Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Saturday, 28 January 2012
She Wants To Be Flowers
I'm planning a discussion on a certain 1969 spookfest (the title should pretty much give it away). But whilst I tap away at it, I suddenly felt all visual. Ghost Transmissions, I said to myself, what you need is an old school start-up sequence.
So here, rushed together, photographed, "animated" and soundtracked by yours truly, is what you would have seen at 9:00 AM weekday morning in the early 1970s, had I been in charge. A hint of BBC schools, a touch of Ghost Box Records, a smattering of Alan Garner. Truly, a rush job and a bit of a botch, but weren't they all? I may do more if you like them. Actually, I'll do more whether you like them or not, you twisted monstrosities.
So here, rushed together, photographed, "animated" and soundtracked by yours truly, is what you would have seen at 9:00 AM weekday morning in the early 1970s, had I been in charge. A hint of BBC schools, a touch of Ghost Box Records, a smattering of Alan Garner. Truly, a rush job and a bit of a botch, but weren't they all? I may do more if you like them. Actually, I'll do more whether you like them or not, you twisted monstrosities.
Monday, 9 January 2012
Why I love Tove (A They Live In Your TV Special)
Good lord, but I was out of ideas for a time there. Ghost Transmissions nearly ground to a halt amid a huge house move and Christmas and so on. The new GhostMansion is within sight of a huge transmitter tower, so I'm inviting the Ashtar Command round for tea later this week. Apparently, I've been seeing him as lights in the sky for a while now. My god, was that Ghost Transmissions in-joke for longstanding marks readers?
No matter. Inspired by the seasons, I turn to something I'd nearly forgotten.
Two things about winter. If it's damp and dreary, well, hibernating through is the only answer. But if it should turn a little snowy...well, I love a blizzard, me. Indirectly, this leads me into a world where ice, snow, sunshine, summer and sleeping for several months all combine into one fuzzy-felt animated semi-paradise, albeit one with crepe-paper serpents. Let's take a look at the time the Poles met Tove Jansson.
Unfamiliar with the name? Tove (one of my dearest wishes is that I'd been on first name terms) was a legendary (and I use the word precisely) Finnish artist and writer. She had a pretty prolific output, but her most famous creations were, of course, the Moomins.
Ahhhhhh, go some of you. Little cute hippo things. Japanese cartoons with the odd scary witch monster in. Cute. Kawaii.
WRONG.
I'm a touch obsessive on this. Before I do all the TV stuff, quick overview of the real Moomin story; the books begin as gently spooky tales of funny monsters having adventures and looking out for their friends. They're about family and love and summer days. With monsters, as I said, but nice ones. Except that even in these early stories, there are hints of a bigger picture; Tove describes a cutesy spring day in the Moominvalley, before casually mentioning that 'the spirits that haunted the trees were combing their long hair.'
And of course, there was a real, full on monster in the story and one that has given small ones the screaming horrors for years. But we'll come to HER shortly.
Time went on; Tove wrote more Moomin stories. The characters grew more defined, the jokes and non-sequiturs got funnier. The art was sublime. Then...then came one of the greatest books ever written. No hyperbole. Simple as that. Moominland Midwinter. What's so good about it? Well, it's a life affirming, philosophical (and intensely pagan, in a sense) tract that touches on life, death, rebirth, outsider status and sexuality. And it's about the Moomins. Our hero, Moomintroll accidentally awakens in January. Alone and trapped by snowdrifts, he meets the mysterious Too-Ticky and a cute squirrel. Ah, Too-Ticky! I may be overstating the point about sexuality in this book, but Too-Ticky is a loner, accustomed to survival, who speaks of the status of the people who only appear in winter-time:
...everything that's a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don't fit in with the others and that nobody believes in...
Lest you be somewhat puzzled at this point, Tove's life partner (or the person whom I'd effectively describe as her wife in these somewhat happier times) was called Tuulikki Pietila. Note the pronunciation.
I'm not spoilering this one for you. You need to read it. Yeah, there's a cute squirrel. But not for long, I'm sorry to say. Trust me, this is intense. There's a bit with a midnight bonfire that seems like a cross between Labyrinth and The Wicker Man. Everything about this book is haunting and resonant.
And so it went on; the books were increasingly beautiful and strange and full of hints and suggestions, until we reached Moominvalley in November, which is basically Waiting For Godot with trolls, as lots of formerly minor characters wait patiently for the Moomin family to return. We never see them. I was terribly saddened by that, as a child.
But this is Ghost Transmissions. The TV one. I promised you a They Live In Your TV long before I started proclaiming my love for long lost Finnish authors. In the early 1980s (yes, them again) a Polish TV company got the rights and a stop-motion serial was made. It was about a million episodes long and kept referring back to its own story in a way that very little kids' TV at the time ever did.
Communist era animation was perfect for the world of Moominvalley. It seems strange enough at the best of times; there used to be a running joke at my school: "In a change to the advertised programme, here is a Polish animation featuring two bits of string screaming at each other for five minutes."
See, I was like this even then.
So, they made the Moomin stories and very faithfully too. ITV duly bought them and FilmFair, a small UK animation house redid the titles and the music, finishing the job of with a new narration. Hooray! Then they showed it and a nation of children started to cry.
It wasn't Disney. It wasn't cutesy enough; sure, the Moomins were cute, but some of their friends were just plain weird looking. And there were...things. Things in that world. Terrible things.
I was fine with all this. I'd read the books. Little My was the greatest character in fiction after H.G. Wells' Time Traveller, as far as I was concerned. The rest of my generation may have felt differently and here are three notable reasons why. In reverse order...
3) The Hattifatteners
They look like little ghosts. They never speak. We are told early on that they cannot hear or see well, so they sense by vibration and some kind of telepathy. They are likely to creep up on you in huge numbers if they think you are on their territory. Oh, and they can give off huge electric shocks sometimes. Many a child had visions of these bad boys under the bed.
2) The Lady Of The Cold
Oh, this is an odd one. Even in the books, they just suddenly mention that there's a danger of The Lady Of The Cold showing up. She does. Someone dies. The animation is worse, she's all tin foil and weird empty eyes. Those mad radiophonic effects on the soundtrack aren't helping. This is the Brothers Quay for nine year olds. Those painted on eyes! That expressionless face! She's creeping me out even now.
Should you choose to follow this link, part of the story will be forever spoiled, but you will get to check out some quality animation. See if you can spot where FilmFair changed the storyline so as not to leave their entire audience sobbing hysterically. "Over the sea to their own country of snow and ice" - my arse, FilmFair. My arse.
So, if you were alive in the early 1980s, there's a good chance you've guessed what's coming now. Some of you may well have left the page and I'm not joking about that; I've known at least two people who wouldn't even look at a picture of our winner. Scariest thing on the Moomins and, let's be fair, one of the scariest things on kids' TV ever. Beasts and small creatures, I present the one, the only...
1) The Groke
Now that you've all stopped screaming, let me explain. Actually, no, let this clip explain for you.
Back with me? The Groke slithered and faded in and out and snarled and hissed and haunted and froze everything. She's there, the dark, frightening beast in the night. The worst thing the Moomins can imagine. She never actually does very much; she doesn't need to. How many of you dreamed of her shifting, flickering eyes staring in at you from the garden? How many heard that voice in the night and howled in terror? Isn't she the worst monster of all?
Actually, no.
You could go to the books to check this, but it's on screen as well. The Groke is a monster in her first appearance, no doubt. She's scary as hell whenever she appears...but after that first encounter, her appearances tend to coincide with Moomintroll's depressions (seriously), anxieties and loss of self-belief. That, or the depths of winter, when she puts out the midwinter bonfire. It seems like an act of evil, but then we get the revelation that she's cold; she's seeking warmth that she can never find.
Somewhere between the freezing epic darkness of the Finnish winter and the shadows that haunt so many of us lies the Groke; she's depression and self-hatred and loss of family and love.
Is it any wonder she's so terrifying?
This Ghost Transmissions is dedicated to my brand new niece, Charlie, who I will be showing round Moominvalley as soon as she's old enough to protect me.
No matter. Inspired by the seasons, I turn to something I'd nearly forgotten.
Two things about winter. If it's damp and dreary, well, hibernating through is the only answer. But if it should turn a little snowy...well, I love a blizzard, me. Indirectly, this leads me into a world where ice, snow, sunshine, summer and sleeping for several months all combine into one fuzzy-felt animated semi-paradise, albeit one with crepe-paper serpents. Let's take a look at the time the Poles met Tove Jansson.
Unfamiliar with the name? Tove (one of my dearest wishes is that I'd been on first name terms) was a legendary (and I use the word precisely) Finnish artist and writer. She had a pretty prolific output, but her most famous creations were, of course, the Moomins.
Ahhhhhh, go some of you. Little cute hippo things. Japanese cartoons with the odd scary witch monster in. Cute. Kawaii.
WRONG.
I'm a touch obsessive on this. Before I do all the TV stuff, quick overview of the real Moomin story; the books begin as gently spooky tales of funny monsters having adventures and looking out for their friends. They're about family and love and summer days. With monsters, as I said, but nice ones. Except that even in these early stories, there are hints of a bigger picture; Tove describes a cutesy spring day in the Moominvalley, before casually mentioning that 'the spirits that haunted the trees were combing their long hair.'
And of course, there was a real, full on monster in the story and one that has given small ones the screaming horrors for years. But we'll come to HER shortly.
Time went on; Tove wrote more Moomin stories. The characters grew more defined, the jokes and non-sequiturs got funnier. The art was sublime. Then...then came one of the greatest books ever written. No hyperbole. Simple as that. Moominland Midwinter. What's so good about it? Well, it's a life affirming, philosophical (and intensely pagan, in a sense) tract that touches on life, death, rebirth, outsider status and sexuality. And it's about the Moomins. Our hero, Moomintroll accidentally awakens in January. Alone and trapped by snowdrifts, he meets the mysterious Too-Ticky and a cute squirrel. Ah, Too-Ticky! I may be overstating the point about sexuality in this book, but Too-Ticky is a loner, accustomed to survival, who speaks of the status of the people who only appear in winter-time:
...everything that's a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don't fit in with the others and that nobody believes in...
Lest you be somewhat puzzled at this point, Tove's life partner (or the person whom I'd effectively describe as her wife in these somewhat happier times) was called Tuulikki Pietila. Note the pronunciation.
I'm not spoilering this one for you. You need to read it. Yeah, there's a cute squirrel. But not for long, I'm sorry to say. Trust me, this is intense. There's a bit with a midnight bonfire that seems like a cross between Labyrinth and The Wicker Man. Everything about this book is haunting and resonant.
And so it went on; the books were increasingly beautiful and strange and full of hints and suggestions, until we reached Moominvalley in November, which is basically Waiting For Godot with trolls, as lots of formerly minor characters wait patiently for the Moomin family to return. We never see them. I was terribly saddened by that, as a child.
