A Homage to the “tit and fang” film

Christopher Lee as Dracula

Philip Larkin (the dead poet of “They fuck you up, your mum and dad” fame that is, not the Philip Larkin who occasionally contributes to this blog) during his time as librarian at Hull University in the 1970s was said to have  complained to a friend about the lack of late night horror films on regional TV at the time, claiming ‘We’re absolutely starved of tit and fang up here.”  It is of course conceivable that the other Philip Larkin holds similar views.  But I couldn’t possibly comment on that.

Larkin was referring to that unique, but long gone staple of the British B-movie industry, the Hammer horror.  A classic combination of gothic horror - plundered from the literary works of Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Dennis Wheatley and Sheridan le Fanu among others and endlessly recycled – and soft porn.  Cheaply made and featuring a regular cast of actors, such as Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Barbara Shelley, the Hammer films would be considered quite tame by modern standards, not to mention tacky with their extensive use of unrealistic rubber bats and plastic fangs from Woolworths, but nevertheless are still highly entertaining to watch today.

Phil Barker in his review of Sinclair McKay’s history of the Hammer films, A Thing of Unspeakable Horror, published in the Observer sums up the genre perfectly:

“Hammer gave us a world all their own, a place with Home Counties woodland masquerading as Transylvania (it was Black Park near Slough), heavily cleavaged vampire women, lashings of fake blood with a strange milkshake texture, and the occasional bad sets, particularly in the later films, as if Dracula lived in a branch of the Angus Steak House. It’s immediately recognisable, this land where ‘the inns are full and boisterous only until someone mentions a certain word’, and McKay does a tasty job of evoking it. We all remember the red lining of Dracula’s cape, but what a pleasure to be reminded of Peter Cushing’s eyeball, suddenly seen huge through a magnifying glass as he examines the brain.

I realise The Dreaming Arm is in serious danger of becoming a branch of the Kate Bush fan club at this stage, but to celebrate Hallowe’en, here’s her very own tribute to the Hammer films – Hammer Horror .  In contrast to the very heavygoing “This Woman’s Work” of the last post, “Hammer Horror” is a light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek number, in which Kate takes a leaf out of Alice Cooper’s book.  Dracula will be turning in his grave.  And then he’ll get out of it and find some healthy young virgins to suck the blood of. 

Kate Bush: Hammer Horror

The Doctor who does this woman’s work

 Thanks to “SillySteve2006″ for coming up with the ingenious idea of posting this rather moving clip on Youtube.  It’s the last moments of Tom Baker as Doctor Who accompanied by the Kate Bush song “This Woman’s Work“.   

Picture the scene – it’s 1981 and the tall curly haired goggle-eyed, toothy-grinned man, who a generation of children has come to know as the hero of Saturday evening TV has just plunged to his imminent death from a radio telescope in the process of saving the universe yet again. 

And now he’s about to morph into that vet from “All Creatures Great & Small”. 

OK, so at the end of the day in the grand scheme of things it’s not a big deal.  All that’s happened is that the lead actor in a children’s TV show is being replaced by another actor.  But when seen in conjunction with the song, which is poignant and moving enough in its own right, it stirs certain emotions in the listener/viewer.  We get the apocalyptic sense that this is truly the end of an era.  The song is actually about pregnancy and childbirth and the traumas and emotional pain involved, a theme which fits in nicely with the regeneration of a dying Time Lord and the beginning of a new life.   The Doctor’s battered body lies prostrate on the ground as he sees flashbacks of old friends calling out his name while Kate mournfully wails about all the things she should have said but didn’t say and urges him not to die, citing “I know you have a lot of strength left, I know you have a little life left in you” – brilliant.

No doubt something similar will occur when David Tennant, probably the most popular Tardis pilot since Tom Baker morphs into the controversially chosen Matt Smith.  But it just won’t be the same.

But this blog posting isn’t really about Dr Who or Kate Bush, but about how childhood memories, certain powerful and evocative pieces of music or film can trigger off strong emotions in the human mind.  The real video for the song, featuring Kate herself alongside Tim “Percy/Captain Darling from Blackadder” McInnerney can be viewed here.   I would defy anyone to play  it without being moved in some way.

