Burlesque Melodrama

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW (1939)

Harry Terry - The Showman from Hitchcock's THE RING - is the titular face at the window, brought to life by cinematographer Hone Glendinning.

THIS Tod Slaughter "quota quickie" is actually great fun. Steeped in the Grand Guignol tradition, it is fittingly set in 1880 Paris, but all the characters speak with crisp British accents. The drooling face of crazed killer Le Loup ("The Wolf," Harry Terry) appears to his victims in windows, with a lycanthropic howl and a knife plunged into their backs. Against this backdrop leering Chevalier Lucio del Gardo (Slaughter) has set his sights on Cecile de Brisson (Marjorie Taylor), whose heart belongs to bank clerk Lucien Courtier (John Warwick). Del Gardo frames Courtier, but thankfully Lucien also has worked with Professor LeBlanc (Wallace Evennett). LeBlanc's experiments with electricity can reanimate corpse muscles to reenact their final tasks; ultimately this leads to the uncovering of Lucio as The Wolf, who has been aided by his deformed stepbrother.

Directed and produced by Slaughter's faithful helmsman George King, this is one of many screen adaptations of the detective play written by F. Brook Warren in 1897. Before his blossoming as a Dick Dastardly style cad, Slaughter was often cast as the hero on stage in the 1920s, and he even portrayed Lucien treading the boards. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW however sees him at his scenery-chewing best, grabbing and forcibly kissing Taylor in scenes that are uneasily effective. All the truly great horror film actors - Karloff, Cushing, Lee et al - had a particular finesse to their craft, yet Slaughter wallows in slimy delirium and manic cackles. In his own way, he evidently enjoys his work.

The cinematic paradigm of a face at the window is an artistic extension of monster versus victim. Flipping an inside threat to the outside, Alfred Hitchcock makes expert use of Norma Bates' silhouette in PSYCHO.

A visage or figure appearing at windows is one of the oldest and most repeated horror film tropes. Not only is it unsettling for the potential victim, it also radiates doom to a situation and impending threat to property. Often this is a sexual urge from the outside to the passive female inside, in everything from KING KONG to PEEPING TOM. Alternatively it can be the building itself, radiating blue light upon Max von Sydow in THE EXORCIST, or a piece of architecture such as the Amityville house. In the 1970s pop culture was full of demonic children, and the eerie window motif encompassed two particularly unnerving examples on television: the undead orphans of A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - LOST HEARTS, and Ralphie and Danny Glick in 'SALEM'S LOT. Yet it is a theme that has shifted like the genre itself, further amplified by productions that have home invasion at their core. 

Altered States

PSYCHEDELIC BRITANNIA (2015)

Pink Floyd’s brittle genius Syd Barrett is symbolic in the British psychedelic story, an illustration of the timeless cautionary tale of art versus fame. In the programme, sculptor Emily Young calls Barrett "a little wild Puck or Ariel figure coming out of the woods. He seemed to me to be borne of the English countryside."

THIS absorbing BBC4 documentary explores the rise and fall of the most visionary period in British culture: five LSD-laced years between 1965 and 1970, when musicians reimagined the boundaries of sound. Narrated by Nigel Planer, this hour long piece sees a generation of homegrown R&B bands discover psychedelic drugs and embrace the avant-garde, starting a movement that would uneasily morph from the bohemian underground to chart success. Substances were initially taken with a wide-eyed innocence, broadening sensory, artistic and emotional possibilities. So began the counter-culture surge against postwar stability and professional pigeonholing, a kaleidoscopic and hallucinatory palette enthused by the 1950s beat generation. It was an important time, when battles for gay rights and women's liberation would also be instigated.

The Sixties had been swinging, but now there was a dizzying but heightened altered state. This lifestyle had a preference for the imagery and fashions of youth; like the concept of Hauntology, this yearned for the security of a safer and less complicated world ("In the mid 60s, a counter-culture swapped the white heat of technology for an older Britain of Edwardian fantasy and bucolic bliss.") It was an idyllically pastoral and untroubled dream, where The Wind and the Willows and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland were an Arcadian blueprint. Singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan dropped out of city life and moved into rural Britain; other bands travelled further, The Beatles with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India, and The Rolling Stones and The Incredible String Band departed for Morocco.

Created by Australian artist Martin Sharp, the cover of Cream’s Disraeli Gears album became an iconic image of the era. It was also used for the retrospective compilation Those Were the Days, released in 1997.

All interviewees still talk passionately about their baroque time in the sun. The mainstream lysergic drip fed us two cornerstones in 1967: 'Arnold Layne' became Pink Floyd's debut single in March, and May saw the release of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Eclectic mixes were not just present in the music, but also in location. Classical was embraced by The Yardbirds (who introduced a vocal chant for 'Still I'm Sad'), The Nice and Procol Harum, and Cream were heavily Jazz-influenced. London may have had The UFO Club, International Times, nostalgic fashion outlet Granny Takes a Trip and the "music-hall psychedelia" of The Small Faces, but the documentary also highlights Robert Wyatt's Canterbury pioneers Soft Machine, and Birmingham-based The Move and The Moody Blues. For this Midlands assault, Roy Wood channeled his "DIY sitar" while Justin Hayward and company changed the scope of the LP with concept album Days of Future Passed.