But this is Ghost Transmissions. The TV one. I promised you a They Live In Your TV long before I started proclaiming my love for long lost Finnish authors. In the early 1980s (yes, them again) a Polish TV company got the rights and a stop-motion serial was made. It was about a million episodes long and kept referring back to its own story in a way that very little kids' TV at the time ever did.
Communist era animation was perfect for the world of Moominvalley. It seems strange enough at the best of times; there used to be a running joke at my school: "In a change to the advertised programme, here is a Polish animation featuring two bits of string screaming at each other for five minutes."
See, I was like this even then.
So, they made the Moomin stories and very faithfully too. ITV duly bought them and FilmFair, a small UK animation house redid the titles and the music, finishing the job of with a new narration. Hooray! Then they showed it and a nation of children started to cry.
It wasn't Disney. It wasn't cutesy enough; sure, the Moomins were cute, but some of their friends were just plain weird looking. And there were...things. Things in that world. Terrible things.
I was fine with all this. I'd read the books. Little My was the greatest character in fiction after H.G. Wells' Time Traveller, as far as I was concerned. The rest of my generation may have felt differently and here are three notable reasons why. In reverse order...
3) The Hattifatteners
 |
| Sailing in their little boats...on their way to YOU |
They look like little ghosts. They never speak. We are told early on that they cannot hear or see well, so they sense by vibration and some kind of telepathy. They are likely to creep up on you in huge numbers if they think you are on their territory. Oh, and they can give off huge electric shocks sometimes. Many a child had visions of these bad boys under the bed.
2) The Lady Of The Cold
 |
| It's all gone a bit Fendahl. |
Oh, this is an odd one. Even in the books, they just suddenly mention that there's a danger of The Lady Of The Cold showing up. She does. Someone dies. The animation is worse, she's all tin foil and weird empty eyes. Those mad radiophonic effects on the soundtrack aren't helping. This is the Brothers Quay for nine year olds. Those painted on eyes! That expressionless face! She's creeping me out even now.
Should you choose to follow this link, part of the story will be forever spoiled, but you will get to check out some quality animation. See if you can spot where FilmFair changed the storyline so as not to leave their entire audience sobbing hysterically. "Over the sea to their own country of snow and ice" - my arse, FilmFair. My arse.
So, if you were alive in the early 1980s, there's a good chance you've guessed what's coming now. Some of you may well have left the page and I'm not joking about that; I've known at least two people who wouldn't even look at a picture of our winner. Scariest thing on the Moomins and, let's be fair, one of the scariest things on kids' TV ever. Beasts and small creatures, I present the one, the only...
1) The Groke
 |
| Tove's original. Oh god, SHE'S LOOKING AT ME |
Now that you've all stopped screaming, let me explain. Actually, no, let this clip explain for you.
Back with me? The Groke slithered and faded in and out and snarled and hissed and haunted and froze everything. She's there, the dark, frightening beast in the night. The worst thing the Moomins can imagine. She never actually does very much; she doesn't need to. How many of you dreamed of her shifting, flickering eyes staring in at you from the garden? How many heard that voice in the night and howled in terror? Isn't she the worst monster of all?
Actually, no.
 |
| I'm actually at a loss for words right now. |
You could go to the books to check this, but it's on screen as well. The Groke is a monster in her first appearance, no doubt. She's scary as hell whenever she appears...but after that first encounter, her appearances tend to coincide with Moomintroll's depressions (seriously), anxieties and loss of self-belief. That, or the depths of winter, when she puts out the midwinter bonfire. It seems like an act of evil, but then we get the revelation that she's cold; she's seeking warmth that she can never find.
Somewhere between the freezing epic darkness of the Finnish winter and the shadows that haunt so many of us lies the Groke; she's depression and self-hatred and loss of family and love.
Is it any wonder she's so terrifying?
This Ghost Transmissions is dedicated to my brand new niece, Charlie, who I will be showing round Moominvalley as soon as she's old enough to protect me.
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
For Schools, Colleges and the darkest recesses of the human mind
I often feel like I'm going over old ground with Ghost Transmissions. There are a lot of people writing about this same material out there, with a lot more facts, funnier opinions and a lot less swearing. I raise this issue because TV Cream makes an excellent point in its Schools section; schools' TV is much, much weirder than regular TV.
At this point, I should go into a long ramble about sitting in the library c.1981 watching the countdown clock, but I did that bit the other week and anyway, they don't actually do School TV anymore. Instead, here are the scary bits, as usual. Remember, a puppet looks good if you spend money on it; if you knock it together out of old foam rubber and Chromakey at the last minute, it's going to scare the shit out of someone before morning playtime.
Look And Read
Gad sir, I loved this. Every week, a weird orange thing called Wordy would teach us basic spelling rules and introduce a bit of a filmed insert adventure story. They made these about thirty five years back and they still occasionally get a repeat on CBBC, minus the educational bits.
The Boy From Space is everyone's favourite. Try and guess what it's about.
You'll often hear people happily recalling how scared they were when it looked like the evil alien dude was climbing the stairs towards our stereotype kid heroes, but that's not what scared me. No, I was scared of the educational bits. See, they were done for about ten pence using a lot of chalk. Every so often, there'd be a song about adding 'ly' to the end of a verb or summat. To liven this up, the producers decided to add a cartoon monster/ghost thing that moved TOO FUCKING FAST for my liking. In retrospect, this was to cut down on the number of animation frames, but believe it or not, I wasn't savvy about .25 of a second shot lengths at age six. I was when I was seven, though.
In the last episode, all the happy cartoon characters fly off in a rocket, their work done. And the monsterghost eats the bloody lot of them and grins into the camera. Shiver. Cheers Wordy. Perhaps Dog Detective can find the word 'traumatised' for me.
Near and Far
Listen to that music. Just listen to it. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? "Boys and girls come out to play" on a haunted music box. Also, there's a bit that looks like a scary Mr Punch on the world map.
Sadly, TV Cream were once again way in front of me on this one. Published bastards.
Words and Pictures
Last time, I shared a particularly disturbing image from this show. Here it is again:
...and that's the sound of me deleting it from my laptop again. Ewwwwwwwww. Cheap animation and a slightly psycho looking actor reading Brothers Grimm style stories, very, very slowly, with flashing subtitles to help us slow readers (I was the slowest reader of all back then) follow the action.
I hated this as a kid. There was one where a pumpkin comes to life and wanders around scaring the shit out of everyone. A stop motion pumpkin at that. I may be mistaken (like Uncle Nathan-Turner used to say, the memory cheats) but I could swear the thing looked at the camera and said "I SHALL EAT YOOOOOUUUU!" in a croaky, high pitched voice.
There was only one place to go from there, and that was straight to the end of the world. No, really. Words and Pictures is perhaps best remembered for its starring role in the legendary BBC nuclearthon, Threads. We should really cover this Sheffield-centric nightmare in detail one day soon, but suffice to say, there's a war and it doesn't end well for the residents of the People's Republic of South Yorkshire (brief pause whilst I sing the 'Yorkshire' song, the only lyric of which being the word 'Yorkshire') and everyone gets all burnt and radiationified and everything. Years pass and they try to educate survivors with an old VHS of this thing. Presumably so they'd immediately feel better about life when it finished. Words and Pictures, that is, not life.
Only click that link if you really like depression and cartoon skeletons.
Tradition demands that I conclude with a mention of Blockaboots, but they were on ITV and not scary. Blockaboots were a fictional type of shoe that was horribly bad for your feet and appeared on a weird made-for-kids-by-kids show called Good Health and the name acted as a kind of nostalgic proof-of-age password amongst thirty/forty somethings ever since. It's a near masonic secret that I can't possibly share, but it involves these:
...and I trust this has all been an education for you. Ha ha, did you hear what I said?
At this point, I should go into a long ramble about sitting in the library c.1981 watching the countdown clock, but I did that bit the other week and anyway, they don't actually do School TV anymore. Instead, here are the scary bits, as usual. Remember, a puppet looks good if you spend money on it; if you knock it together out of old foam rubber and Chromakey at the last minute, it's going to scare the shit out of someone before morning playtime.
Look And Read
 |
| She smiles too much. Wordy is the one on the left. |
Gad sir, I loved this. Every week, a weird orange thing called Wordy would teach us basic spelling rules and introduce a bit of a filmed insert adventure story. They made these about thirty five years back and they still occasionally get a repeat on CBBC, minus the educational bits.
The Boy From Space is everyone's favourite. Try and guess what it's about.
 |
| It's possible the cover may be something of a spoiler. |
You'll often hear people happily recalling how scared they were when it looked like the evil alien dude was climbing the stairs towards our stereotype kid heroes, but that's not what scared me. No, I was scared of the educational bits. See, they were done for about ten pence using a lot of chalk. Every so often, there'd be a song about adding 'ly' to the end of a verb or summat. To liven this up, the producers decided to add a cartoon monster/ghost thing that moved TOO FUCKING FAST for my liking. In retrospect, this was to cut down on the number of animation frames, but believe it or not, I wasn't savvy about .25 of a second shot lengths at age six. I was when I was seven, though.
In the last episode, all the happy cartoon characters fly off in a rocket, their work done. And the monsterghost eats the bloody lot of them and grins into the camera. Shiver. Cheers Wordy. Perhaps Dog Detective can find the word 'traumatised' for me.
Near and Far
Listen to that music. Just listen to it. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? "Boys and girls come out to play" on a haunted music box. Also, there's a bit that looks like a scary Mr Punch on the world map.
Sadly, TV Cream were once again way in front of me on this one. Published bastards.
Words and Pictures
Last time, I shared a particularly disturbing image from this show. Here it is again:
 |
| I told you two last time. FUCK OFF. |
...and that's the sound of me deleting it from my laptop again. Ewwwwwwwww. Cheap animation and a slightly psycho looking actor reading Brothers Grimm style stories, very, very slowly, with flashing subtitles to help us slow readers (I was the slowest reader of all back then) follow the action.
I hated this as a kid. There was one where a pumpkin comes to life and wanders around scaring the shit out of everyone. A stop motion pumpkin at that. I may be mistaken (like Uncle Nathan-Turner used to say, the memory cheats) but I could swear the thing looked at the camera and said "I SHALL EAT YOOOOOUUUU!" in a croaky, high pitched voice.
There was only one place to go from there, and that was straight to the end of the world. No, really. Words and Pictures is perhaps best remembered for its starring role in the legendary BBC nuclearthon, Threads. We should really cover this Sheffield-centric nightmare in detail one day soon, but suffice to say, there's a war and it doesn't end well for the residents of the People's Republic of South Yorkshire (brief pause whilst I sing the 'Yorkshire' song, the only lyric of which being the word 'Yorkshire') and everyone gets all burnt and radiationified and everything. Years pass and they try to educate survivors with an old VHS of this thing. Presumably so they'd immediately feel better about life when it finished. Words and Pictures, that is, not life.