But then maybe it just affects 36-year old batchelors with too much time on their hands.  “Batchelor?” I hear you cry in amazement.  Well, I write a blog and I like Dr Who.  Go figure as the Americans would say.

Will the Real Kate Bush please stand up?

I’ve referred to the early 1980s BBC comedy sketch show Not the 9 o’clock News on this site before (cf “Nice Video Shame About the Song” and the Two Ninnies “We like birds” song).    Here’s another sketch of note.  Pamela Stephenson, now trading as the psychologist Dr Pamela “married to a rather well known hirsute Scottish comedian, who this blogger has been known to do drunken impressions of at 60th birthday parties in Belgian restaurants” Stephenson does a passable parody of Kate Bush.

The sketch is a satire of the song Them Heavy People, (which is also linked here for comparative purposes), a cautionary tale warning people about the dangers of obesity.  Although Kate’s one of those people along with Enya and the French actress Irène Jacob of Three Colours Red and La Double Vie de Véronique fame that I won’t have a bad word about, it’s probably fair to say that some of her songs do slightly border on the pretentious or too- clever-by-half category with their pseudo-intellectual references to deep philosophical concepts and spirituality.  Who else could get away with a song containing references to whirling dervishes and lines like:

“They open doorways that I thought were shut for good.
They read me Gurdjieff and Jesu”

And no I didn’t know who Gurdjieff was either before I looked him up on Wikipedia.

Although she doesn’t succeed in looking like Kate, Pamela gets the voice uncannily accurate.  And I’m sure being a good sport and of fairly broad-minded principles Kate saw the funny side.  Hopefully so will you.

ENNIO MORRICONE: MUSICAL GENIUS

The Dreaming Arm’s occasional contributor Philip “We like birds we’re ornithologists/Postman Plod he’s a miserable sod, the tattoo on Biffa Bacon’s Mum’s arm, it’ll be ye ootside and ye’ll hoof us in the knackaz” Larkin is back to pay homage to arguably the world’s greatest living composer (and without a shadow of doubt the world’s greatest ever composer of soundtracks to 1960s spaghetti westerns and films about 18th century Jesuit missionaries in South America) Ennio Morricone.

I  am sitting down to write this small tribute to one of the greatest modern composers for the blog before it is too late, and he has passed on.  CW and myself have prevaricated and “hummed and hawed” about this piece, but happily the legend that is Morricone still remains with us today.  Morricone will never read what I have written, but I feel it only fair that the blog should acknowledge him:  CW and I are both big fans.  I very much regret not going to a concert of his in London a number of years ago, but if such an event ever happens again (and I hope that it will), you may bet that I will be in the audience, whatever my circumstances may be.  I am writing this piece to the haunting strains of the “Ecstasy of Gold” which accompanied the frenzied searches of Tuco for buried gold in the vast cemetery during the final scenes in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Some people in this world have an instinctive genius for being able to stir deep emotions within us, accessing these by a profound knowledge of what fires our most primitive senses. Winston Churchill was able to do this through the medium of words: his speeches remain possibly his greatest legacy to the United Kingdom and its people. Laurie Lee, in his Cider with Rosie had a similar talent for choosing exactly the right combination of words to evoke pictures in our mind’s eye of a young boy growing up in the Cotswolds in the 1920s. I would say that Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer of whom I write, similarly possesses this wonderful talent, except that he expresses it through the medium of music. It is as if he visualises human emotion like the cords of a violin, and knows instinctively which ones to play in order to produce a wonderful reaction in each of us.

I do not know much about his background, except that he is obviously Italian and has been classically educated in music. For those who are unfamiliar with the name of Ennio Morricone, he wrote the music for many of Sergio Leone’s  Western Films, for example, A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Once Upon a Time in America, to name but a few. Practically everyone knows at least some of these tunes. In addition to the work he did for Leone, Morricone also composed the highly memorable soundtrack for the film The Mission, and so many other pieces that it would be tedious to try and catalogue them here.  I feel personally that his music works in particularly perfect harmony with Leone’s films, their look and feel, their mood, and their environment. This partnership may have worked so well because both were Italians and Latins, and had an instinctive understanding of what the other was looking for.