In PSYCHEDELIC BRITANNIA, Arthur Brown describes taking LSD: "seeing into people's eyes, I saw all the universes, I saw them being born, I saw them die, I would say it was the nearest I came to being able to see God." Yet like all Utopia, it is inevitably undone by reality. Childlike optimism was no match for the harder realms entering Britain in the latter stages of the 1960s. The early growth of The National Front and "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland shifted the United Kingdom to Dystopia, as did Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech on mass immigration.  

"Chant to strange gods, and beat unhallowed gongs"

The Courtyard (2003)

Neonomicon (2010-11)

Providence (2015-17)

A concert by the Ulthar Cats - referencing a H. P. Lovecraft short story - is a gateway to the sequential horror of The Courtyard; this is the cover of #2 (February 2003).

THESE three Avatar comics - a publishing house renowned for its creative freedom (code for graphic sex and violence) - cover Alan Moore's main association with H. P. Lovecraft. Originally planned to appear in Yuggoth Cultures and Other Growths, The Courtyard became a two part release in its own right. Written by Antony Johnston and illustrated by Jacen Burrows, it is based on a 1994 narrative by Moore which appeared in the Creation anthology The Starry Wisdom. Unorthodox FBI agent Aldo Sax investigates three seemingly unrelated ritual murders in the United States using anomaly theory, a method that correlates disparate data into a cohesive whole. His exploration leads him to Club Zothique and a drug called Aklo, peddled by veiled Johnny Carcosa. Sax is given a potent white powder and experiences spectral planes and primordial creatures. Understanding that Aklo is not a drug but the language Carcosa had spoken, the visions drive Sax to kill his neighbor using the same modus operandi as the cases he was examining.

Inspired by the ninth sonnet of Fungi from Yuggoth, Moore creates the long-faced Sax almost as a modern Lovecraft facsimile, and even in such a short story it is laced with inevitable fan service. Aklo has been used by many authors after its inception in Arthur Machen's 1899 The White People, a mystical language which has been used by Lovecraft himself (The Dunwich Horror, The Haunter of the Dark); Zothique is an imaged future continent in the works of Clark Ashton Smith; the action takes place in Red Hook, with the protagonist mimicking the blatant racism from HPL's The Horror at Red Hook; and to flag the sexualities to come, Carcosa offers to sell Aldo "a cock ring from Innsmouth."

Neonomicon (or "New Necronomicon") explores two of H. P. Lovecraft's most notable undercurrents, literally fleshing out his unnatural rituals and sexual shyness. Here FBI agent Brears gives a Deep One a handjob.

The story continues in the notorious four-issue Neonomicon, which Moore has described as "really fucking horrible." FBI agents Gordon Lamper and Merril Brears visit Sax at a psychiatric hospital. They are investigating a copycat killer, and want to question him about his motives, yet he only speaks unintelligible gibberish. Lamper and Brears track down Carcosa whose disturbing paraphernalia lead them to a specialty shop in Salem - Whisperers in Darkness - stockists of occult books and weird sex toys (which include dildo tentacles, Cthulhu gimp masks and an Elder Thing as an inflatable doll). Going undercover as husband and wife, Lamper and Brears attend an orgy hosted by the owners, members of the Esoteric Order of Dagon who regularly indulge in rituals to attract the sexual attention of a race of fishmen. 

This grotesque melange continues with the agents exposed and Lamper murdered by the cultists. Brears is sexually assaulted by the Order then locked in a room with a Deep One, which rapes her continuously for several days. During this ordeal Brears has a vision of Carcosa, who reveals himself as an avatar of Great Old One Nyarlathotep. When the sea creature tastes a drop of Brears' urine, it determines that she is pregnant and helps her escape into the ocean. Brears returns to the city and contacts the FBI, who raid the specialty shop John Woo-style. Three months later Brears visits Sax and is able to understand his speech as Aklo, the language of the Deep Ones. Brears realises that the events in Lovecraft's fiction are actually premonitions of a future apocalypse, an event that will be heralded by the birth of her child, Cthulhu.

The prolonged interracial rape in Neonomicon owes little to Lovecraftian cosmic horror. It's more like the comic book equivalent of passing a car crash; you look, but you know you shouldn't.

In a 2010 interview with Wired.com, Moore labels Neonomicon "one of the most unpleasant things I have ever written," and forged against fallout from the WATCHMEN movie and an impending issue with HMRC. "Although I took it to pay off the tax bill," says Moore, "I’m always going to make sure I try and make it the best possible story I can. Because I was in a very misanthropic state, I probably wasn’t at my most cheery. So Neonomicon is very black, and I’m only using black to describe it because there isn’t a darker colour." Suppressed Lovecraft themes - from underlying racism to lack of female characters and carnal activity - are given a brutal makeover, feeling as if the reader is experiencing a snuff movie. Lamper is black and dies quickly, and Brears is a recovering sex addict; it's as if Merril's past has made it justifiable that her epiphany encompesses a building and uncontrollable despair.