Only click that link if you really like depression and cartoon skeletons.
 |
| My hometown bites the big one. I may have whimpered slightly. |
Tradition demands that I conclude with a mention of Blockaboots, but they were on ITV and not scary. Blockaboots were a fictional type of shoe that was horribly bad for your feet and appeared on a weird made-for-kids-by-kids show called Good Health and the name acted as a kind of nostalgic proof-of-age password amongst thirty/forty somethings ever since. It's a near masonic secret that I can't possibly share, but it involves these:
...and I trust this has all been an education for you. Ha ha, did you hear what I said?
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
A Pleasing Terror (unless you don't like being scared, that is)
(Mike Samms Singers vocal)
"Unpleasant sound on!
Faceless nuns on!
Welcome,
Welcome,
Welcome home to Ghooosssstt Trrannnnsmisssions!"
Time for a little romance, given half the chance.
My first love was the ghost story. Sadly, I suffer from horrific night terrors and always have done. Oh, I could tell terrifying stories and leave half the school traumatized, but there would still be things that would turn up around three AM and gibber horribly at me.
Get this; there still are. Sometimes every night for a week. That said, once you've been woken up by something grabbing you round the neck with a rotting hand a few times, you tend to become a bit on the badass side about such matters.
"Remove that claw from my neck," I told one grinning THING last year, "or I will rip it the fuck off."
Also, I'm a sleepwalker and have a little trouble with lacunal amnesia when woken suddenly. Effectively, as I grow older, I'm turning into an M.R. James character, or possibly Tyler Durden, albeit fatter. The biggest risk to my health isn't alcohol, it's getting smothered by a bedsheet monster and if you don't get that reference I may as well give up right now. No? Ah well, let's try anyway.
Here's a scare that I'm fairly sure none of you shared, to get us in the usual obscure mood. Halloween might be long past but I get a little...frisky at this time of year.
Being an account of how schools TV traumatised the young Ghost Transmissions
I was about five. I was ill. It was daytime. This is all I remember clearly. Gran looked after me that day, so it was a school day. And she left the TV on.
As every British child of the 1970s knows, they used to show educational programmes during the day, with massive gaps between. The theory was that these were to allow harassed teachers to herd kids into the school library (the only place with a TV in those days) and watch the countdown to Basic Maths or some junk*.
As every other British child of the 1970s also knows, it was a legal right that, providing you were off school ill, one was allowed to watch all the TV one wanted to as long as it was on BBC Schools. This wasn't a problem as there was literally nothing else on; most transmissions started in earnest round half three; with the exception of Pebble Mill At One and Bagpuss, the schedules were thin on content.
So, Gran, being a wonderful Gran, puts a blanket over me, fetches me some Lucozade and sits back with some knitting whilst I watch Scene, Thinkabout and My World. And then...well, neither of us were really paying attention to the next show. Something about drama, was it? Actually, it was Music Scene. The good people at this particular show wanted to illustrate how incidental music affects the viewer. So they really went to town and filmed a cheap and cheerful adaptation of a story by the aforementioned Montague Rhodes James. Namely, Mr Humphreys And His Inheritance.
My god, never did a show sound like it had so much potential for comedy. By rights, it should have been a sitcom spinoff with John Inman. But no, this particular story...
I don't want to spoiler this too much. It's...unexpected. Remember, I was sitting on the sofa, drifting in and out of the attention zone. It seemed a peaceful little film about old men wandering around in the countryside, though I noticed Gran getting a touch uneasy. There was a definite hint of the Wrong about the film. I went back to me copy of Doctor Who Weekly. Looked up again, half distracted. At this point, BBC Schools decide it's appropriate to show a claymation screaming, rotting face hurtling out of the darkness and right at the viewer.
My gosh, just check it out. It unsettled me when I saw it again recently, in the way that only something that really scared you in childhood can. I joke around a lot with this stuff but I think this might well be the one time I was truly, truly, disturbed by TV imagery.
Alas, I can't share links with you. Mysteriously, despite pretty much everything being on YouTube these days, Mr Humphreys has been removed. The only place you can see it is as an extra on the DVD Casting The Runes, a Jamesian adaptation set in 1970s Leeds which is absolutely amazing.
As the nights get darker, the BBC used to make a lot of this stuff (apart from the abovementioned Leedsfest and Mr Humphreys, both of which were made by YTV); you can look up Ghost Stories For Christmas and get a lot of responses. Once upon a time, no-one remembered them, nowadays they get constant repeats and critical kudos. Yep, too mainstream for me these days. Nah, who am I kidding? They're quiet, scratchy film, washed out colour horrors and I love them to bits. Like public information films, but even more unpleasant. Here are my three favourites...
Lost Hearts
Take the title literally and you're pretty much there. Some horrific implications and a scary hurdy-gurdy child thing. Silly fingernails though. If you don't like the little boy ghost in Ju-On, this is not for you.
Whistle and I'll Come To You
Not the cack John Hurt version. The good one, with Michael Hordern stuffing his face. Blows into a little pipe he finds. "Dirty," he mutters, staring at it. That night, his bedclothes are all messed up. Look, I may be reading too much into this.
A Warning To The Curious
Wolfie Smith's landlord/Grouty off of Porridge is made redundant in Victorian times, finds a magic crown and gets beaten to death by a mad ghost in a top hat. Sorry, should have said 'Spoilers' back there somewhere. The ending is a bit creepy.
They did a version of The Mezzotint too, read aloud by Robert Powell with some horrid illustrations accompanying. Says a lot for the power of the original (not to mention Mr Powell's reading) that I can remember watching this like it was yesterday.
So what conclusions do we draw this time? Well, Monty James was a mighty troubling author and 70s TV is a mighty troubling place, so I guess...well, like, don't dig up any crowns, or anything. Try not to cut hearts out. And, if you leave small children in front of educational television, they will be haunted for life.
Not by M.R. James though. By THESE freaky bastards.
And that is my lesson; give me the spade clawed horrors any day. If I'm locked in a school library with those two, I'm leaving through a broken window.
*My impression of that Valley girl rabbit out of Tiny Toon Adventures. In retrospect, I don't know why I'd do that, or own up to it in front of literally ten readers.
"Unpleasant sound on!
Faceless nuns on!
Welcome,
Welcome,
Welcome home to Ghooosssstt Trrannnnsmisssions!"
Time for a little romance, given half the chance.
My first love was the ghost story. Sadly, I suffer from horrific night terrors and always have done. Oh, I could tell terrifying stories and leave half the school traumatized, but there would still be things that would turn up around three AM and gibber horribly at me.
Get this; there still are. Sometimes every night for a week. That said, once you've been woken up by something grabbing you round the neck with a rotting hand a few times, you tend to become a bit on the badass side about such matters.
"Remove that claw from my neck," I told one grinning THING last year, "or I will rip it the fuck off."
Also, I'm a sleepwalker and have a little trouble with lacunal amnesia when woken suddenly. Effectively, as I grow older, I'm turning into an M.R. James character, or possibly Tyler Durden, albeit fatter. The biggest risk to my health isn't alcohol, it's getting smothered by a bedsheet monster and if you don't get that reference I may as well give up right now. No? Ah well, let's try anyway.
Here's a scare that I'm fairly sure none of you shared, to get us in the usual obscure mood. Halloween might be long past but I get a little...frisky at this time of year.
Being an account of how schools TV traumatised the young Ghost Transmissions
I was about five. I was ill. It was daytime. This is all I remember clearly. Gran looked after me that day, so it was a school day. And she left the TV on.
As every British child of the 1970s knows, they used to show educational programmes during the day, with massive gaps between. The theory was that these were to allow harassed teachers to herd kids into the school library (the only place with a TV in those days) and watch the countdown to Basic Maths or some junk*.
As every other British child of the 1970s also knows, it was a legal right that, providing you were off school ill, one was allowed to watch all the TV one wanted to as long as it was on BBC Schools. This wasn't a problem as there was literally nothing else on; most transmissions started in earnest round half three; with the exception of Pebble Mill At One and Bagpuss, the schedules were thin on content.
So, Gran, being a wonderful Gran, puts a blanket over me, fetches me some Lucozade and sits back with some knitting whilst I watch Scene, Thinkabout and My World. And then...well, neither of us were really paying attention to the next show. Something about drama, was it? Actually, it was Music Scene. The good people at this particular show wanted to illustrate how incidental music affects the viewer. So they really went to town and filmed a cheap and cheerful adaptation of a story by the aforementioned Montague Rhodes James. Namely, Mr Humphreys And His Inheritance.
My god, never did a show sound like it had so much potential for comedy. By rights, it should have been a sitcom spinoff with John Inman. But no, this particular story...
 |
| The steam train...OF DEATH! Look, it got more frightening later. |
I don't want to spoiler this too much. It's...unexpected. Remember, I was sitting on the sofa, drifting in and out of the attention zone. It seemed a peaceful little film about old men wandering around in the countryside, though I noticed Gran getting a touch uneasy. There was a definite hint of the Wrong about the film. I went back to me copy of Doctor Who Weekly. Looked up again, half distracted. At this point, BBC Schools decide it's appropriate to show a claymation screaming, rotting face hurtling out of the darkness and right at the viewer.
My gosh, just check it out. It unsettled me when I saw it again recently, in the way that only something that really scared you in childhood can. I joke around a lot with this stuff but I think this might well be the one time I was truly, truly, disturbed by TV imagery.
 | ||
| "Are you free, Mr Humphreys?" - "No, as it happens, I've just been attacked by a dead face and, as a consequence, have fouled myself, Captain Peacock. Why are you wearing a Snape costume, anyway?" |
Alas, I can't share links with you. Mysteriously, despite pretty much everything being on YouTube these days, Mr Humphreys has been removed. The only place you can see it is as an extra on the DVD Casting The Runes, a Jamesian adaptation set in 1970s Leeds which is absolutely amazing.
As the nights get darker, the BBC used to make a lot of this stuff (apart from the abovementioned Leedsfest and Mr Humphreys, both of which were made by YTV); you can look up Ghost Stories For Christmas and get a lot of responses. Once upon a time, no-one remembered them, nowadays they get constant repeats and critical kudos. Yep, too mainstream for me these days. Nah, who am I kidding? They're quiet, scratchy film, washed out colour horrors and I love them to bits. Like public information films, but even more unpleasant. Here are my three favourites...
 | |
|
Lost Hearts
Take the title literally and you're pretty much there. Some horrific implications and a scary hurdy-gurdy child thing. Silly fingernails though. If you don't like the little boy ghost in Ju-On, this is not for you.
 |
| If you get too close to your TV, this is what you see on the other side of the screen. Go on, try it. |
Whistle and I'll Come To You
Not the cack John Hurt version. The good one, with Michael Hordern stuffing his face. Blows into a little pipe he finds. "Dirty," he mutters, staring at it. That night, his bedclothes are all messed up. Look, I may be reading too much into this.
 |
| Michael Hordern's character is followed by a man on the beach, whilst on holiday alone. Doesn't seem to be running as much as he does in the book. |
A Warning To The Curious
Wolfie Smith's landlord/Grouty off of Porridge is made redundant in Victorian times, finds a magic crown and gets beaten to death by a mad ghost in a top hat. Sorry, should have said 'Spoilers' back there somewhere. The ending is a bit creepy.
 |
| Godber didn't like the way this episode was going. |
They did a version of The Mezzotint too, read aloud by Robert Powell with some horrid illustrations accompanying. Says a lot for the power of the original (not to mention Mr Powell's reading) that I can remember watching this like it was yesterday.
