pressing question I hadfor
KIERANTFOSTER
in the bar before things began was, "Is it actually a good story?", to which he replied "Er, it is now." From this I gathered that judicious editorial work had been done - but I still have to say that the plot-line was pretty bonkers and hard to make much coherent sense of. Besides which a fortnight has already passed since I saw it, so my memory of it may not be particularlysharp.
Still, these are the outlines as far as I can remember. The story is set in mid-70s (when the script was originally written), and the major locations are Bermuda and London. Bermuda beach, we gradually learn, is where Vampirella first fell to Earth, in the form of a bat, after an alien race called Akrons destroyed her home planet, Drakulon, where the rivers run with blood. There, she met alcoholic stage magician Pendragon, who helped her adjust to life on Earth and took her to London where her alien powers lent his act a new lease of life. But she cannot fully remember who she is or where she came from, and is only able to access her past in scant fragments via hypnosis with the help of her boyfriend, Allan. Meanwhile, planes and ships are disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle. They are scooped up, scanned, and then either returned or destroyed. And in London, a scientific organisation called Space Operatives for Defence and Security (SODS), of which Allan is a part, are trying to work out the cause of multiple cases of apparent mass murder and mutilation across the globe. Early in the story, Pendragon and Vampirella perform their show at a London casino, but we also notice that a strange blue-eye man is tracking Vampirella. He turns out to be one of the Akrons who destroyed her planet, who is also operating the alien base which has been plucking vehicles out of the Bermuda triangle. Vampirella inevitably ends up captured and transported to the base, where she sees horrible visions of brains in jars, but initially she is returned to SODS, where the team are struggling to get their supercomputer to help them work out the cause of the mystery deaths. Their efforts, though, are undermined when their chief (played by Caroline Munro, though in a role originally intended for a man) turns out to be an alien infiltrator, whereupon Vampirella kills her. Vampirella is transported to the alien base again, where she this time confronts the blue-eye man and learns about her past and his role in destroying her planet. He suggests that they should team up and become all-powerful together, but instead she reveals the identity of the base to SODS, who destroy it. Vampirella escapes back down to Bermuda beach, where Pendragon is sitting, and they leave together. Vampirella as a character originated in a series of comic books, and the story sort of makes sense on that level - casinos, aliens, teams of scientists, kidnappings, supercomputers etc. Indeed, it may have worked best not as a live-action film, as Hammer were planning, but as an animation, where the very staccato story with sudden jumps from one scene to another without much obvious logic behind them might have seemed less surprising. I think it also suffered pretty badly from just having too many characters in it, so that none of them was very well-developed. Still, the core pairing of a washed-up but charmingly paternalistic Pendragon (a role originally intended for Peter Cushing) and a resourceful but out-of-place Vampirella was sound. For me, the most effective scene by far consisted of a party hosted in their echoing old ballroom by two elderly sisters, Gloria and Constance, who have sent their man-servant out to invite their society acquaintances of the past without realising that they are all long dead. Instead, Pendragon and Vampirella show up, for plot reasons which I can't now remember, followed shortly thereafter by a motorbike gang who get right into the spirit of the party. The sisters are mainly just delighted that anyone has come, while Vampirella uses her alien powers to conjure up visions of the guests they had originally invited, who dance with them for a while, but then gradually fade away. I got the impression from the script that this was intended as visible fading, in which they would become more and more transparent before disappearing, but in my head it was done via edits - each time the camera cut to a new angle on the room, there were just fewer and fewer dancers until only the living ones were left. Vampirella is a very different kind of vampire from Hammer's more usual gothic variety, both in that she is actually an alien and in that she behaves largely like an ordinary human being, only killing when people deserve it (e.g. the alien who has infiltrated SODS). But I was pleased to find that the story was designed to dovetail with the Dracula 'universe' nonetheless. This was partly done through two characters called Adam (the father) and Conrad (the son) Van Helsing, who come after Vampirella as though she were a typical Hammer vampire, but fail when garlic proves to have no effect on her. I like to think they are maybe the brother and nephew of Lorrimer from _Dracula AD 1972_. Also, at the end of the film, as Vampirella and Pendragon walk off Bermuda beach, a horse-drawn hearse pull up and its driver informs them that his Master invites them to perform at his castle, whereupon a hand wearing a ring embossed with a D extends from the coffininside.