In contrast, the twelve-issue Providence is a dry, historical thesis. Exhaustively researched - as you would expect - Providence is similar to From Hell when Sir William Gull examines London architecture; but that was only a chapter, here it is over eleven issues. Author Robert Black tours New England and the outsiders of society, befriending Lovecraft who is inspired by Black's travels to write prophetic stories. In the final issue we reconnect with Brears, who gives birth to a baby Cthulhu as the Earth becomes a fiction based dreamstate. One looks at Moore's trilogy wondering if he has devalued Lovecraft for his own dramatic gain, similar to Gull's Masonic whim. The core of the Cthulhu mythos is that interdimensional entities look at humanity as not even a footnote; yet Moore has argued that there is a different relationship between humans and Cthulhu, as the Great Old One is a caricature of our form, rather than the more abstract deities. In the end, to quote Dr Pretorius in THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, "to a new world of gods and monsters!".

Avatar mainstay Jacen Burrows drew all three tales. His clear line and almost cartoonish style is greatly influenced by Hergé and Mike Baron; this is the limited Century cover to Providence #11 (November 2016).

Moore has a long and problematic history of sexual violence in his comics. Notable examples include Silk Spectre in Watchmen, the attempted rape of Kid Marvelman, and The Joker's treatment of Barbara Gordon in Batman The Killing Joke. Rape did occur fleetinging with Lovecraft but off page, in The Curse of Yig and The Horror at Red Hook; and in contrast to Neonomicon, Deep Ones in The Shadow over Innsmouth appear to prefer willing human partners. Providence riffs on The Thing on the Doorstep for its own rape scene of choice, a particularly warped body swap involving a possessed Black and a thirteen-year-old girl. Moore used a similar trait for Swamp Thing when Abby had sex with her husband Matt Cable, who was controlled by her uncle Anton Arcane.

When Monsters Attack!

BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER (1959)
GORGO (1961)

Initially written as an amorphous blob, distributor Allied Artists insisted that BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER became another 1950s movie dinosaur.  The Behemoth itself originates from Job 40:15-24, given to Earth on the fifth day of Creation, and generally regarded to have been Satan in the form of an elephant.

IN BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER, scientists Steve Karnes (Gene Evans) and James Bickford (Andre Morell, channeling his role as Professor Quatermass) travel to Looe in Cornwall to investigate the death of a fisherman, whose dying word was "behemoth." Thousands of dead fish have washed ashore shortly after, and it is discovered that samples contain large amounts of radioactive contamination. Karnes suspects that the "behemoth" is a large marine mammal that has mutated as a result of nuclear testing. After an attack near the Essex coast, eccentric paleontologist Dr Sampson (Jack MacGowran) identifies the creature as a Paleosaurus, an aquatic dinosaur that emits an ionising pulse like an electric eel. Surfacing in the Thames and capsizing the Woolwich Ferry, the monster then rampages through London. While Karnes and Bickford advise the military to administer a dose of radium, they hope to accelerate the radiation sickness that is slowly killing the beast.

This joint Anglo-American production, released in the United States as THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, was co-directed by Eugène Lourié and Douglas Hickox, and is a facsimile of Lourié's own THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. Evans and Morell are the most convincing aspects, and Lourié - an art director by trade - manages to bring out some atmospheric locales, but the threadbare budget and punishing schedule clearly hindered the special effects. Willis O'Brien and his assistant Pete Peterson were subcontracted by the film's initial team of Jack Rabin, Irving Block and Louis DeWitt, the latter providing the embarrassing "umbrella handle" version of the Paleosaurus during the ferry attack (the prop's wooden base even clears the Thames). Similarly, during the London stomping, the model's ankle joints are visibly falling apart. These climactic attacks were actually filmed without sound to save money, but a nice nod to O'Brien's glory days sees stock screaming from KING KONG dubbed in for the panic.

GORGO's off screen life has included a Charlton comic book run illustrated by Steve Ditko. This is the cover of Gorgo #3 (September 1961), where Latin dictator Astro - a reference to Fidel Castro - commands the creature to destroy all countries who oppose him.

Two years later Lourié helmed GORGO, a co-production of the United Kingdom, the United States and Ireland. Captain Joe Ryan (Bill Travers) and his first officer Sam (William Sylvester) are salvaging for treasure off the Irish coast when a volcano erupts. Taking their ship to Nara Island for repairs, they consult an unhelpful harbour master cum archaeologist and encounter a sixty-five foot tall dinosaur awoken by the seismic explosion. Capturing the monster, Ryan shuns the University of Dublin for a better deal from Dorkin's Circus of London. Exhibited in Battersea Park, it transpires that the monster Gorgo - named after the fearful Gorgon of Greek myth - is in fact only an infant. The two hundred feet mother has been following its phosphorescent trail and comes ashore in the capital, to demolish as many landmarks as possible and rescue her offspring.

For GORGO, stop-motion gives way to a man in an unwieldy monster suit, swiping at and stamping on the miniatures in banal, overlong sequences. Refreshingly both monsters survive to return to the sea, innocents escaping human interference and violence. The completely male cast are more like caricatures - Sylvester looks consistently flippant and uninterested - with the military and scientists also severely lacking in any kind of intelligence. The dramatis personae also includes an annoying young Irish orphan boy played by Vincent Winter, who had won the Academy Juvenile Award for 1953's THE KIDNAPPERS.