So what conclusions do we draw this time? Well, Monty James was a mighty troubling author and 70s TV is a mighty troubling place, so I guess...well, like, don't dig up any crowns, or anything. Try not to cut hearts out. And, if you leave small children in front of educational television, they will be haunted for life.
Not by M.R. James though. By THESE freaky bastards.
 | ||
| Fuck's sake. More on these two and their (genuine!) link to global apocalypse soon, GT fans! |
And that is my lesson; give me the spade clawed horrors any day. If I'm locked in a school library with those two, I'm leaving through a broken window.
*My impression of that Valley girl rabbit out of Tiny Toon Adventures. In retrospect, I don't know why I'd do that, or own up to it in front of literally ten readers.
Monday, 31 October 2011
Trigger Mechanism
A pointless film I made to accompany some sounds I also made. Listen closely and you might see why it's appropriate for Ghost Transmissions. Happy Halloween, Beasts.
Sunday, 30 October 2011
Obscure PIF 1971
Remember folks, the Cornelius family won't be there when you vibrate random strangers to death.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Two More Days To Halloweeeeeeeeen
Good evening, Beasts. Trust you enjoyed your vacation? I myself enjoyed a short cruise calling at the Gasworks, the Smoking Mountain and the House of Eyes. Wonderful. The mental scars look amazing. Now that I am relaxed and have a new smoking jacket (unfact) and a roll neck jumper (truefact), let us continue our journey, all the way to the heart of October Country.
We need to celebrate Halloween and celebrate it properly. There's a whole horror rennaisance ongoing over the last ten years or so; the problem is that most of it is spectacularly duuuullllllll. Killer children. Killer hoodies. Killer Youth Hosteling. Saw is just Doctor Phibes with less art deco. Sadly, I have to spout a grumpy old bugger cliche; it's about the disgust rather than the fear. Now I'm not Halliwell and I love a bit of wild disgust; Deathline and The Devil's Rejects are over thirty years apart, but they both combine gross-out sadism with genuine creepiness, a hint of the demented dark behind the curtain. Doesn't hurt that Rejects is set in the 1970s either, I suppose...
My rambling and long-lost point is that we need to grab a Halloween that's a real spookshow for once. It's hidden, but it runs through television history like a seam of killer gold. Killer Gold! My god, I'm copywriting that here and now, please take note. Anyway, I don't mean the deliberate, established fantasy/horror classics. There are plenty of Twilight Zone explorations out there, lots on the Outer Limits and sadly, not that much on Night Gallery, even though it was the best of all of them, but we are not concerning ourselves with these tonight.
My grand guignol of choice then? My childhood favourites, that's what. Back in the day, you'd get to this time of year and a subtle change would take place; kids shows and sitcoms would suddenly do an unexpected ghost-story episode. And oddly, they all seemed to follow a set script pattern:
But if that's you, then who...
We all have to deal with people we don't like. Maybe it's your boss or one of your work colleagues, a relative that comes to stay too much, a nosey neighbour, or perhaps just an annoying secondary personality commanding you to kill through your radio. But we deal with them, ignoring and smiling fixedly. Unless, of course, you're a sit-com character living between 1970 and 1984. If that's so, under British law, you have the unalienable right to persecute your opponent ( generally a new arrival in the area) using a terrible costume and an obscure local superstition. Um, no, this is sounding wrong (it sounded wronger before my last edit, trust me).
So, what you do is this. You spread rumours about a headless horseman or whatever. Then you get one of your comedy mates to put the costume on and run round at night shouting "woooooooooooooooo" whilst you and the rest of your friends watch from behind a hedge until your victim screams and runs away, usually on speeded up video tape.
CAVEAT: whilst this will enable you to dispose of problem neighbours legally you are required to turn to the ghost and say something to the effect of "well done Frank!" or whoever. At this point, Frank runs up behind and apologises for being late. Everyone turns back to the ghost who goes WOOOOOOOOOOOO again, albeit in the manner of being played by a different actor. At which point, all other cast members must run away on speeded up video. However, your original enemy will never be seen again, which seems a bit sinister, now I come to think of it.
Notable Example: Metal Mickey: Mickey Meets Mumsie. It's a Headless Horseman in that one, as well. I remember my sister really laughing at one of the jokes in this one: "He died when he attacked the coach" - "Why? Did he get his head caught in the sliding doors?"
We'll Just Have To Stay The Night
Tends to be the staple of heavily studio bound sit-coms, usually the ones that never move an inch from the front room set. Once every three or four years they get an outing. Often, this gets used for the deadly dull Spanish holiday edition, but once in a while we get lucky and they do the scary haunted house one instead.
So, our cast are on their way somewhere and the car/bus/train breaks down. So they have to spend the stormy night in an abandoned mansion, or derelict railway station or whatever. This leads to amusing sub-Morecambe and Wise two-blokes-in-a-bed situations. Basically, the whole plot of The Old Dark House condensed into 28 minutes. Sometimes the ghost is real, sometimes it's a misunderstanding with. Hilarious. Consequences.
Notable Example: It's a considerable understatement to say that I'm not a big fan of Only Fools And Horses. But the time they recreated the Bob Hope masterpiece The Cat And The Canary is one of the very few episodes that stands a re-watch. Features a serial killer, rather than yer actual ghost, though.
Dark In Here, Innit?
This one is easy to summarise. You can do it yourself. Here are the pieces you'll need:
"Oh, no love, there's nothing to worry about in this old house. I've been here for years, never had a problem."
"I'm fine! There was this lovely old man/woman who helped me out."
"But...no-one's lived there since old Mr MacCliche died in 1940!"
OH NO! HE WAS A GHOST ALL ALONG!
Later ruined by The Sixth Sense, which didn't even have any swannee whistle on the soundtrack. I'm waiting for a sequel in the style of Rentaghost.
Notable Example: Foxy Lady, a completely forgotten YTV sitcom from the 80s. The entire episode can be summed up the above lines of dialogue.
Heh Heh Heh
And last, and most enjoyably at all, Vincent Price on The Muppet Show. Gad, YES!
Happy Halloween, Long Leggetty Beasties.
We need to celebrate Halloween and celebrate it properly. There's a whole horror rennaisance ongoing over the last ten years or so; the problem is that most of it is spectacularly duuuullllllll. Killer children. Killer hoodies. Killer Youth Hosteling. Saw is just Doctor Phibes with less art deco. Sadly, I have to spout a grumpy old bugger cliche; it's about the disgust rather than the fear. Now I'm not Halliwell and I love a bit of wild disgust; Deathline and The Devil's Rejects are over thirty years apart, but they both combine gross-out sadism with genuine creepiness, a hint of the demented dark behind the curtain. Doesn't hurt that Rejects is set in the 1970s either, I suppose...
My rambling and long-lost point is that we need to grab a Halloween that's a real spookshow for once. It's hidden, but it runs through television history like a seam of killer gold. Killer Gold! My god, I'm copywriting that here and now, please take note. Anyway, I don't mean the deliberate, established fantasy/horror classics. There are plenty of Twilight Zone explorations out there, lots on the Outer Limits and sadly, not that much on Night Gallery, even though it was the best of all of them, but we are not concerning ourselves with these tonight.
My grand guignol of choice then? My childhood favourites, that's what. Back in the day, you'd get to this time of year and a subtle change would take place; kids shows and sitcoms would suddenly do an unexpected ghost-story episode. And oddly, they all seemed to follow a set script pattern:
But if that's you, then who...
We all have to deal with people we don't like. Maybe it's your boss or one of your work colleagues, a relative that comes to stay too much, a nosey neighbour, or perhaps just an annoying secondary personality commanding you to kill through your radio. But we deal with them, ignoring and smiling fixedly. Unless, of course, you're a sit-com character living between 1970 and 1984. If that's so, under British law, you have the unalienable right to persecute your opponent ( generally a new arrival in the area) using a terrible costume and an obscure local superstition. Um, no, this is sounding wrong (it sounded wronger before my last edit, trust me).
So, what you do is this. You spread rumours about a headless horseman or whatever. Then you get one of your comedy mates to put the costume on and run round at night shouting "woooooooooooooooo" whilst you and the rest of your friends watch from behind a hedge until your victim screams and runs away, usually on speeded up video tape.
CAVEAT: whilst this will enable you to dispose of problem neighbours legally you are required to turn to the ghost and say something to the effect of "well done Frank!" or whoever. At this point, Frank runs up behind and apologises for being late. Everyone turns back to the ghost who goes WOOOOOOOOOOOO again, albeit in the manner of being played by a different actor. At which point, all other cast members must run away on speeded up video. However, your original enemy will never be seen again, which seems a bit sinister, now I come to think of it.
Notable Example: Metal Mickey: Mickey Meets Mumsie. It's a Headless Horseman in that one, as well. I remember my sister really laughing at one of the jokes in this one: "He died when he attacked the coach" - "Why? Did he get his head caught in the sliding doors?"
 |
| Check the eyes out. Now you know exactly who was looking in the window in The Amytiville Horror. Presumably George Lutz was an unpopular substitute teacher. |
We'll Just Have To Stay The Night
Tends to be the staple of heavily studio bound sit-coms, usually the ones that never move an inch from the front room set. Once every three or four years they get an outing. Often, this gets used for the deadly dull Spanish holiday edition, but once in a while we get lucky and they do the scary haunted house one instead.
So, our cast are on their way somewhere and the car/bus/train breaks down. So they have to spend the stormy night in an abandoned mansion, or derelict railway station or whatever. This leads to amusing sub-Morecambe and Wise two-blokes-in-a-bed situations. Basically, the whole plot of The Old Dark House condensed into 28 minutes. Sometimes the ghost is real, sometimes it's a misunderstanding with. Hilarious. Consequences.
Notable Example: It's a considerable understatement to say that I'm not a big fan of Only Fools And Horses. But the time they recreated the Bob Hope masterpiece The Cat And The Canary is one of the very few episodes that stands a re-watch. Features a serial killer, rather than yer actual ghost, though.
 |
| Oddly, I prefer this cast to the one featuring Nicholas Lindhurst. |
Dark In Here, Innit?
This one is easy to summarise. You can do it yourself. Here are the pieces you'll need:
"Oh, no love, there's nothing to worry about in this old house. I've been here for years, never had a problem."
"I'm fine! There was this lovely old man/woman who helped me out."
"But...no-one's lived there since old Mr MacCliche died in 1940!"
OH NO! HE WAS A GHOST ALL ALONG!