The linking narration from the original script was shared out between the various members of the cast when they weren't busy with other roles, and was similar to other Hammer scripts I've seen or read in the quantity and quality of descriptive detail. Indeed, it included some quite nicely worked out linking devices, like a from-space view of Earth switching to life on the planet by cutting from an image of the globe to a spinning bicycle wheel. I missed Jonathan Rigby's narratorial voice as we'd enjoyed it in _The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula_ a little bit, but he was great as Pendragon (pronounced as PENdra-gon rather than the more usual pen-DRAgon), channelling Peter Cushing quite uncannily in the role. This wasn't just about his vocal delivery, but something about his stance and the angle of his head which almost made the shape of his face seem to change and acquire a Cushing-esque gaunt profile and long nose. Georgina Dugdale, whom I didn't even realise until afterwards is Caroline Munro's daughter, played Vampirella, interestingly choosing to do her as sweet and demure (but deadly when she needed to be), rather than the default sexy superhero that the character's comic art suggests. Caroline Munro herself unfortunately stood out a bit as less in command of her role than the others, and she obviously felt it hadn't been her best performance. I chatted to her briefly in the bar afterwards, as I was wearing a T-shirt with a big picture of her in _Dracula AD 1972_ on it, and a Hammer super-fan who knows her quite well insisted on taking me over so she could see it, and when I asked her if she'd enjoyed it she said straight away that she wished they'd had more rehearsal time. But she has such a lovely warm personality, and was so gushingly proud of her daughter (with good reason!) that no-one could possibly mind. I came away feeling that it had probably never been a terribly good story, and there were probably good reasons why it was never made, but that it had been a brilliantly fun evening watching it come to life with an audience of appreciative people, and having the chance to reach that conclusion for ourselves. There is plenty more yet to be discovered in the Hammer script archive, and I for one will be there next time it's tapped into. -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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CLASSICAL DRACULA AND WAR OF THE WORLDS * Oct. 13th, 2019 at 4:04 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
I'm uncomfortably aware that I haven't written anything other than WIDAWTW posts for over a month, or indeed commented much on other people's entries. The approach of term coincided with the local constituency party that I am chair of having to go into high alert due to the likelihood of a General Election being called at any moment, so it has all been teaching-related activity and campaigning. Last weekend, though, I took myself down to London for an epic weekend which combined delivering a talk on _Dracula_ and Classical Antiquity to the Dracula Society on the Saturday evening with going to the immersive musical version of Jeff Wayne's _War of the Worlds_ the following day - and today I finally have a day off to write about it. ( DRACULA AND CLASSICAL ANTIQUITYCOLLAPSE
)
( JEFF WAYNE'S WAR OF THE WORLDS - THE IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCECOLLAPSE
) Then
at the end, we were invited to pose in our pairs for pictures in front of a green-screen, of which this was very much the best final result for me and Fiona, pretending to be menaced by Martians: I'm normally pretty cynical about that kind of add-on money-making ploy for an experience which you've already paid quite a considerable amount of money for, but given that it had actually been a really enjoyable afternoon, and that the full set of pictures came complete with a digital download code which meant that we could both access them, I decided to go for it. All in all, A++ would fight my way through red weed again. -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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6. ARTHUR MACHEN (1894), THE GREAT GOD PAN * Sep. 1st, 2019 at 12:57 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
I read this because it was published while Stoker was writing _Dracula_, and both use pagan gods to stand for the abject, evil and Satanic - though Machen's novella focuses almost wholly on that idea, whereas in Stoker's _Dracula_ it's only part of a tapestry of related concepts. _The Great God Pan_ is part of efflorescence of _fin-de-siècle_ stories and artworks about Pan, mainly inspired by an anecdote about his death in Plutarch, _De Defectu Oraculorum_ 17 and thoughtfully examined in this 1992 book chapter,