The Sinister Urge

SLAUGHTER HIGH (1986)
THE URGE TO KILL (1989)
LIVING DOLL (1990)

It took three directors - including Caroline Munro's partner George Dugdale - to helm SLAUGHTER HIGH.

AMERICAN horror and exploitation producer Dick Randall took up permanent residence in the UK from 1981 until his death, bankrolling a number of disposable fare including the three features under consideration here (he also produced DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS). SLAUGHTER HIGH - shot in London and at Holloway Sanatorium - is a cheesy slasher which begins with bespectacled high school nerd Marty Rantzen (Simon Scuddamore) seduced by Carol (Caroline Munro) as a joke. Several other students appear and physically abuse Marty while filming his ordeal, before the school's coach (Marc Smith) intervenes. However the April Fool's Day pranksters aren't finished yet, giving Rantzen Marijuana which accidentally sets off a chain of events that ends with Marty being doused with nitric acid. Ten years later the culprits are invited back to a fake school reunion, where Marty stalks them in a jester mask.

By the mid 1980s the slasher genre existed in self parody - even Jason Voorhees is referenced by name here - and sample killings in SLAUGHTER HIGH are suitably outlandish for their cliched characters: Ted (Michael Saffran)'s stomach explodes after drinking acid-laced beer, Shirley (Josephine Scandi) is melted in an acid bath, Joe (Gary Martin) is eviscerated by tractor blades, and Stella (Donna Yaeger) and Frank (EMMERDALE favourite Billy Hartman) are electrocuted while having sex. But the most ridiculous factors are the variable American accents and Munro trying to pass herself off as "girl most likely to succeed" despite being thirty-six at the time. Like the movie itself the cast are simply going through the motions. Only Scuddamore goes the extra mile in what would be his one and only film; the actor committed suicide by a drugs overdose not long after the production's wrap.

Following in the footsteps of H.A.L. 9000 and Skynet, THE URGE TO KILL's murderous A.I. takes sexually driven human form.

THE URGE TO KILL's premise is given away by its working title: ATTACK OF THE KILLER COMPUTER. Written and directed by renowned smut peddler Derek Ford, this unreleased travesty tells of lecherous music producer Bono Zorro (Alan Lake lookalike Peter Gordeno). Bono lives in a hi-tech flat (actually Randall's London apartment) which is run by a computer called S.E.X.Y.; however the A.I. develops feelings and becomes jealous of his female company. The computer kills the girls by scalding in the shower, death by electric toothbrush, melting by jacuzzi and - in the most notorious scene - a woman is trapped in a sun bed and her breasts explode. Somehow S.E.X.Y. has been able to manifest itself in human form, a green and silver nude woman who can even drive a car.

Horror movies of the 1980s both feared and revered technological advances, asking questions where society might be heading as we embraced the home computer boom. For THE URGE TO KILL, the answer is down the sexploitation sewer. In his last film, Ford crafts a tale that is Alexa meets DEMON SEED meets GARTH MARENGHI'S DARKPLACE (but without it being an in-joke). All the actresses have zero credentials, and spout dialogue as if reading idiot boards off screen. This, together with the dubious dubbing and hokey special effects, make it simply one of the worst entries in the entire British horror film canon.

"Look at her hair, its real"; Mark Jax and Katie Orgill in LIVING DOLL. Despite the perverse premise, the film falls between comedic understatement and gross-out.

In LIVING DOLL, introverted medical student Howard Adams (Mark Jax) works in the NYC Metropolitan morgue (actually Hammersmith Hospital) with wisecracking Jess (Gary Martin) for hostile boss Ed (Freddie Earlie). Howie is infatuated with Christine (Page 3 girl and model Katie Orgill, in her only acting role), who runs the flower shop at the hospital. He is shocked when she becomes his latest arrival, having been accidentally killed in a car accident by her obnoxious boyfriend Steve (Marcel Grant). Adams is shaken to discover a medical card indicating Christine suffered from catalepsy; refusing to accept she is definitely dead, he digs up her casket and carries her corpse back to his fleapit apartment, despite rent problems with harridan landlady Mrs Swartz (Eartha Kitt). Howie and Christine share the happenings of "their" day, watch television and cuddle on the couch - the student even brings a teddy bear back from her apartment - as the maggots and rats slowly take hold.

LIVING DOLL is a ponderous sleazefest that exists in a dreamstate tinged in sadness; it is a story that doesn't develop, and has a cast that aren't engaging. Every role is unlikeable or stereotypical; gullible nurses and a transsexual who lurks in alleyways are quite unnecessary. Orgill is visibly breathing in some scenes, but the sudden lapses into an "alive" state are jolting and effective. The lurid effects on Christine's decaying corpse help magnify the insanity, and there is also a gruesome autopsy sequence (yet the "money shot" is undoubtedly Howie's gooey, open-mouthed kiss).

Dead and Loving It

DRACULA (2020)

IN SEARCH OF DRACULA (2020)

"I'm undead, I'm not unreasonable;" Danish actor and musician Claes Bang is The Count in the BBC's new DRACULA miniseries.