Later ruined by The Sixth Sense, which didn't even have any swannee whistle on the soundtrack. I'm waiting for a sequel in the style of Rentaghost.
 |
| Obligatory Rentaghost picture of the week: I see loads of dead people and employ them with hilarious etc etc etc |
Notable Example: Foxy Lady, a completely forgotten YTV sitcom from the 80s. The entire episode can be summed up the above lines of dialogue.
Final miscellany? Well, I like that episode of Two Pints where they all get killed, for what should be fairly obvious reasons. Then there's the (rarer) Halloween episodes of regular series like Quantum Leap; in that case, it seemed that the devil himself had taken control of the story. I only really enjoyed that show when it went weirder, so essentially that's this one and the final episode only.
And last, and most enjoyably at all, Vincent Price on The Muppet Show. Gad, YES!
Happy Halloween, Long Leggetty Beasties.
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Never To Be Repeated: Tarot Phenomena
Picture it! The early 70s, again. The BBC holds sway with its behemothic Doctor Who. They've got Pertwee in the TARDIS and all is well with their world. Not so for the poor ITV network. Think! sez the ITV network to itself. We needs a bit of this. With our own Pertwee, we could command respect. People would give us money. We could afford Susan Stranks.
Susan Stranks. It sounds funny.
Desperate for Pertwee of their very own, they cast around the place. Thames Television, down in their bunker at Teddington Lock (world's meanest carpark attendant, apparently) think they have a plan. Get us a Pertwee, but younger, they command. And lo! They found Michael Mackenzie, to play the hero, Tarot. Fetch us a dolly bird and a bit of rough, they said, for their second wish. With a flash and a puff of smoke, there was Judy Loe and Tony Selby, twenty odd years before Sabalom Glitz.
"And for your third wish?" asked the genie that I've just made up.
"We wish for all the wishes we want, whenever we want them!" chorused Thames Television.
"Highly unwise," said the genie, "as this will result in the career of Jim Davidson during the 1980s. Well, there's no other fucking explanation. Try again."
"We want the London Weekend Television Ident to repeat endlessly!" shouted Thames Television.
"It's on TV Ark in the future and they won't let me link to it directly," replied the genie, looking at his watch. "Can't you do a bit better than this? I'm due on Jackanory Playhouse in half an hour."
"OK!" said Thames Televison, "Can we have a children's version of The Avengers?"
"If you must," said the genie, "but mark my words, you'll wind up making it on tape and it will look awful."
"Doesn't matter!" laughed Thames Television, lighting a cigar, "because we're going to erase the bloody lot about ten minutes after it's all broadcast!"
"Well that's fairly annoying of you," said the genie, because he was an even tempered soul who figured that erasing old TV probably wasn't a war crime or anything, whatever Ian Levene thinks. "Mind you, I'd keep the third series."
Thames Television was intrigued. It leaned forward over the edge of the wall (from behind which Roy Skelton was operating it and doing the voice).
"Why the third series?" it asked, nervously.
"Easy," said the genie, whose verbs were being supplied by Hemingway, "the third series is the one with a different bird and the bit of rough who looks like Robin Askwith. It will lead to endless confusion. People will mix it up with the Confessions films. Also, Petra Markham will baffle people. The viewers will spend years trying to work out if she's fit or not."*
Thames Television was very impressed.
"O wise genie," it said, what may we do for you, in return for your many magical gifts and advice?"
"Easy," said the genie. "Spend the money on Jenny Hanley instead of Susan Stranks and there won't be no trouble."
And with that, he was gone to meet with Brian Cant and Derek Griffiths, because any right thinking person would, given the chance. But the foolish Thames Television left it until 1974 to hire Hanley and the genie asked PJ Hammond to completely destroy Ace Of Wands (for such was the name of the new show) by ending it with a massive explosion that appeared to kill all the characters off.
All future TV producers were supposed to learn from this and never end a series on a cliffhanger without a new contract already signed. But they didn't. Just ask The Tripods.
And Ace Of Wands, well, what was left of it after the Thames tape wiping department had finished, rode off into the sunset, with massive flouncy sleeves and a footballer's haircut. As a legacy, it left behind the unique spectacle of Brian Wilde playing an absolutely terrifying villain and one of the world's best theme tunes. Go on, you deserve it. A treat before bedtime.
*The answer, beasts, is yes, she is. Shallow fools.
Susan Stranks. It sounds funny.
 |
| Stranks. Thanks. |
Desperate for Pertwee of their very own, they cast around the place. Thames Television, down in their bunker at Teddington Lock (world's meanest carpark attendant, apparently) think they have a plan. Get us a Pertwee, but younger, they command. And lo! They found Michael Mackenzie, to play the hero, Tarot. Fetch us a dolly bird and a bit of rough, they said, for their second wish. With a flash and a puff of smoke, there was Judy Loe and Tony Selby, twenty odd years before Sabalom Glitz.
 |
| From left to right: Status Quo, Laura Ashley, Tony Hart |
"And for your third wish?" asked the genie that I've just made up.
"We wish for all the wishes we want, whenever we want them!" chorused Thames Television.
"Highly unwise," said the genie, "as this will result in the career of Jim Davidson during the 1980s. Well, there's no other fucking explanation. Try again."
"We want the London Weekend Television Ident to repeat endlessly!" shouted Thames Television.
"It's on TV Ark in the future and they won't let me link to it directly," replied the genie, looking at his watch. "Can't you do a bit better than this? I'm due on Jackanory Playhouse in half an hour."
"OK!" said Thames Televison, "Can we have a children's version of The Avengers?"
"If you must," said the genie, "but mark my words, you'll wind up making it on tape and it will look awful."
"Doesn't matter!" laughed Thames Television, lighting a cigar, "because we're going to erase the bloody lot about ten minutes after it's all broadcast!"
"Well that's fairly annoying of you," said the genie, because he was an even tempered soul who figured that erasing old TV probably wasn't a war crime or anything, whatever Ian Levene thinks. "Mind you, I'd keep the third series."
 |
| You're expecting a smart mouth remark, but if that yellow suit was in a different colour, I'd totally dress like that. |
Thames Television was intrigued. It leaned forward over the edge of the wall (from behind which Roy Skelton was operating it and doing the voice).
"Why the third series?" it asked, nervously.
"Easy," said the genie, whose verbs were being supplied by Hemingway, "the third series is the one with a different bird and the bit of rough who looks like Robin Askwith. It will lead to endless confusion. People will mix it up with the Confessions films. Also, Petra Markham will baffle people. The viewers will spend years trying to work out if she's fit or not."*
 |
| It looks like a bloody Carry On poster. Tarot is the only one taking it seriously. |
Thames Television was very impressed.
"O wise genie," it said, what may we do for you, in return for your many magical gifts and advice?"
"Easy," said the genie. "Spend the money on Jenny Hanley instead of Susan Stranks and there won't be no trouble."
And with that, he was gone to meet with Brian Cant and Derek Griffiths, because any right thinking person would, given the chance. But the foolish Thames Television left it until 1974 to hire Hanley and the genie asked PJ Hammond to completely destroy Ace Of Wands (for such was the name of the new show) by ending it with a massive explosion that appeared to kill all the characters off.
All future TV producers were supposed to learn from this and never end a series on a cliffhanger without a new contract already signed. But they didn't. Just ask The Tripods.
And Ace Of Wands, well, what was left of it after the Thames tape wiping department had finished, rode off into the sunset, with massive flouncy sleeves and a footballer's haircut. As a legacy, it left behind the unique spectacle of Brian Wilde playing an absolutely terrifying villain and one of the world's best theme tunes. Go on, you deserve it. A treat before bedtime.
*The answer, beasts, is yes, she is. Shallow fools.
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Dramerrrrr-raaaaaaama
Ah, tea-time. So many of our meetings have involved tea-time. Around five o'clock, in my neck of the woods. Usually on my knee in front of some fine piece of programming. But now it is late at night and, as I have just written and deleted a huge piece on the grounds of good taste, (one day, I'll publish it, but not right now) my usual preamble must be a little briefer than I am used to. This is a new regular thrill, beasts; a little trip into the hearts and minds of the after-school crowd c.1984. Enter, if you can stand it, the world of Dramarama.
Well, that died on its arse, didn't it? I mean, the title just kills it. Hey! Guys! Great idea for a new show to get the kids into discussing serious heavyweight issues! Let's name it after the lesson at school that involves most twatting about! Blinder of a plan, mate. Next week, PE Mysteries starring Mr Baxter.
Actually, fuck that. I'd watch PE Mysteries if Baxter was in it. No offense, Drama teachers, by the way. I know your pain.
Clearly, ITV realised that they might have just killed the new anthology show dead, so they took to adding the word 'Spooky' in swirly green Chromakey. They needn't have bothered. The weird chanting Dramarama theme, followed by a badly animated curtain was all the freakout we needed. Why is bad animation so scary? If you ask me, it always gives the impression that a serial killer knocked it up in his shed, that's why.
 |
| Cosgrove-Hall-Manson productions. Joke edited for taste, again. |
So we get little one off plays. Twenty odd minutes each. As you and I know that's just enough time to mess with anyone's head in TV Land. So, obviously, they go with family friendly tea-time viewing for episode one. Dolls that come to life. Naturally.
We open on a little Edwardian lad, sitting with his old Granny. Poor bugger, first of all he gets his gran to tell him a bedtime story. Being a pleasant old sort, she goes with the 'in a dark, dark house' routine, which goes down a freakin' storm, since she lives in a dark, dark house. Then, by the time he's practically shat himself, it's off to bed on his own. You know, in a dark, dark room and everything. Well bugger me, if there isn't a dark, dark box in the corner. By this point, you're expecting him to look resignedly to camera, like Wile E Coyote before he falls off a cliff, but it seems our hero has never a spooky film and doesn't know what's coming next.
Feeling scared, sonny? Never mind, here's this tasteful and not at all sentient sailor doll to go on your shelf. Hope it doesn't move by itself or anything. Likewise, hope it doesn't remind you that your dad was a sailor who drowned. Jesus, what is it with Granny? Does she have his sanity insured or something?
But it's all going to be OK! It's just his dead father's ghost, moving the doll, that's all. Well thank fuck for that. Deceased relatives should always communicate through terrifying inanimate objects, it really speeds the grieving process along. That, and a three minute blast of psychedelic hallucinations that make me wonder what exactly Granny was putting in the Ovaltine.
How many of you fellow Britorians recall these little nightmares? The sailor doll nearly caused the ten year old Ghost Transmissions to pass out in terror, but what else do you remember? Here's a clue for next time...try writing your name on the blackboard. Then...rub it out. No! Not your name! HER name!
Sunday, 25 September 2011
They Live In Your TV
Right, let me get one thing absolutely straight from the start today. I love Oliver Postgate and everything about him. There, I said it. The man was - and is - a legend. His work inspired a generation, and he did it all in a shed with a camera made of Meccano.