which I wanted to get to grips with as part of _Dracula_'s context and a possible influence. Having read it, though, I don't think the influence is particularly strong or direct. Both certainly reflect similar anxieties about what lurks beneath the façade of contemporary civilisation, within us, in the past and / or in the untamed places of nature - but those themes are more or less what all horror stories are about. And both present their stories as a collection of accounts from different viewpoints which only gradually come together - but again, many late 19th century novels did that. What makes them quite different is that Dracula is manifest and present within his eponymous novel, whereas Pan does not manifest directly to any of the point-of-view characters in Machen's. Indeed, he isn't wholly an embodied being at all. Rather, Pan, Satan and Nodens are all treated as attempts to express by metaphor an evil too horrific and inhuman for human minds otherwise to understand; as much something psychological, or the pure concept of evil itself, as anything embodied. As one character puts it, "Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish tale." That was all slightly disappointing to me, as I was hoping for something both a bit more embodied and a bit more ambiguous - a Pan simultaneously alluring _and_ terrifying, who might sound sweet music through wooded glades and yet also leap savagely with snorting nose and bloodied fingernails upon the unwary transgressor. Machen's Pan doesn't really span that divide, existing rather on the wholly-terrifying side of the equation. I shall have to browse through the book chapter I've linked above for something more along the lines I was looking for - unless anyone reading can recommend a different _fin-de-siècle_ story or novel which comes closer to ticking those boxes? Do I want G.K. Chesterton's _The Man Who Was Thursday_ or Saki's 'The Music on the Hill' (which sounds good anyway), or what? Anyway, although it wasn't quite the novel I was expecting or perhaps really wanted, I still got good value out of reading this one. The way it draws on Classical motifs, and especially the landscape and gods of Roman Britain, to construct its image of evil reminded me of the realisation I had made while watching the BBC TV version of Nigel Kneale's _Quatermass and the Pit_ that it is in part a response to the discovery of the London Mithraeum (LJ/ DW
). I guess this
novel, and other material like it, also forms part of the literary backdrop which made Kneale's story possible. It does some interesting things with story structure. The chapters from different points of view I've already mentioned, but the final chapter is literally called 'The Fragments', and includes texts with deliberate lacunae in them to bring the story to a dim, half-understood conclusion which the reader is left to patch together. This is essential to the way Machen has dealt with Pan throughout, the whole point being that no human mind can witness him / it without going insane. And it plays around nicely with the relationship between city and country. Pan is unleashed in the remote Welsh / Romano-British countryside, but his worst effects are felt in the heart of London. So Machen uses rural metaphors to describe the encroachment of the rural (primitive) into the city (civilised). One dimly-lit London street looks "as dark and gloomy as a forest in winter", while in another "the wind blew as blithely as upon the meadows and the scented gorse". The critical reception section of the Wikipedia page is right to draw attention to its outright misogyny, though (third para). The force which Pan represents is brought into the world in the person of a woman, Helen Vaughan, whose main modus operandi is to lure men to her and then drive them to kill themselves. Even worse, she is born in the first place by the actions of a doctor who performs a brain operation on her mother, Mary, and who justifies his actions to a demurring friend on the grounds that "I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit." Mary, by the way, is only seventeen, and in addition to seeming to think he has the right to perform experimental brain surgery on her, the doctor has also evidently brought her up to call him 'dear' and solicit kisses from him in what read to me as a _very_ power-abusing relationship. The operation destroys Mary's mind, while her body survives only long enough to give birth to the child, Helen, (always the true purpose of women in misogynistic novels) and while the doctor does come to regret his actions by the end of the story, it's not at all clear that he would have done if it hadn't been for the consequences which followed. Both Helen and Mary also exist only from the two-dimensional perspective of the male characters - Helen never speaks, but just goes round being evil and ruining men; Mary speaks a few lines before the doctor's operation, but only to submit meekly to his will. Still, Wikipedia also tells methat