ADAPTED by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, this loose and outrageous version of the perennial classic was screened as three ninety-minute segments over the New Year. We open in 1897 Transylvania, where Lawyer Jonathan Harker (John Heffernan) travels to Count Dracula (Claes Bang)'s labyrinthine abode, and soon becomes embroiled in mystery and contagion. The second episode is an expanded account of how Dracula sailed to England on the Demeter, assimilating his fellow travellers and its crew. And after being rescued from a watery grave 123 years later by The Jonathan Harker Institute - a scientific facility guarded by militia - the final part sees Dracula imprisoned like Hannibal Lecter, before the arrival of confidant Renfield (Gatiss himself) whom he had been skyping (luckily, the wifi password was set at 'Dracula').

As off-kilter as BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA and as hammy as CARRY ON SCREAMING, the production was shot at such notable locations as Orava Castle (NOSFERATU's homestead) and Bray. Bang is a Prince of Darkness somewhere between Roger Moore and David Walliams, and unsurprisingly for a Gatiss Dracula, The Count is not just insatiable for blood but also for homoerotica. Dolly Wells is the standout as dovetailing character Sister Agatha Van Helsing, before regressing into dull descendant Zoe for the third installment. In fact it is this last ninety minutes were everything is finally derailed, the modern setting used as if Quentin Tarantino was suddenly helming a primetime soap opera. The two opening salvos do hold interest, not least because of the old school makeup feel; bloody feedings and animated corpses are made creepier with jump cuts, and Dracula’s emergence from the innards of a wolf is pure 1980s body horror.

A miniscule character in the source novel, nurse Sister Agatha is now a nun and a Van Helsing, portrayed by Dolly Wells ("like many women my age I'm trapped in a loveless marriage, maintaining appearances in order to keep a roof over my head.")

More tactile is Gatiss' companion documentary IN SEARCH OF DRACULA, which charts The Count's literary origins, cinematic legacy and lasting iconography. Gatiss has always been more appealing as a fanboy, and we share his delight as he views original novel notes and interviews a host of Hammer starlets (Joanna Lumley attributes Christopher Lee's appeal to his eyebrows). As Moffat states, Bram Stoker's creation was the first time evil gained an attractive allure; and through his consequent journey, Dracula has become a myth in his own right, branching out from his own back-story of folklore and superstition. Appealing to our own more sinister psyche, the lord of the vampires is as insecure and shallow as all of us, seeking food, companionship and a sense of belonging.

It is this fascination with lore that is DRACULA's greatest strength and weakness. Written and unwritten rules are playfully addressed; Zoe tells The Count that his phobias are simply legends he had believed for so long that they have manifested as truth (sunlight death rays, for example, do not combust him, a trait introduced in NOSFERATU). Gatiss and Moffat juggle so many threads that basic questions remain puzzling: the treatment of reflections is particularly problematic, and why doesn't Dracula age before his rescue by the Harker Institute? The climax is also ambiguous; Dracula drinks Zoe's cancerous blood, leaving both characters seemingly dying but leaving enough room for a possible second series.

Bond and Beyond (Part II of II)

MOONRAKER (1979)

A fusion of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, MOONRAKER sees Roger Moore in his fourth Bond movie, the first 007 picture to adhere to the summer Hollywood blockbuster.

THE largest grossing James Bond until GOLDENEYE, MOONRAKER is the most preposterous of all 007 adventures, but does benefit from stunning locations, extraordinary Ken Adam sets and Derek Meddings' Oscar-nominated effects. When Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale)'s Moonraker shuttle vanishes, Bond (Roger Moore) questions the billionaire at Drax's luxurious California estate. In Venice, Bond uncovers a laboratory manufacturing a deadly gas, which he learns is to destroy life on Earth so Drax Industries can preside over a master race on an opulent space station. Together with undercover CIA agent Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), United States Marines and former Drax henchman Jaws (Richard Kiel), 007 thwarts the plans and destroys the poison capsules jettisoned towards Earth. 

Because of prohibitive British tax laws, this movie became a £30m Franco-British co-production (which explains the high proportion of French cast and crew), and took precedence over FOR YOUR EYES ONLY because it could cash in on the STAR WARS phenomenon (even Cubby Broccoli admitted they went too far). MOONRAKER particularly suffers from loose editing, obvious product placement and an overbearing comedic tone; when Jaws - in the pre-credits sequence - lands without the benefit of a parachute onto a circus tent, it acts as a signpost of what is to come. Even Shirley Bassey can't save the insipid theme (allegedly offered to Kate Bush, who sensibly declined the offer). But the narrative is nonsensical: for a motion picture which prided itself on the technical advice from NASA, the space battle is still full of laser sound effects (the vacuum of the stars has never hindered filmmakers), and it is a mystery why the RAF are transporting a fuelled shuttle in the first place.

"Look after Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him;" 
Michael Lonsdale is effortlessly creepy as Hugo Drax.