For those of you unlucky enough not to get the Postgate therapy as a child, Oliver was one half of Smallfilms, a production company which made animated children's programmes mainly for the BBC. Throughout the 60s, 70s and early 80s, Smallfilms made some of the most memorable shows EVER. This is the team that gave us Ivor the Engine, which is kind of like Samuel Beckett but nice and with dragons. Noggin the Nog was Lord of the Rings with more cake involved. Clangers was a NASA favourite and featured a fantastically huge amount of heavily disguised swearing. And naturally, there was Bagpuss. If you don't know Bagpuss - no, I can't even begin to describe it. Except to say that it's a slightly sepia-toned gateway to a past where Pebble Mill at One was exciting and the spinning BBC globe was the sign that all was well with the world. Bagpuss and Ivor are my Proustian delights, which is appropriate, seeing as how there was a character in Bagpuss called Madeline. She's the only sentient ragdoll that I'm not scared off. She's ace, in fact, as are all the other characters.
"What's going on?" whimpers my audience. "He's not Ghost Transmissions at all. This is some unicorn loving impostor. No-one's tried to show their arse or anything. There hasn't even been a character with no face. I don't like it and I want my money back."
Well, firstly, you never paid to get in anyway. You put a window through round the back and climbed in, first having chewed up an old ticket to make it look like a new one. Secondly, stop whining. See, Madeline wasn't scary. But Oliver knew a thing or two about spooking his audience.
There were clues early on. One black and white stop-motion epic - Pogles Wood - featured a distinctly unnerving witch, with a habit of screaming a lot. She scared the daylights out of the BBC who insisted on removing the character from future series*. That seemed to be the last scary Smallfilm; however...
Oliver was famous for creating worlds. This was how he viewed it; they were places in his imagination with their own geography and rules. He just went there (mentally, unless there's a REALLY cool story we don't know here) and wrote down whatever was going on. In the 1980s, however, he discovered that his ability to create worlds had grown a little thin; he describes this in his awesome autobiography, Seeing Things, suggesting that his muse gave him twelve complete worlds and that was his lot. So, when he started adapting other people's worlds instead...well, it wasn't quite the same.
Rumer Godden was an author with quite a bibliography, and tucked away in that was a children's book called The Dolls' House. There, in that one sentence, I've got half my audience back shuddering again already, haven't I? The BBC commissioned Smallfilms to adapt this for the late afternoon/early evening slot. Rumer has it - nah, got to stop that one, couldn't resist - that the author was initially frosty, but soon warmed to the Smallfilms style.
The Dolls' House. Clue is in the title. Dolls are involved. Five of them. Yes, you're outnumbered. Actually, they are quite nice in a creepy way; four of them live in a box, dreaming of a happier life when they might have a house to live in. They get one. They are happy and excited, they are gentle, naive creatures. Tottie, Birdie, Mr Plantagenet and Apple. Stop motion they may be, but this is still a Smallfilms production and things are vaguely comfortable...sort of. It feels a bit uneasy, to be honest.
Yeah, I bet it does. Cause this is when Marchpane turns up. Jesus fucking Christ.
Marchpane is a posh doll with a voice like a young Princess Margaret and an attitude that would make Machiavelli feel like he wanted a nice cup of tea with his Granny. Marchpane don't like sharing the dolls' house. Marchpane wants rid of the others. In the same way that the Reverend Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter wants rid of those kids. In fact, I think it best if you consider Marchpane to be the Reverend Powell of Childrens' BBC.
Here then, for your education, is an episode. Watch and consider. Or don't.
You know how these things go. She's going to connive. She's going to set traps and whatnot. She's going to be the classic kids' TV villain. And they'll win out. Good will triumph. Yeah, it does. Except that...well...
She kills one of the other dolls. Actually, that's not quite accurate.
She burns one of them alive.
Right to fucking death there on camera at four o'clock in the afternoon on BBC1, just around home time from school. And it's the really nice, trusting, positive one, Birdie. At which point did the BBC think You know what we need? A kids' version of The Wicker Man. Aimed at nine year olds. Belting plan, Jeremy old boy.
Oh, don't worry. Evil will not triumph here. No, not at all. See, Marchpane, it turns out, is so nice and so antique and Princess Margarety that her owners decide she can't be played with and seal her up in a dark box. Dolls, by the way, are always sentient, but powerless. People can choose, but dolls can only be chosen runs the script, making me wonder if Ayn Rand was involved somewhere. So, if you consider for a moment: after having immolated a saintly mother-figure, Marchpane gets effectively buried alive. Eternally aware. Sealed in a box. For the rest of time. The end. Happy fucking viewing, kiddies. Instant Karma and all that, but no-one smart enough to think it through is going to enjoy their tea after that.
Smallfilms wound up operations not long after; I think they have one more series to their name. And as I said at the start, I will never, ever defame the life and work of Oliver Postgate; the man was a genius in more than one field, lived a life of adventure and strangeness and had the best bedtime story voice in the entire universe, more so even than the Ashtar Command. But I think I'll stick to the worlds he created himself. There were dragons in Oliver's own worlds, you see. They lived in the chestnut barrel. I much prefer that.
*But not from the Pogles books, where she gets all metafictional. She gets turned into a wood and plaster model, with glass eyes, which is exactly what she was in real life. I may have read too much Grant Morrison, but there are all kinds of spooky overtones to that.
For those of you unlucky enough not to get the Postgate therapy as a child, Oliver was one half of Smallfilms, a production company which made animated children's programmes mainly for the BBC. Throughout the 60s, 70s and early 80s, Smallfilms made some of the most memorable shows EVER. This is the team that gave us Ivor the Engine, which is kind of like Samuel Beckett but nice and with dragons. Noggin the Nog was Lord of the Rings with more cake involved. Clangers was a NASA favourite and featured a fantastically huge amount of heavily disguised swearing. And naturally, there was Bagpuss. If you don't know Bagpuss - no, I can't even begin to describe it. Except to say that it's a slightly sepia-toned gateway to a past where Pebble Mill at One was exciting and the spinning BBC globe was the sign that all was well with the world. Bagpuss and Ivor are my Proustian delights, which is appropriate, seeing as how there was a character in Bagpuss called Madeline. She's the only sentient ragdoll that I'm not scared off. She's ace, in fact, as are all the other characters.
"What's going on?" whimpers my audience. "He's not Ghost Transmissions at all. This is some unicorn loving impostor. No-one's tried to show their arse or anything. There hasn't even been a character with no face. I don't like it and I want my money back."
Well, firstly, you never paid to get in anyway. You put a window through round the back and climbed in, first having chewed up an old ticket to make it look like a new one. Secondly, stop whining. See, Madeline wasn't scary. But Oliver knew a thing or two about spooking his audience.
 |
| Totally unrepresentative of a holistic wiccan lifestyle |
There were clues early on. One black and white stop-motion epic - Pogles Wood - featured a distinctly unnerving witch, with a habit of screaming a lot. She scared the daylights out of the BBC who insisted on removing the character from future series*. That seemed to be the last scary Smallfilm; however...
Oliver was famous for creating worlds. This was how he viewed it; they were places in his imagination with their own geography and rules. He just went there (mentally, unless there's a REALLY cool story we don't know here) and wrote down whatever was going on. In the 1980s, however, he discovered that his ability to create worlds had grown a little thin; he describes this in his awesome autobiography, Seeing Things, suggesting that his muse gave him twelve complete worlds and that was his lot. So, when he started adapting other people's worlds instead...well, it wasn't quite the same.
Rumer Godden was an author with quite a bibliography, and tucked away in that was a children's book called The Dolls' House. There, in that one sentence, I've got half my audience back shuddering again already, haven't I? The BBC commissioned Smallfilms to adapt this for the late afternoon/early evening slot. Rumer has it - nah, got to stop that one, couldn't resist - that the author was initially frosty, but soon warmed to the Smallfilms style.
The Dolls' House. Clue is in the title. Dolls are involved. Five of them. Yes, you're outnumbered. Actually, they are quite nice in a creepy way; four of them live in a box, dreaming of a happier life when they might have a house to live in. They get one. They are happy and excited, they are gentle, naive creatures. Tottie, Birdie, Mr Plantagenet and Apple. Stop motion they may be, but this is still a Smallfilms production and things are vaguely comfortable...sort of. It feels a bit uneasy, to be honest.
Yeah, I bet it does. Cause this is when Marchpane turns up. Jesus fucking Christ.
 |
| You can add your own caption. I'm not staying on this bit a minute longer. NB, they've got Tottie's name wrong. She won't like that AT ALL. |
Marchpane is a posh doll with a voice like a young Princess Margaret and an attitude that would make Machiavelli feel like he wanted a nice cup of tea with his Granny. Marchpane don't like sharing the dolls' house. Marchpane wants rid of the others. In the same way that the Reverend Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter wants rid of those kids. In fact, I think it best if you consider Marchpane to be the Reverend Powell of Childrens' BBC.
Here then, for your education, is an episode. Watch and consider. Or don't.
You know how these things go. She's going to connive. She's going to set traps and whatnot. She's going to be the classic kids' TV villain. And they'll win out. Good will triumph. Yeah, it does. Except that...well...
She kills one of the other dolls. Actually, that's not quite accurate.
She burns one of them alive.
Right to fucking death there on camera at four o'clock in the afternoon on BBC1, just around home time from school. And it's the really nice, trusting, positive one, Birdie. At which point did the BBC think You know what we need? A kids' version of The Wicker Man. Aimed at nine year olds. Belting plan, Jeremy old boy.
Oh, don't worry. Evil will not triumph here. No, not at all. See, Marchpane, it turns out, is so nice and so antique and Princess Margarety that her owners decide she can't be played with and seal her up in a dark box. Dolls, by the way, are always sentient, but powerless. People can choose, but dolls can only be chosen runs the script, making me wonder if Ayn Rand was involved somewhere. So, if you consider for a moment: after having immolated a saintly mother-figure, Marchpane gets effectively buried alive. Eternally aware. Sealed in a box. For the rest of time. The end. Happy fucking viewing, kiddies. Instant Karma and all that, but no-one smart enough to think it through is going to enjoy their tea after that.
Smallfilms wound up operations not long after; I think they have one more series to their name. And as I said at the start, I will never, ever defame the life and work of Oliver Postgate; the man was a genius in more than one field, lived a life of adventure and strangeness and had the best bedtime story voice in the entire universe, more so even than the Ashtar Command. But I think I'll stick to the worlds he created himself. There were dragons in Oliver's own worlds, you see. They lived in the chestnut barrel. I much prefer that.
 |
| Idris. AWESOME. |
*But not from the Pogles books, where she gets all metafictional. She gets turned into a wood and plaster model, with glass eyes, which is exactly what she was in real life. I may have read too much Grant Morrison, but there are all kinds of spooky overtones to that.