there is a feminist response to the novel called _Helen's Story_ by Rosanne Rabinowitz which tells the whole story from Helen's point of view - and that could be truly awesome. If you'd like to read _The Great God Pan_ yourself, the whole thing is on Project Gutenberg , and I can confirm that their free Kindle-formatted version works very nicely. -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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18. THE HOUSE IN NIGHTMARE PARK (1973), DIR. PETER SYKES * Aug. 26th, 2019 at 7:09 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
AND FINALLY (for now), this is a fairly standard narrative about a dysfunctional family bumping each other off for an inheritance with Frankie Howerd thrown in for comic relief, which I watched withLADY_LUGOSI1313
after it was screened on Talking Pictures recently. It wasn't awful, but it dragged a lot more than it should have done given the suspenseful potential of the plot. Frankie Howerd was relatively toned down, perhaps so that he would fit appropriately into a story about family murders, but it ended up feeling like an unhappy compromise - neither funny enough nor horrific enough to entertain. To be fair to it, the sets and a lot of the cinematography were actually very good, and we had fun spotting all the cliches and guessing what was going to happen. But it wasn't a patch on comparable British horror comedy _Carry on Screaming_. Since no more need be said about this film, I hereby declare myself UP TO DATE with reviewing at long last. That's basically taken me the whole of the bank holiday weekend, but it was a worthwhile investment. Who knows what crazy things I might get up to now! -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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17. HORRIBLE HISTORIES: THE MOVIE – ROTTEN ROMANS (2019), DIR.DOMINIC BRIGSTOCKE
* Aug. 26th, 2019 at 6:22 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
I saw this one with
LADY_LUGOSI1313
. We noticed that it was on its last week of screening in Leeds despite only having been released a couple of weeks earlier, and that the cinema wasn't exactly packed out, so I'm guessing it perhaps hasn't done as well as hoped. And that's a pity because I thought it was great on all levels - cast, story, jokes, songs and historical detail. The setting is the Boudiccan rebellion, and the main storyline follows a Roman boy, Attilius (or Atti for short) who is forced into the army by Nero as a punishment, and a 'Celtic' (I would have preferred 'British', but I get why they did this) girl, Orla, who is desperate to be a warrior but whose Dad won't let her as she is too young. Their utterly wholesome narrative involves her taking him prisoner, them falling (very chastely) in love, and both of them eventually coming to realise that war is actually a bad thing as it tends to end up withpeople being hurt.
The research was really solid, and what I particularly liked about it was that the script not only reflected a strong knowledge of the relevant source material, but that it also drew direct attention to the nature of those sources and their problems. So we saw a classically-megalomaniacal version of Nero being told that no-one really knew what had happened to Boudicca, and dictating his own preferred version to his tame court historian - who, for bonus meta-referential points was _Horrible Histories_' real-life historicalconsultant,
GREG_JENNER
. Then, as if that weren't enough, a Roman rat popped up over the closing credits to tell us all about the conflicting historical accounts of the events depicted. The value of that for children just getting to grips with history is _immense_, and I was so pleased they had taken the time to do it. I was also pretty impressed by the way they had handled the topics of Roman imperialism and cultural change, both inevitably raised by the historical period and setting. We were shown very clearly that most of the 'Celtic' characters weren't in the least bit interested in Roman 'civilisation', while those who were (as represented by them e.g. incorporating Roman columns into their round-houses) didn't consider having their political autonomy arbitrarily taken away a reasonable price to pay for it. As a children's film, it had to come to a happy ending after Boudicca's rebellion, so we didn't see that being brutally repressed (in fact, most of the final battle was conveyed as a dance-off), and instead the Romans and the 'Celts' reached a cheerful accommodation with one another. But even this was very much about characters who had developed mutual respect for one another's cultures over the course of the film, rather than the Celts coming to appreciate 'what the Romans have done for us'. In short, if a generation of future Classics / Anc Hist students are out there watching this, I