Morricone’s background music never fails to capture the right mood in a film scene, and almost draws the viewer deeper into the ambience of the picture. Who can fail to be moved by the strains of “Death of a Soldier”, when Clint Eastwood’s ministers to a mortally wounded young confederate, dying alone, in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly?  In that same film, (and with a similar music score), during the scene when Tuco and the man with no name enter the monastery for help, we are filled with empathy and compassion at the sight of the monks in simple brown habits binding and washing the wounds of the helpless, starving, confederate refugees. Sticking with The Good…etc, remember that part when our two anti-heroes, Eastwood and Wallach, are marched into a dust caked, fly-blown prisoner of war camp by their Union captors?  By the use of the whistling and ever-so-slightly wistful marching tune, we almost can believe that we are being shepherded to the same camp.

Claudia Cardinale and Charles Bronson in Once Upon A Time in the West

Changing the film and the mood entirely, remember the wonderful score in Once Upon a Time in the West which accompanies Claudia Cardinale’s character as she alights from the train and we see the birth of a bustling new western town, and the music conveys both hope for future progress, but also wistful regret at the demise of the old “Wild West” and its (often warped) code of honour? In our deepest core we know, without realising it, that civilization as represented by the new town spells death to the Old West, yet the mere footage in this film of the stage town alone could not convey this knowledge to the viewer: Morricone’s musical score darkly hints at the notion in our sub-conscious. Sometimes the melancholy invoked by Ennio’s pieces can be almost overpowering: I would not recommend anyone in a dark mood to listen to “Deborah’s Theme” from Once Upon a Time in America.

Part of the reason for Morricone’s success is that he is prepared to be highly innovative in his approach to musical scores. For instance, during one duel scene in For a Few Dollars More, the feverish, oven-like tension is accentuated by the sepulchral strains of organ music punctuating the classic Western stand-off. Similarly, no other composer could have made work as well as Ennio the frog croaking “wop, wop, wop” “March of the Peasants” in A Fistful of Dynamite. Neither, as with the “Ecstasy of Gold”, was he scared to use female soprano singing in the score. Somehow, the music seems entirely appropriate to the scene of the film.

Some people take a very snobbish view towards composers such as Ennio Morricone, accusing them of being “populist”, and selling their work for pure profit. I do not agree. Ennio’s work has touched the lives of millions of people, even without us being aware of it, and brought fine music within the remit of those of us who do not ordinarily know our Rachmaninov from our Tchaikovsky.

Good on you Ennio! 

 

The “Nice video, shame about the song” effect

Nice video - shame about the song

In the early 1980s the popular BBC comedy show Not the Nine O’Clock News mocked the pretensions of the contemporary pop video phenomenon in the famous sketch “Nice Video Shame About the Song” (avaialble on Youtube if you’re interested).  It was a magnificent piece of satire, highlighting the fact that pop videos had become over-elaborate and relied heavily on the state of the art special effects of the time like Quantel and Paintbox, as if in an attempt to make up for the crapness of the song.  Bands like the Human League, Duran Duran and Visage were particularly guilty of this.

I was reminded of this recently when on a Ryanair flight which arrived at its destination ahead of schedule.  To celebrate this momentous event a trumpet fanfare was played and an American voice announced over the tannoy how great Ryanair was. I’ve been a regular flyer with Ryanair for the best part of a decade now. To be fair, I’ve only had two bad experiences with them, one of which was mostly my own fault for being late. So, in principle I’ve got no problem in flying with Ryanair, but I can’t say I care much for the airline’s chief executive, the publicity-seeking, money-grabbing Michael O’Leary as I’ve made clear in a previous post.

Essentially what I’m getting at here is the fact that it is quite possible to admire great works of art, literature and music without liking their creator.

U2 are without doubt a fine bunch of musicians, but their lead singer is equally without doubt a egomaniacal, sanctimonious, self-righteous irritating little tosser – as I’ve made clear in a previous piece.  Another loud-mouthed Dubliner, not quite as nauseating, but almost as sanctimonious was a fine musician and songwriter in his day. I don’t like Mondays, Rat Trap and Banana Republic are among the greatest songs of the 1970s, but the man who wrote them is an arrogant tosser.

Also, take Andrew Lloyd-Webber for instance.  Cats, Evita and Phantom of the Opera are all outstanding works of musical theatre, even though their creator is an obnoxious trout-faced, medieval-haired twat.