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
The day the downs stood still
Following that brief Ken Dodd interlude (note to my readers who didn't grow up in the UK; never, ever ask about Ken Dodd) I think we should continue our meanderings amongst the signal pirates. Our previous excursion apparently scared the living daylights out of quite a few of you, so let's tone it down a touch this time. Max only wanted to tell you about his dirty glove; our next guest, in complete contrast, is polite, civilised and the very model of courtesy. Oh, and he's implying that he'll kill you all and burn your planet unless you do as he says.
Pirate Material: This is Radio Free Vrillon
Our story takes place in two locations, one geographical, one temporal. Spacially, we are going to be in Hampshire. Chronologically, the 1970s. I spent seven years in the 1970s and one day in Hamphire. It would be needlessly offensive to a whole county if I finished this joke.
Ah, the 1970s, my spiritual home, were it not for the racism, economic decline, baseline technology and lack of Ghost Box Records or PJ Harvey. But let's not dwell on the downside; the 1970s were dependable (in my cheating memory, at least). Tea time in that decade for me; Dad comes home from work with a briefcase (bearing a NALGO 'Stop the Cuts' bloody dagger sticker). Meal is eaten at the table, like proper folk. Just in time to go and watch the news (Calendar was the local show in Yorkshire, as any fule kno). Safe, everyday, normality.
Usually.
It's November 1977. Almost ten years to the day before the Max incident traumatises Chicago. The population of a major bit of the south coast sits down, tired from a long day of sailing or something and has its tea in front of the ITN early evening bulletin. You will be able to hear a bit of it soon, deadly dull beige news about the international situation, terrifying important incidents that have been made to sound beige so they can be safely read on a beige studio set without causing dangerous levels of excitement.
However, round about this point, it slowly began to dawn on the viewing public that Andrew Gardner seemed to have had a bit of an image change. He was calling himself Vrillon of the Ashtar Galactic Command. Ey-up, thought the audience. No, hang on a minute, they were in Hampshire. What did they think in Hampshire? I say, one doesn't get this with Richard Baker. Something like that.*
Gardner's voice had been faded out and replaced with something else entirely. Vrillon was reading the news now and it wasn't great for the human race. Frankly, we were getting a bollocking from space. He controlled the horizontal, the vertical - well, actually, he just controlled the soundtrack, but that was enough to make you drop your Findus Crispy Pancake (lame, lazy retro reference number 2352).
Go and have a listen to Vrillon. Go on.
Well, there you go. That's us told. He talks about manifesting in peace and harmony and whatnot, but notice, only the people who pay attention will get to ascend to spiritual wonderland. The rest of us will presumably fry. Isn't that the rapture or something, but with aliens and that? Dunno. Anyway, the news came back on and everything went back to normal, save for a few unfortunate parents of nervy children who had a lot of prising down off the ceiling to deal with.
Anyway, the IBA called hoax on the whole thing, which begs the question, what else were they going to say, exactly? This is exactly why I'm no longer allowed to write press releases for anything at all.
OK, so, in a rational world, we know it probably wasn't aliens. Thing is, precious little else about this case is clear or known; it's not even certain that the above recording is the real one and not a mock-up. Its existence would imply someone at the TV station recording it (i.e being aware it was about to start a few seconds in advance), which is a bit suspicious, pointing no fingers of blame, like.
The source of the rogue signal, despite what a lot of (even) dodgier sites have to tell you, was the Hannington transmitter. Here's a look at a view of the local scenery:
Spoooooooooky wintry place.
Now, is it me, or does that look spooky as hell? Surely, they filmed half the Ghost Stories For Christmas around there. What I find a little creepy is that someone sneaked out, miles and miles into the countryside on a dark November evening, got close enough to the tower to jam the audio link and ran the tape of Vrillon. Imagine them, hidden in the eerie winter night, watching patiently, delivering their spaced up message, like Joe Meek returned for revenge. I like to think that someone was working in that transmitter station, that they had the feeling they were being watched right up until the Ashtar took command.
So, beasts, there you have it. The voice of the aeons, addressing you from Southern Television. Like Max, a mystery on a November night that's never been solved. No-one has ever come forward to admit the truth. Vrillon has remained silent ever since; have Ashtar Command abandoned us to our fate?
Perhaps there's more to Southern TV than meets the eye. I'll leave you with this; the last few seconds of broadcast before the station closed down forever, four years after Vrillon's impassioned plea. It's up to you to decide if they were trying to tell us something.
Lights in ours skies, see.
* I know little of your Hampshire ways, but I bet someone's going to tell me all about them very, very soon.
Pirate Material: This is Radio Free Vrillon
Our story takes place in two locations, one geographical, one temporal. Spacially, we are going to be in Hampshire. Chronologically, the 1970s. I spent seven years in the 1970s and one day in Hamphire. It would be needlessly offensive to a whole county if I finished this joke.
Ah, the 1970s, my spiritual home, were it not for the racism, economic decline, baseline technology and lack of Ghost Box Records or PJ Harvey. But let's not dwell on the downside; the 1970s were dependable (in my cheating memory, at least). Tea time in that decade for me; Dad comes home from work with a briefcase (bearing a NALGO 'Stop the Cuts' bloody dagger sticker). Meal is eaten at the table, like proper folk. Just in time to go and watch the news (Calendar was the local show in Yorkshire, as any fule kno). Safe, everyday, normality.
Usually.
It's November 1977. Almost ten years to the day before the Max incident traumatises Chicago. The population of a major bit of the south coast sits down, tired from a long day of sailing or something and has its tea in front of the ITN early evening bulletin. You will be able to hear a bit of it soon, deadly dull beige news about the international situation, terrifying important incidents that have been made to sound beige so they can be safely read on a beige studio set without causing dangerous levels of excitement.
However, round about this point, it slowly began to dawn on the viewing public that Andrew Gardner seemed to have had a bit of an image change. He was calling himself Vrillon of the Ashtar Galactic Command. Ey-up, thought the audience. No, hang on a minute, they were in Hampshire. What did they think in Hampshire? I say, one doesn't get this with Richard Baker. Something like that.*
 |
| Klaatu Nikto Bakerada, Gort. And now, Michael Fish live from the Krell Machine. |
Gardner's voice had been faded out and replaced with something else entirely. Vrillon was reading the news now and it wasn't great for the human race. Frankly, we were getting a bollocking from space. He controlled the horizontal, the vertical - well, actually, he just controlled the soundtrack, but that was enough to make you drop your Findus Crispy Pancake (lame, lazy retro reference number 2352).
Go and have a listen to Vrillon. Go on.
Well, there you go. That's us told. He talks about manifesting in peace and harmony and whatnot, but notice, only the people who pay attention will get to ascend to spiritual wonderland. The rest of us will presumably fry. Isn't that the rapture or something, but with aliens and that? Dunno. Anyway, the news came back on and everything went back to normal, save for a few unfortunate parents of nervy children who had a lot of prising down off the ceiling to deal with.
Anyway, the IBA called hoax on the whole thing, which begs the question, what else were they going to say, exactly? This is exactly why I'm no longer allowed to write press releases for anything at all.
OK, so, in a rational world, we know it probably wasn't aliens. Thing is, precious little else about this case is clear or known; it's not even certain that the above recording is the real one and not a mock-up. Its existence would imply someone at the TV station recording it (i.e being aware it was about to start a few seconds in advance), which is a bit suspicious, pointing no fingers of blame, like.
The source of the rogue signal, despite what a lot of (even) dodgier sites have to tell you, was the Hannington transmitter. Here's a look at a view of the local scenery:
Spoooooooooky wintry place.
Now, is it me, or does that look spooky as hell? Surely, they filmed half the Ghost Stories For Christmas around there. What I find a little creepy is that someone sneaked out, miles and miles into the countryside on a dark November evening, got close enough to the tower to jam the audio link and ran the tape of Vrillon. Imagine them, hidden in the eerie winter night, watching patiently, delivering their spaced up message, like Joe Meek returned for revenge. I like to think that someone was working in that transmitter station, that they had the feeling they were being watched right up until the Ashtar took command.
 |
| Now bring me Fred Dineage. |
So, beasts, there you have it. The voice of the aeons, addressing you from Southern Television. Like Max, a mystery on a November night that's never been solved. No-one has ever come forward to admit the truth. Vrillon has remained silent ever since; have Ashtar Command abandoned us to our fate?
Perhaps there's more to Southern TV than meets the eye. I'll leave you with this; the last few seconds of broadcast before the station closed down forever, four years after Vrillon's impassioned plea. It's up to you to decide if they were trying to tell us something.
Lights in ours skies, see.
* I know little of your Hampshire ways, but I bet someone's going to tell me all about them very, very soon.
Sunday, 11 September 2011
Lightning Round
Three quick scares from the dark places of the inside, Tegan:
Not quite our usual product, but decently wrong, I'm sure you'll agree. To cleanse the mind's eye of this horror, allow me to make good use of Gareth Hunt:
 | |||
| I think 'fucking hell' should cover it. |
 | ||||||
| Happy Christmas, love from Jim Jones |
 | |
| A video nasty font, a pair of disembodied eyeballs, Harold Meaker with a pair of shears; if the least scary thing is Mr Fucking Claypole, you're in big trouble. |
Not quite our usual product, but decently wrong, I'm sure you'll agree. To cleanse the mind's eye of this horror, allow me to make good use of Gareth Hunt:
 |
| Warning: do not think of the phrase 'gender politics' |
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
I've made a terrible mistake, Leela. I've locked it in here...with us!
Good evening, or indeed good morning, or goodnight fellow beasts, wherever you may be. It's evening for me, and the sky is all dark and September stormy. I'm watching Sapphire and Steel; under these circumstances, I think a nicely unsettling discussion is called for.
I've talked to you about some of the horrid childhood nightmares and a few that probably creeped adults out as well. Scary as they might have been, they were all part of the system, created by TV production companies, broadcast as advertised, credited, filed away and, if they were especially good, promptly burnt to make sure no-one could ever enjoy them again.
Isn't it more unsettling to encounter something that's not sanctioned? Something that doesn't belong? Something that's effectively broken in to your little broadcasting noosphere*? I think so, but then I'm made up of 70% broadcast media these days, with precious little organic content remaining. So let's take a look at some unoriginal pirate material (phone rings: 2004 wants its joke back). Let's examine the world of the Signal Pirate.
It's quite tricky, breaking into a TV transmission. Funnily enough, broadcasting authorities don't seem to want to explain how this is done in detail, but the short and vague version is that if you can get a fairly powerful transmitter of your own and fix it up near a less powerful relay transmitter, you should be able to merge your own signal in and freak the living shit out of anyone watching. Right, that's enough science. It's time to watch Max Headroom get spanked on Doctor Who.
Pirate Material Part One: Twenty Minutes Into The Future
It's November 22nd, 1987. This is an auspicious date; the anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. A day before the 24th anniversary of Doctor Who. And a Discordian Day of Celebration, as I recall. Any, none or all of these may have some bearing on what happened in Chicago that night.
It started on the evening news. They suddenly cut from the Chicago Bears into...a lot of buzzing/humming noises, an image of a sheet of revolving metal and...well, a man in a Max Headroom mask, reeling about oddly.