should get fewer in my classes assuming that Roman imperialism was a beneficent civilising mission. There were too many great jokes and inter-texts to list in detail, but obviously it was beyond wonderful to see Derek Jacobi reprise his role as Claudius for a few short minutes, before being bumped off by the machinations of an almost equally wonderful Kim Cattrall as Agrippina. I thought there was a touch of David Morrissey's Aulus Plautius in _Britannia_ lurking behind Rupert Graves' Suetonius Paulinus, too, as well as in the design of the Roman camps and the way Atti was treated after being recaptured from Orla (though this was obviously a very sanitised, child-friendly version of what happens in _Britannia_). As for jokes, watching in Yorkshire I think my favourite had to be seeing the Brigantes (our local tribe) portrayed with strong Yorkshire accents. Overall a great watch and a most worthy addition to the canon of screen portrayals of Roman Britain. -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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16. MIDSOMMAR (2019), DIR. ARI ASTER * Aug. 26th, 2019 at 4:11 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
As this is a recent release still screening in some places, I will cut the bulk of this review. That's not to say it's a film that would seriously be ruined by knowing a bit about what happens in it, though. In fact, once the major parameters are established, it proceeds with dreadful inevitability towards its end-point, and that's a lot of how it generates its sense of horror. So if you're sure you'll like it and would prefer to see it unspoiled, go ahead - it's great. But if you're not sure and would like to use this review to help you decide, you won't really lose anything by reading it. And if you've already seen it and want to share views, come hit me up in the comments! ( REST OF THE REVIEW UNDER HERECOLLAPSE
)
-------------------------Dreamwidth version
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13.-15. FILMS SEEN AT THE INTERNATIONAL VAMPIRE FILM AND ARTSFESTIVAL, HIGHGATE
* Aug. 25th, 2019 at 2:39 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
I've already written up the International Vampire Film and Arts Festival which I attended in July in its own right (LJ/ DW
), but
deliberately saved reviewing the films I had seen there until I'd written up a large back-log of earlier viewings first. Now, their timehas come.
( 13. CAPTAIN KRONOS - VAMPIRE HUNTER (1974), DIR. BRIAN CLEMENSCOLLAPSE
)
( 14. INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (1994), DIR. NEIL JORDANCOLLAPSE
)
( 15. DRACULA (1958), DIR. TERENCE FISHERCOLLAPSE
)
-------------------------Dreamwidth version
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11 AND 12. HAMMER DOUBLE BILL AT THE STOCKPORT PLAZA * Aug. 24th, 2019 at 5:35 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
I saw these with
LADY_LUGOSI1313
and
HICKEYWRITER
in June at the Stockport Plaza, a very splendid Art Deco cinema which looks like this: 11. _THE DEVIL RIDES OUT_ (1968), DIR. TERENCE FISHER I've seen this one at least twice before, but surprisingly a search of my LJ / DW archives suggests not since I started reviewing all of the films I watch here systematically. At least, that is to say, I've half-watched chunks of it several times on the Horror Channel during that time, but not sat down and paid full attention from beginning to end of the film, which is my criterion for whether I then write the film up 'officially' or not. Anyway, it's obviously great, in ways no-one particularly needs me to recap here. But I will note two things. One is that I became irreverently obsessed with the fate of the Eatons' car. We're primed for a casual attitude to cars by the Duc de Richelieu's response when Rex asks to borrow one of his - "Yes, take any of them" - but the Eatons have made no such offer when Rex arrives in it at their house with Tanith, and she takes the first available opportunity to slip into the driver's seat and escape. That's literally all they've ever seen of Tanith, but they are good people who trust and like Rex, so when he then asks to take _their_ car in order to chase after her, they generously agree. I decided to pay careful attention to the outcome of all this, and the answer is that he then totals the car in the forest at the end of a high-speed chase, and when he and the Duc de Richelieu return to the Eatons' house (with Tanith and in yet another car), he says nothing at all about it and they don't ask about it, then or indeed ever at any point for the rest of the film. It's one of a few loose ends or unexplained transitions in the film, another being why Rex becomes so committed to helping Tanith in the first place, and led me to comment at the end that I felt the film must have been heavily, and not always entirely successfully, compressed from Dennis Wheatley's novel.HICKEYWRITER