Performances are also negated by the superficiality. In stark contrast to his assured performance in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, Moore telephones his eyebrows and charisma in, and looks nondescript in a number of outrageous sequences (especially on board the embarrassing inflatable gondola). Chiles makes for an appealing but functional Bond girl, and the effectiveness of Drax servant Chang (Toshiro Suga) is overshadowed by the slapstick. But this is nothing compared to Blanche Ravalec as Jaws' girlfriend Dolly, who, together with Sheriff Pepper, ranks as the most inappropriate role ever to grace a Bond. Pint-sized, pig-tailed and bespectacled, Jaws falls madly in love with Dolly and are inseparable for the rest of the film. Long standing characters are treated only on a rudimentary basis; though assigned to MI6's Brazilian HQ, Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) carries on her sidelining during the Moore era with a brief appearance, but at least Maxwell's real-life daughter appears in a non-speaking role as one of Drax's perfect specimens.

Ian Fleming's original Moonraker novel of 1955 is the only Bond book that takes place solely in Britain, and consequently has been described as the author's hymn to England. Featuring a nuclear warhead destined for London, the film retains only the lead villain's name, the label of the rocket, and an undercover love interest. The novel paints a very different Drax, who is a Nazi in Britain under the employ of the Soviet Union; he has had plastic surgery and one side of face is permanently scarred. This, together with red hair and a moustache, sees Fleming liken the character to a ringmaster. Amazingly, the first adaptation of Moonraker was a year later on South African radio, with future BLOCKBUSTERS host Bob Holness as everyone's favourite secret agent.

Bond and Beyond (Part I of II)

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977)

Nobody does it better; Roger Moore and Barbara Bach both give outstanding performances in this iconic Bond movie.

WHILE on a mission in Austria, Secret Agent James Bond 007 (Roger Moore) encounters a set of Russian operatives and kills Sergei Barsov (Michael Billington). Meanwhile, Allied and Soviet nuclear submarines are disappearing, so M (Bernard Lee) and his KGB counterpart General Gogol (Walter Gotell) assign 007 and leading Russian spy Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) to work together and investigate. The leading suspect is reclusive Karl Stromberg (Curt Jurgens), a billionaire shipping magnate who has a unique operational base: Atlantis, a structure in the sea at the centre of his plans for a new aquatic world order. Bond and Amasova discover that Stromberg has been using his huge cargo ship Liparus to capture the submarines and imprison the crews, planning to use the subs to launch nuclear missiles to destroy civilisation. The two agents initially forge an uneasy alliance, which is further tested when Amasova realises that it was Bond who had murdered her lover, Barsov.

Freed from his strained relationship with Harry Saltzman, and following the lukewarm reception for THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, Cubby Broccoli was determined to re-energise the Bond franchise. Yet the project was not a smooth ride: a disjointed script writing process - which had included the resurrection of SPECTRE and input of writers as diverse as Anthony Burgess and John Landis - was further shadowed by a court injunction obtained by Kevin McClory, who was attempting to remake THUNDERBALL. TV puppetmaster Gerry Anderson also instigated legal action when he discovered that some aspects of the script bore a resemblance to a MOONRAKER proposal he had submitted with UFO script editor Tony Barwick prior to DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. Anderson was persuaded to drop the case, and rights were purchased by the producers.

A Steel-toothed character adapted from Ian Fleming's bad boy Horror, Richard Kiel's Jaws is one of the most recognisable Bond villains, but a missed opportunity. A nudging joke has the character bite and fight a shark at the end, but another less obvious tie-in is that JAWS director Steven Spielberg was approached to helm the picture, only to allegedly ask for too much creative control.

All this acts as problematic metaphors for Ian Fleming's novel The Spy Who Loved Me itself, the writer's most bizarre book. A total anomaly, it is written from the heroine's viewpoint, much of the action takes place in a motel room, and Bond himself doesn't appear until late on. Allegedly based on a true story, it was Fleming's intent to move away from the standard 007 format after criticisms of the Bond novels. After even greater disapproval, the author claimed at one point he just found the manuscript on his desk anyway. Consequently, when he sold the film rights of the books to Broccoli and Saltzman, Fleming specified that the source material was to be reinvented for the big screen and only the title could be used. 

With a screenplay eventually in place - a combined effort credited to Richard Malbaum and Christopher Wood - production designer Ken Adam warned Broccoli that no sound stages in existence could accommodate the envisioned tanker battle climax; when Cubby simply instructed "then built it," it marked the creation of the famous 007 Stage at Pinewood, and also illustrated the kingpin's determination for the most spectacular Bond yet. Made for a then gargantuan $13.5m, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME contains exemplary Derek Meddings modelwork and is generally a visual stunner - filming major sequences in Egypt, Sardinia and the Bahamas - and unleashes the beautiful Lotus Esprit into the pantheon of extraordinary gadgets. The female cast are also particularly stunning - even the hotel receptionist is played by Valerie Leon - and Bach remains one of the most attractive lead women ever to grace a Bond film.

Veteran German actor Curt Jurgens as Stromberg. Underdeveloped and underplayed, the villain joins the ranks of Gustav Graves from DIE ANOTHER DAY, Brad Whitaker from THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, and Elliot Carver from TOMORROW NEVER DIES as most ineffective menaces in the world of James Bond.