For those unlucky enough to have missed out on Max, he was Matt Frewer in a full latex head makeup usually, presenting videos on late night TV. The concept was that he was a computer generated VJ in a sharp suit and if you can think of anything more 80s than that, please keep well away from my house.
What's less well remembered ('less' he says!) is that Max began life in a Blade Runner- esque Channel 4 TV show and short lived follow up series. Set in a dystopian near future, Max's original human version had adventures involving dodgy TV channels, artificial intelligence and, my favourite, killer adverts. It was like Videodrome made by the Comic Strip Presents. But the series had an ongoing theme of signal pirates and TV broadcasting rebellion, so I'm guessing either someone had paid close attention or the fancy dress shop had sold all its William Shatner masks to John Carpenter.
Normal service abruptly resumed, leaving the most flustered sports anchor in history to try and carry on regardless. But more was to come, near midnight and the Doctor Who anniversary. As usual, the station was screening Tom Baker, as so they jolly well should. Horror of Fang Rock, to be precise. The one with the killer jellyfish thing and the only example of pornography in the whole original series. Go on, look for it. I dare you. It's there.*2
Suddenly, Our Tom changes and not in the good "the moment has been prepared for" way. Max was back, and this time he was talking. And what he said was...not good. And for the life of me, I can't work out why. Here's a few quotes that really, really disturb me:
"My brother is wearing the other one!"
"This one is...dirty"
"Your love is fading!"
"They're coming to get me!"
At which point, someone started spanking his bare ass with fly swatter. And this is the point at which it became a bit creepier; on repeat viewing, it seems very like whoever doing the spanking is a child. And that shifts the focus from a bit of Discordian prankster-ness to something a bit darker and nastier. In all honesty, I'm suddenly finding it a bit difficult to try and be funny about this; maybe I'm over-reacting, after all, in all probability it's either a grown adult or, chances are, it was someone's sibling wearily helping out with a 'wacky' jape.
EDIT: The jury is out on whether that's a kid or not. Some more lazy research suggests that the mystery female speaks at one point, but it's hard to tell. Lots of commentators seem to be of the opinion that it's an adult with the flyswat, but the whole thing is still nasty as hell. My apologies to Max if I'm wrong here or just getting creeped out unecessarily. By a madman in a rubber mask showing his arse.
But it still has the overwhelming sense of the unheimlich, the idea of wrongness, of things being not as they should be. Something is WRONG with this clip but, apart from the above, I find it very difficult to phrase exactly what.
What's even more unsettling is that in the intervening twenty-odd years, no-one has ever been caught, investigated or prosecuted for this. No-one has claimed responsibility. Not a word, not a rumour. Just one dark late night, and then 'Max' was gone for good.
I think, on reflection, I'd rather deal with the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water.
Here's the linkage.
*Noosphere. Like, a load of ideas and cultural concepts circling each other, yeah? It's totally a real thing. Don't look it up.
*2 Alright, alright. Rueben, the undead lighthouse keeper has mucky postcards in his room. The Doctor looks at them for ages.
I've talked to you about some of the horrid childhood nightmares and a few that probably creeped adults out as well. Scary as they might have been, they were all part of the system, created by TV production companies, broadcast as advertised, credited, filed away and, if they were especially good, promptly burnt to make sure no-one could ever enjoy them again.
Isn't it more unsettling to encounter something that's not sanctioned? Something that doesn't belong? Something that's effectively broken in to your little broadcasting noosphere*? I think so, but then I'm made up of 70% broadcast media these days, with precious little organic content remaining. So let's take a look at some unoriginal pirate material (phone rings: 2004 wants its joke back). Let's examine the world of the Signal Pirate.
It's quite tricky, breaking into a TV transmission. Funnily enough, broadcasting authorities don't seem to want to explain how this is done in detail, but the short and vague version is that if you can get a fairly powerful transmitter of your own and fix it up near a less powerful relay transmitter, you should be able to merge your own signal in and freak the living shit out of anyone watching. Right, that's enough science. It's time to watch Max Headroom get spanked on Doctor Who.
Pirate Material Part One: Twenty Minutes Into The Future
It's November 22nd, 1987. This is an auspicious date; the anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. A day before the 24th anniversary of Doctor Who. And a Discordian Day of Celebration, as I recall. Any, none or all of these may have some bearing on what happened in Chicago that night.
It started on the evening news. They suddenly cut from the Chicago Bears into...a lot of buzzing/humming noises, an image of a sheet of revolving metal and...well, a man in a Max Headroom mask, reeling about oddly.
For those unlucky enough to have missed out on Max, he was Matt Frewer in a full latex head makeup usually, presenting videos on late night TV. The concept was that he was a computer generated VJ in a sharp suit and if you can think of anything more 80s than that, please keep well away from my house.
What's less well remembered ('less' he says!) is that Max began life in a Blade Runner- esque Channel 4 TV show and short lived follow up series. Set in a dystopian near future, Max's original human version had adventures involving dodgy TV channels, artificial intelligence and, my favourite, killer adverts. It was like Videodrome made by the Comic Strip Presents. But the series had an ongoing theme of signal pirates and TV broadcasting rebellion, so I'm guessing either someone had paid close attention or the fancy dress shop had sold all its William Shatner masks to John Carpenter.
 |
| We were simple folk, with none of your modern ways. |
Normal service abruptly resumed, leaving the most flustered sports anchor in history to try and carry on regardless. But more was to come, near midnight and the Doctor Who anniversary. As usual, the station was screening Tom Baker, as so they jolly well should. Horror of Fang Rock, to be precise. The one with the killer jellyfish thing and the only example of pornography in the whole original series. Go on, look for it. I dare you. It's there.*2
Suddenly, Our Tom changes and not in the good "the moment has been prepared for" way. Max was back, and this time he was talking. And what he said was...not good. And for the life of me, I can't work out why. Here's a few quotes that really, really disturb me:
"My brother is wearing the other one!"
"This one is...dirty"
"Your love is fading!"
"They're coming to get me!"
At which point, someone started spanking his bare ass with fly swatter. And this is the point at which it became a bit creepier; on repeat viewing, it seems very like whoever doing the spanking is a child. And that shifts the focus from a bit of Discordian prankster-ness to something a bit darker and nastier. In all honesty, I'm suddenly finding it a bit difficult to try and be funny about this; maybe I'm over-reacting, after all, in all probability it's either a grown adult or, chances are, it was someone's sibling wearily helping out with a 'wacky' jape.
EDIT: The jury is out on whether that's a kid or not. Some more lazy research suggests that the mystery female speaks at one point, but it's hard to tell. Lots of commentators seem to be of the opinion that it's an adult with the flyswat, but the whole thing is still nasty as hell. My apologies to Max if I'm wrong here or just getting creeped out unecessarily. By a madman in a rubber mask showing his arse.
But it still has the overwhelming sense of the unheimlich, the idea of wrongness, of things being not as they should be. Something is WRONG with this clip but, apart from the above, I find it very difficult to phrase exactly what.
What's even more unsettling is that in the intervening twenty-odd years, no-one has ever been caught, investigated or prosecuted for this. No-one has claimed responsibility. Not a word, not a rumour. Just one dark late night, and then 'Max' was gone for good.
I think, on reflection, I'd rather deal with the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water.
Here's the linkage.
*Noosphere. Like, a load of ideas and cultural concepts circling each other, yeah? It's totally a real thing. Don't look it up.
*2 Alright, alright. Rueben, the undead lighthouse keeper has mucky postcards in his room. The Doctor looks at them for ages.
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
They Live In Your TV
It's been a while since I've written here, due to holidays and the sudden loss of me bleedin' internet. So another mini-post whilst I work up a head of steam for one of my epic marathons about Hartley Hare or something.
A few posts back I mentioned people who were afraid of the YTV logo; bad dreams have been mentioned when discussing it. I always found it friendly and supportive personally, but hey, that's what they said about Captain Howdy.
So I got thinking; why are idents scary? Well, a lot of it's sound based. By its very nature, a TV company ident had to grab the attention of a viewer who had pretty much zoned out during the adverts. Five minutes of Nimble and Long Life beer will do that to you. So, we commence with a bold fanfare, which I suspect scared the shit out of daydreaming kids. Yorkshire TV went with the legendary Baaa-ba-ba-ba-baaaaaaaa. There were others that I did find slightly unsettling. For example, you never quite new what would follow the ATV eye, which strongly gave the impression it was watching you right back.
Actually, their fanfare was a bit full on as well. How to onomatopize this one? Er - hang on - baaaa-baaab-baaaa (bombombom) dingdingding baaaa-ba-baaaaaaaaaa. Not so much scary as slightly unsettling. I could never work out how those animations were done; there's a certain ghostliness about the translucency perhaps?
Here's one from the USA (which is a bit of a cheat, as I'd never have seen it back in the glory years) but I love the Cronenberg-ness of it. I'd have been waiting for the TV to grow a mouth or something. That face on the end is definite nightmare fuel.
Finally, here's Ulster. Who apparently are finding it necessary to tell us what star system they come from. Presumably the news was read by Rod Serling. I especially like the way they've used scary music box music, just to remind us that there's probably a ghost upstairs.
All shapes of creepiness. I miss them.
A few posts back I mentioned people who were afraid of the YTV logo; bad dreams have been mentioned when discussing it. I always found it friendly and supportive personally, but hey, that's what they said about Captain Howdy.
 | ||
| Your mother watches Farmhouse Kitchen in hell. Or Woodseats. |
So I got thinking; why are idents scary? Well, a lot of it's sound based. By its very nature, a TV company ident had to grab the attention of a viewer who had pretty much zoned out during the adverts. Five minutes of Nimble and Long Life beer will do that to you. So, we commence with a bold fanfare, which I suspect scared the shit out of daydreaming kids. Yorkshire TV went with the legendary Baaa-ba-ba-ba-baaaaaaaa. There were others that I did find slightly unsettling. For example, you never quite new what would follow the ATV eye, which strongly gave the impression it was watching you right back.
 |
| We can seeeeeeee you from in here. |
Actually, their fanfare was a bit full on as well. How to onomatopize this one? Er - hang on - baaaa-baaab-baaaa (bombombom) dingdingding baaaa-ba-baaaaaaaaaa. Not so much scary as slightly unsettling. I could never work out how those animations were done; there's a certain ghostliness about the translucency perhaps?
Here's one from the USA (which is a bit of a cheat, as I'd never have seen it back in the glory years) but I love the Cronenberg-ness of it. I'd have been waiting for the TV to grow a mouth or something. That face on the end is definite nightmare fuel.
 |
| It turns to look at you when you aren't watching. |
Finally, here's Ulster. Who apparently are finding it necessary to tell us what star system they come from. Presumably the news was read by Rod Serling. I especially like the way they've used scary music box music, just to remind us that there's probably a ghost upstairs.
 |
| It even looks like teeth, for god's sake. |
All shapes of creepiness. I miss them.
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