, who has read it, agreed. The other thing which struck me was about how the special effects during Mocata's (remote) attacks on the magic circle look on a big screen. Several of these effects have been pilloried over the years, and indeed a Blu-ray version in which they have been CGI enhanced wasreleased in 2012
. I'm pretty
sure we were seeing the original, unenhanced version, but nonetheless the Angel of Death in particular actually looked really good and impressive to me on a big screen. It's to do with the angle of vision and the size of the image when you are sitting in a cinema seat, which together mean that it really looms over you as the horse is rearing and snorting. I think we too often forget this sort of factor when criticising special effects in vintage films - they were designed to capitalise on the spatial set-up of a cinema auditorium, and inevitably lose a lot of that impact the moment they are transferred to a home viewing environment. 12. _PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES_ (1966), DIR. JOHN GILLING This one I _have_ reviewed here before (LJ/ DW
), so I won't
repeat myself. But it was great to be able to drink in the fine details of the sets thanks to the big-screen image, which also made Dr Thompson's nightmare about being surrounded by zombies in the cemetery particularly effective. We left on quite a high at the end of the night. Seeing the two as a double bill was splendid, although coming after the paciness, wit and crackling performance of _Devil_, _Plague_ did come across as a shade more pedestrian and B-movieish (as indeed it and _The Reptile_ avowedly were next to _Dracula: Prince of Darkness_ and _Rasputin_). Still, more Hammer double bills in cinemas within a reasonable distance of my house will always be a good thing. -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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5. MIKE SHEPHERD (2018), WHEN BRAVE MEN SHUDDER: THE SCOTTISH ORIGINSOF DRACULA
* Aug. 24th, 2019 at 1:10 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
Just over a year ago, in June 2018, I went on holiday with DracSoc to Cruden Bay (formerly known as Port Erroll), a little fishing village on the east coast of Scotland where Bram Stoker spent several summer holidays and probably wrote most of _Dracula_. As part of the trip, we met up with local resident Mike Shepherd, who had been researching Bram's visits to Cruden Bay, and guided us around the place pointing out Stoker-related landmarks and explaining what he did there. At the time, he had basically finished this book and was in the process of looking for a publisher for it, so he walked around clutching sheafs of print-outs from it, and periodically reading relevant passages - mainly quotations from Stoker's work. Here's a picture of Mike talking to some slightly chilly DracSoc members about Bram walking up and down Cruden Bay beach and the inspiration he drew from the sight and sound of the sea, with just such a sheaf in hand: The book was published later that year, went straight on my Christmas list, and now I have read and very much enjoyed it. Most of the information about Bram's visits there I knew already from what Mike told us during our trip (and which I wrote up after the holiday: LJ/ DW
), but it was nice
to see a few extra historical pictures in the published book, and I also learnt a bit more than I'd fully grasped before about Cruden Bay's development during the years that Stoker was visiting. Basically, he was a bit of a pioneer, discovering the village by chance during a walking holiday when it was still very remote and isolated. But soon after his first stay there in 1894, major local developments began with the aim of turning it into the 'Brighton of Aberdeenshire' - and the name change from Port Erroll to Cruden Bay was part of this, as it was judged to sound less related to trade and hard work, and more charming and idyllic. Work began in 1895 on a local railway station which was completed in 1897, while a hotel and golf course opened in 1899. So as Stoker continued to visit annually, the village changed entirely from a quiet retreat to a popular resort full of contemporary notables. This was obviously great for the local economy, but changed things rather for Bram, and probably explains why on his last visit there in 1910 he stayed in a cottage at Whinnyfold, at the other end of the bay, which would have been markedly cheaper as well as quieter - particularly important for him by that time on grounds of ill health. Alongside Mike's careful research into these sorts of historical details is a second thread to the book, which he hinted at during our visit but kept closer to his chest. This is all about how the natural landscape and local customs of Cruden Bay may have appealed to and inspired Bram, given his well-documented passion for the similarly nature-venerating and pantheistic poetry of Walt Whitman. There's certainly a basis for this. Whitman poems like 'On The Beach At NightAlone'