In essence a YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE remake, director Lewis Gilbert returns for what is widely regarded as the high mark to Moore's tenure, but there are issues. The comedic one liners still grate, and Marvin Hamlisch's dated score cheapens the action. But the main problem is Stromberg; a wet fish himself, Jurgens even has webbed fingers, which are never directly referred to. One of the dullest of Bond villains, he is another adversary who is reduced to pushing buttons and issuing ultimatums (his demise is also anticlimactic, providing a low key shootout). Even his rogues gallery are a mixed bag: dubbed by Barbara Jefford, Caroline Munro sizzles as helicopter assassin Naomi, Milton Reid's hulking henchmen Sandor is soon despatched, and the effectiveness of Richard Kiel's dim-witted but determined Jaws (in a role where David Prowse and Will Sampson were considered) is diluted by being increasingly used for light entertainment, an issue taken to another level for MOONRAKER.

The Spirit of Radio

A CHILD'S VOICE (1978)
A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - THE DEAD ROOM (2018)

Dyall M for Murder: English character actor Valentine Dyall's sepulchral voice effortlessly graced radio drama. But he also had a fascinating acting and voice artist career on screen, with film roles as diverse as Jethro Keane in CITY OF THE DEAD and a finance minister in COME PLAY WITH ME. On television, Dyall appeared as The Black Guardian on DOCTOR WHO, and provided the vocalisation of Deep Thought in THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY.

DUBBED "The British Vincent Price", Valentine Dyall's distinctive tone made him perfect as raconteur The Man in Black, who introduced the BBC radio series Appointment with Fear. Revived on a number of occasions since its inception in 1943, these dramatised half-hour horror stories drew on both classic tales of terror and original commissioned pieces; between 2009 and 2011, BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast four series under the banner The Man in Black, with Mark Gatiss in the title role. Five years since the previous BBC A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - the Gatiss adaptation and direction of M.R. James' The Tractate Middoth - Gatiss returns to pen and helm an original tale, THE DEAD ROOM, which fuses his love of these two great homegrown brands and rubbishes their heritage in one tidy half-hour. 

THE DEAD ROOM refers to a long-running audio horror series presented by veteran luvvie Aubrey Judd (perfectly cast Simon Callow), a broadcaster who has been "bringing mild disquiet to radio listeners since 1976." Judd discovers that elements of his own past - an underage same-sex frisson during the heatwave of '76 -  are not as buried as he hoped. Never, since the notorious THE ICE HOUSE, has there been such a preposterous entry; the meat only kicks in at the halfway mark (setting up the inclusion of Fox's top five hit 'S-S-S-Single Bed'), and for all of Judd's longing for the substance of yesteryear, the programme subscribes to the modern requisites of political correctness and diversity casting.

Susan Penhaligon, Simon Callow 
and Anjli Mohindra in THE DEAD ROOM.

With a score created from sound effects, THE DEAD ROOM was filmed in the BBC's iconic Maida Vale Studios, a decommissioned facility that had been a mainstay for John Peel sessions and the Radiophonic Workshop. No wonder that Judd is agitated he is reading a ghost story about video games - Ready Player Death - in such a studio of gravitas, it is Callow alone that holds all the thinly veiled threads together. As Gatiss succumbs to that nadir of all overstretched writers - self-reverence - even when the vengeful spirit eventually turns up (reminiscent of Amicus' eye-less visage from AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS!) it plays straight into our now favourite disco tune of choice. Applying the James/Ghost rule of malevolent phantoms approximately forty years previous to the setting, Gatiss commented "[James] had no time for friendly ghosts. And one of his big things is no sex. I broke that rule."

For THE DEAD ROOM, Gatiss applied another forty year rule by drawing heavily from A CHILD'S VOICE. An independent production from Dublin-based B.A.C. Films, it received an airing on the BBC and was entered into the London and Chicago Film Festivals. Written by film critic David Thomson and narrated by Dyall, the programme tells of "the disturbing gentleman of the wires" Ainsley Rupert Macreadie (T. P. McKenna), haunted by his next intended tale. This macabre story concerns the tragic death of a magician's child apprentice, and Macreadie receives a telephone call in the dead of night from a child asking him not to continue with the broadcast. Back at the studio this creepy occurrence gets under his usually unflappable skin, with the storyteller fluffing numerous lines. Panicking, Macreadie tries to escape but the recording booth door is locked; and yet his colleagues claim he delivered a perfect recital, while entering the unlocked door with his usual after-performance refreshments. 

T. P. McKenna in A CHILD'S VOICE; “that’s the spirit of radio. It’s a medium that leaves us blind and dumb. All the world is guided into the ears. It blows gently upon the embers of the imagination, till they flare up into a fire that nothing will put out…”

The close-ups of telephones and microphones illustrate how these two earliest methods of communication can isolate more rounded processes and interactions. Like Callow, McKenna is flawless as the thespian loner, who has spent too long with his own company, and too long delighting in the sound of his own voice. And similar to all good ghost stories, the real nature of the presence is open to interpretation: is it merely a prank, a reflection of Ainsley's mental state, or has the youth's ethereal pain miraculously materialised in the real world?