An obnoxious trout-faced medieval-haired twat

Blackadder is in my view one of the greatest comedy shows ever – but I don’t care much for its co-writers Ben Elton and Richard Curtis and their smug, self-righteous “oh look how great we are” demeanours.

So when you bring Ben Elton and Andrew Lloyd-Webber together (a match made in Hell if ever there was one) as was the case for The Beautiful Game, a musical about a Belfast youth soccer club amidst the backdrop of the violence which enguled the city in the early days of the troubles, the result is an abomination.  Two rich middle class prats from the English Home Counties lecturing people on how bad it all was in Belfast back then.  It’s almost as bad as mega-rich rock musicians from Dublin lecturing the world on how bad things are in Africa.  If they really feel that strongly about it they should go and live in Africa.

At this point I will grudgingly admit that I was a teenage U2 fan during my younger and more foolish days.  Then I gradually saw the error of my ways.

Nice songs,  shame about the singer, etc.

 

 

 

 

The power of coincidence before sunrise

Some time ago on this blog I mentioned the remarkable coincidence that occurred when I happened to have exactly the same amount in loose change in my pocket as what the supermarket bill came to.

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in Before Sunrise

Another coincidence of sorts happened to me more recently. When on one of my (now increasingly rare) trips into town (ie Central London) on the pretext of attending a data protection seminar (yes, I know fascinating stuff), I stopped at a branch of a well-known recorded media retailer to acquire some CDs and DVDs. On my shopping list was Before Sunrise, a film from the mid-’90s starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke as two young free-spirited travellers, one French and one American who meet by chance on a train bound for Vienna. It’s quite an uplifting film with a simple plot in which nothing of note actually happens, except that the two characters (the only main characters in the film) wander around Vienna over the course of 24 hours and have various quasi-intellectual conversations on life, death, art, philosophy, then have sex with each other in a park (an uneccesary event which lowers the tone of the film by the way), and sleeping rough, before going their own separate ways agreeing to meet up again at the same place in 6 months time.

The type of film you’d see late on a Sunday night on Channel 4 thanks to the generous sponsorship of a well-known Belgian brewer famous for its pretentious black and white commercials featuring French peasants of the Resistance during the second world war. I’d seen the film before a few years ago (probably late one Sunday night on Channel 4 come to think of it, and being knackered at the work the next day), but was keen to revisit it to pick up on any points I’d missed out the first time – and also for the mesmerising song “Living Life” played over the end credits, which captures the spirit of the film pefectly.In any case it was going quite cheaply, so I bought it safe in the knowledge that I could always flog it off on Amazon once I’d watched it a few more times.

It’s one of those films like Crocodile Dundee, Jaws or Psycho which stands out on its own and thus making a sequel is tantamout to sacrilege. But a sequel did come out about a decade after the original. And predictably enough it didn’t live up to the standard. Swapping Vienna for Paris with the characters 10 years older just didn’t do it for me.

Anyway, the coincidence was that the very next day, the arts section of The Independent (which on Fridays publishes old reviews of films from years gone by) happened to have a retro-review of that very film.

Stranger things have happened though.  Who would have thought 6 months ago that Tyrone would be in another All Ireland final and Stephen O’Neill back in the squad?

Red Hands Drub Dubs as Ronnie Drew his last breath

It’s been a sad weekend for Dubliners in both the sporting an musical arenas.  In a bizarre twist of fate I found myself celebrating the former and mourning the latter. 

Ronnie Drew RIP

The passing away of Ronnie Drew, former frontman with the Dubliners and celebrated wit, raconteur and all-round colourful character will be greatly mourned the world over.   Drew and his bearded cohorts broke the mould in successfully demolishing the homespun squeaky clean aran sweater-wearing image of folk music with their anarchic brand of bawdy, anti-estabishment music and tongue-in-cheek piss-take of revered and formerly untouchable Irish institutions.

The proliferation of beards among the Tyrone players starting a new trend for facial hair was almost as if they were paying tribute to Ronnie by way of apologising for the demolition of his native county in the All Ireland quarter final.  Written off before the game as a spent force, Tyrone defied the critics in style by producing an inspirational performance.

One shot the Dublin goalie couldn’t shave: It’s back to the drawing beard for the Dubs as Tyrone and Omagh’s Joe McMahon celebrates his razor-sharp skills after scoring a spectacular goal.