and 'With Antecedents'do speak of
the oneness of all things in nature, and the acceptance and syncretism of all faiths as reflections of a single spiritual truth. And Mike quotes plenty of examples and passages from Stoker's work which reflect similar thinking - e.g. Esse, the main character in his novel _The Shoulder of Shasta_, who is explicitly described as a pantheist, or the mystical / magical old woman Gormala in _The Mystery of the Sea_ (which is set in Cruden Bay and which I need to read urgently!), whose beliefs are described as deriving from 'some of the old pagan mythology'. I found this helpful and interesting, and it certainly gave me more of a sense of what had impressed Bram so much about Whitman's poetry than Skal's biography (LJ/ DW
), from which you
would be forgiven for concluding that it was wholly about repressed homosexuality. But I also think Mike might be indulging slightly in projection and wishful over-thinking when he makes statements likethese:
> "Bram discovered an entire world-view in Walt Whitman's poems and > connected with them. This was an outlook that led from his childhood > connection with nature and progressed to an acceptance of pantheism. > This encompassed and subsumed the Protestant faith of his boyhood."> (p. 179)
>
> "I walk along the same beach every day trying to imagine what Bram > Stoker was thinking when he walked there some 120 years ago. My > suspicion is yes: Bram believed in a mystical universe, that land is > the realm of the material world and the sea is the living embodiment > of the spiritual world. It's essentially the age-old belief of the > Port Erroll fishermen; that a nameless spirit resides in the sea."> (p. 203)
>
> "Here's what I think. Bram Stoker's spiritual outlook appears to be > more or less that of Walt Whitman: it encompassed all religions past > and present and rejected none. If a religious belief was real to the > person that held it, then their gods and spirits were real to Bram > Stoker. That the fishermen of Port Erroll could simultaneously hold > Christian and pagan beliefs would be seen as natural by Bram." (p.> 206)
I totally get where Mike is coming from on all of this, and I appreciate the way he has signalled this thinking as his own opinion, rather than verifiable fact. But the idea that Bram Stoker consciously identified as a pantheist in a way that 'encompassed and subsumed' his Protestantism, or believed that all gods and spirits were equally real, doesn't ring true to me from what else I've read about him (quite a lot by this stage!). He was certainly fascinated by other religious traditions and enjoyed probing at their implications in his creative writing. There's a very good article about the religious implications of _Dracula_ (which requires a JSTOR subscription or library to access in full but has a reasonable abstract here ), which reveals some fascinating unresolved and probably unconscious tensions and implicit dark undercurrents in the way Stoker portrays various Christian traditions and their relationship with (what were seen as) superstitions. That is, it's clearly all a locus of unease which he keeps circling back to, and I think it's perfectly accurate to say he was fascinated by and sympathetic to ideas like pantheism. But still, at face value he always remains resolutely Christian and indeed somewhat pious in his proclaimed outlook. I didn't mind too much, though, because in the process of exploring the potential relationship between Stoker's beliefs and local pagan traditions Mike devoted two whole chapters to them - taking 'pagan' to mean pretty much anything relating to the veneration of nature, unnamed spirits, superstitions and anything not sanctioned by the church. Stoker himself does get rather left behind during those two chapters, which both more or less begin and end with brief comments along the lines of "this is the sort of stuff Stoker might have heard about or been inspired by when he visited Cruden Bay", but I was perfectly happy to read about them in their own right because I love that stuff. There were a few things which rang _Wicker Man_-ish bells for me, like a reference to Shoney, god of the sea (to whom Lord Summerisle offers barrels of ale). And I was particularly tickled, for surname-related reasons, to learn about the custom of the Goodman'sCroft or Fold -
a small area of agricultural land deliberately left untilled for the 'Goodman', a generic word for landowner here meant in the sense of a spirit living on the land. I've always understood it before just to mean (along with Goodwife) a wholly generic term similar to 'Gentleman', but I like the idea of it meaning a spirit of the land alot more.