Most Haunted

BORLEY RECTORY (2017)
ULTRASOUND OF A HAUNTING: THE MAKING OF BORLEY RECTORY (2019)

A ghostly nun has been at the forefront of the Borley Rectory legend. Whether in life or afterlife, the nun has a rich tradition in horror; their distinctive dress and unwavering devotion have creeped out audiences in an array of religious hysteria on film, including HAXAN, THE DEVILS and SCHOOL OF THE HOLY BEAST. 

THE gothic rectory of Borley in Essex - which stood between 1862 and 1944 - has been described by psychic researcher Harry Price as "the most haunted house in England." By the late 1940s, a study by the Society for Psychical Research had rejected most of the sightings as either imagined or fabricated, and cast doubt on Price's credibility. A convoluted history includes the ghost of a nun, headless horsemen, spirit messages, a human skull and failed exorcisms; and although having no basis, ghost hunters often quote the story of a nearby Benedictine monastery, to which a monk conducted a relationship with a nun. After their affair was discovered, the monk was executed and the nun bricked up alive.

To add to this, in 1938 Helen Glanville conducted a planchette séance in Streatham. Price reported that she made contact with two spirits, the first of which was that of a young woman, Marie Lairre. Marie was a French nun who travelled to England to marry a member of the Waldegrave family, the owners of Borley's 17th-century manor house. She was said to have been murdered in a building once on the site of the rectory, and her body buried either in a cellar or thrown into a disused well, with the spirit messages her pleas for help from beyond the grave. In 1939 the rectory was severely damaged in a fire when new owner Captain W. H. Gregson was involved in an insurance scam; whether the blaze was accidental or incidental, it mirrored the 1841 fate of a first rectory.

Ashley Thorpe of Carrion Films. Carrion prides itself in bringing to the screen the spirit of our wind-swept myths and penny dreadful traditions (previous shorts include Scayrecrow, about a vengeful ghostly highwayman, The Screaming Skull, and The Hairy Hands, taking inspiration from the Dartmoor legend). 

The first inhabitants – the Bull family – soon reported ghostly phenomena, largely thought to be a combination of local rumour and the imagination of the Bull daughters. In 1929 Mr and Mrs Smith became the new incumbents, and the supernatural shenanigans persisted. The Smiths approached the Daily Mirror, asking for their help in contacting the Society for Psychical Research, and a series of sensationalist articles appeared before the paper facilitated the involvement of Price. When the Foysters moved in during 1930 Price maintained his interest, as the strange occurrences seemed to intensify around Mrs Marianne Foyster.

This peculiar tale is the basis for the first feature-length release of Carrion Films, led by Devon-based writer and illustrator Ashley Thorpe. Operating a rotoscope-style fusion of animation and green screen, BORLEY RECTORY recalls a movie heritage of James Whale and THE INNOCENTS in its 75 minute docudrama format. Narrated by Julian Sands, the details are built upon by its flickering monochrome images, creating a dreamworld of pale faces and pitch black shadows (most memorably, a figure sits at the end of a child's bed, and the phantom nun's face transforms into a grimacing skull). The cast are uniformly excellent: Reverend Harry (Richard Strange) and Ethel Bull (Sara Dee), Reverend Guy (Nicholas Vince) and Mabel Smith (Claire Louise Amias) and the Reverend Lionel (Steve Furst) and Marianne Foyster (Annabel Bates), all shine in their stylised make-up and costumes. And for genre enthusiasts it is a joy to see film historian Jonathan Rigby as Price and Reece Shearsmith as journalist V. C. Wall.

Annabel Bates as Marianne Foyster. During the Foyster tenure of the rectory - between 1930 and 1935 - the alleged paranormal activity was at its height. In fact, the unconventional personal life of the couple would make a fascinating feature in its own right.

ULTRASOUND OF A HAUNTING: THE MAKING OF BORLEY RECTORY is the centrepiece bonus on Nucleus' recent Blu-ray disc, which runs thirty minutes longer than the film it documents. And it needs to: a nostalgic labour of love that goes back to the 1977 publication of Usborne's World of the Unknown: All About Ghosts, and the loss of a childhood friend. The most astute observation is that the hauntings can be traced not just through the tall stories, but to the needs for monetary recognition and sexual fulfilment of the Borley females; perhaps the stuffy men of God saw them as second best to their faith. BORLEY RECTORY itself is a triumph of getting the job done after six years of trials and (often personal) tribulations. Yet even in his darkest days, Thorpe's escape back to Borley cements the power of wondrous childhood memories and the need for simpler times. After all, it is us human beings - with all our yearnings and motives - that create the reality or unreality we experience. 

We can all relate to Ashley's sentimentality; popular culture exists in a whirlwind of nostalgia. First described as a psychosomatic disease, we can confuse the past and the present, the real and the imaginary; our preference for the sights, sounds and smells of yesteryear has its foundation in our carefree childhoods. It was Immanuel Kant who stated that people were triggered not so much for an actual place as for the time of youth. David Lowenthal's The Past is a Foreign Country considers that nostalgia constructs a form of escapism; and by savouring these ruins of artificiality, author Susan Stewart condemns the condition as a "social disease," maintaining that the past is utopian and unreachable.