Overall a very interesting book which needed writing, which Mike as a Cruden Bay resident was the perfect person to undertake, and which will especially appeal to those who (like me) enjoy a bit of Scottish folk tradition as well as the work of Bram Stoker -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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10. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008), DIR. TOMAS ALFREDSON * Aug. 17th, 2019 at 9:00 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
I first saw this during my trip to Australia in 2017 on a friend's telly-box (LJ/ DW
), but as I had
never seen it in the cinema I was very happy to go along and watch it again at the Hyde Park Picturehouse withLADY_LUGOSI1313
recently. It is, after all,very good.
Some things which particularly struck me this time, and / or I didn't mention last time, included the very effective use of silence and stillness throughout the movie. It creates a compelling sense of focus and isolation around Oskar and Eli when they meet in the play-area of their apartment building, underscoring how separate from everything around them their friendship is. And once that's established, it contrasts nicely with the sounds we _do_ hear - yelling from Oskar's bullies, the buzz of conversation in the bar where the adults hang out, the roar in Oskar's ears as he is being held underwater in thepool.
Perhaps because I was seeing it on a big screen this time, or perhaps just because I already knew the story so could pick up smaller details, I also noticed that sometimes when Eli is in vampire-attack mode, CGI is used to make them appear both older and more savage. I really liked that - both the subtlety of it, so that you may or may not consciously notice it, and the properly frightening, supernatural edge it gives to the character (who could otherwise risk becoming too humanised). And although I had certainly remembered how touching the portrayal of Eli and Oskar's relationship is, I had forgotten that from time to time the film is also darkly humorous - as when we learn that Eli has appeared to save Oskar's life and make short work of his tormentors by seeing severed limbs and heads falling into the swimming pool from Oskar's underwater perspective. In my head, this film now belongs on a list of five exceptionally-good (for different reasons) vampire movies which we've been lucky enough to have in the last now-slightly-more-than-ten years. In chronologicalorder, those are:
* _Let the Right One In_ (2008) * _Byzantium_ (2012) * _Only Lovers Left Alive_ (2013) * _A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night_ (2014) * _What We Do In The Shadows_ (2014) I will be only to happy to consider further additions to the list if anyone wants to recommend any, or indeed release them! -------------------------Dreamwidth version
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9. IRON SKY: THE COMING RACE (2019), DIR. TIMO VUORENSOLA * Aug. 17th, 2019 at 8:19 PMSTRANGE_COMPLEX
I saw the first _Iron Sky_ film in the cinema when it came out in 2012 (LJ/ DW
). This one, the
sequel, did get a cinema release, but in Leeds only one cinema offered a showing if enough people signed up in advance and not enough did, soLADY_LUGOSI1313
and I watched it via GooglePlay instead.
I was surprised as we watched by how very little I remembered about the first film, but now I've realised it came out in 2012 I'm less so. (If you'd asked me to guess its release date before I checked, I would have said 2015.) It left me a bit at sea at the beginning of the film, as we were evidently meant to recognise some of the characters as descendants of people from the original film, but I couldn't remember anything about their parents soLADY_LUGOSI1313
had to remind me. It didn't really matter too much once things got going, though. Like the first film, it was funny and knowingly silly. There's a lot to be said for a film whose climax features a fake alien lizard-Hitler riding a tyrannosaurus rex through a moon colony. It was fun to see a fake alien lizard-Caligula crop up briefly part-way through, too. But I see looking back at my review of the first film that I complained about its unsubtlety in some areas, and I felt like that again this time about their parody of Apple cultism, in which a slavish adoration of Steve Jobs and everything he ever produced had become the main religious cult on the moon base. It would have been OK as a one-off passing joke, but as things are it was over-played. Still, it made fora fun afternoon.
-------------------------Dreamwidth version
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