We start off with a quick note that the last
From The North bloggerisationisms update received an 'edited to add' segment this week when some additional information concerning The Be-Atles (a popular beat combo of the 1960s, you might've heard of them) and their
non-appearance in Compton Film's 1963 movie
Saturday Night Out came to light. This blogger's fiend Young Malcolm once interviewed the movie's producer, Tony Tenser and the story Tenser told him was something of a variant on the one mentioned on
From The North last time around. They're close, but different enough to be worthy of highlighting. Tenser also told, essentially, the same version of his story on one of his DVD commentaries on
The Tigon Collection box-set in 2005. Of course, the acclaimed Be-Atles historian and biographer,
Mark Lewisohn is currently working on the second volume of his definitive - and
massive - Be-Atles biography,
All These Years (tentatively scheduled for publication sometime next year, which will cover 1963 to 1966). So, one imagines, this subject will be dealt with in Mark's usual forensic detail there.
As this blogger has
previously noted, dear blog reader, you may believe that you are cool. You may even
be cool. But, know this, you will never - not
ever - be as a cool as That There George Harrison in a black poloneck posing with his Aston Martin DB5. Sorry, but it's The Law.
According to the photographer, Henry Grossman, George's son was so moved upon seeing this photo that he burst into tears. Entirely understandable but it does, rather, raise one additional question. If Dhani bubbled at
that (and, why wouldn't you?), God only knows what happened when he saw his dad sitting on the bonnet of his E-Type Jag in 1964. (This blogger needs to thank to his most excellent fiend, Jan, for supply some additional information and for confessing that 'Harrison 1964 to 1966 is my Kryptonite [and] so are vintage 1960s cars.')
As for what constitutes this blogger's Kryptonite, dear blog reader, it involves, red hair, leatherwear and a sportscar. Keith Telly Topping is a man of simple (but,
very specific) tastes. Oh, the lady in question should also, if at all possible, have absolutely
appalling taste in men. That's a deal-breaker.
Filming on the
Doctor Who Sixtieth Anniversary episode is, currently, continuing apace with the
DoctorWhoTV website producing a - potentially spoiler-
crammed -
piece on the latest news and all the speculation that's fit to print (and, some that isn't). So, as ever, if you're
at all bothered about spoilerisation-type-malarkey, dear blog reader (and this blogger is aware that some people definitely are), then you might want to skip the next couple of bits.
Still here, dear blog readers?
Good. Tell you what, let's talk about those who've left to avoid being spoilerised behind their backs whilst they're away.
That'll be good for a laugh.
Anyway, if you're still reading this, according to the previously mentioned
DoctorWhoTV website, 'UNIT will be back in full force in this story and they have a new logo to boot.'
Personally, this blogger doesn't think sticking the boot into logos is a very nice thing to do, but he's probably alone in that belief. 'Second,' the website adds, 'more intriguingly, [Russell Davies] might be bringing to screen a little-known monster from a
Doctor Who Fourth Doctor comic - The Wrarth Warriors.' 'The Who?' this blogger hears you collectively bellow as one, dear blog reader. No, The Who were a popular beat comb of the 1960s (and beyond), you might've heard of them. The Wrarth Warriors, on the other hand, were
not. The
Screen Rant website provides a
helpful explanation: 'If the speculation turns out to be true, it gives additional weight to rumors [sic] that [Russell Davies'] new version of
Doctor Who will be more like a comic book.' The photos in question come from a night shoot in Cardiff involving the cast and a black cab. Footage - circulated on social media - shows a stunt driver dressed in David Tennant's costume driving a white furry creature around in the cab. Another much-shared video saw an actor in an insectoid costume being escorted to the filming location underneath an umbrella. 'Both creatures will sound familiar to long-term readers of
Doctor Who comics,' adds the website. And, indeed, they do - the fluffy white creature in the taxi and the insectoid seem reminiscent of creatures from a comic strip, originally published in 1980 in the pages of what was, then,
Doctor Who Weekly.
Doctor Who & The Star Beast introduced Beep The Meep, a rabbit-like creature with a dark side. And, a sodding
big space gun. The story also introduced The Wrarth Warriors, intergalactic insect police whose mission is to bring The Meeps to justice (a bit like The Judoon, only with pincers). 'The ridges on the back of the costume caught on camera and the presence of the aforementioned fluffy white Beep-style costume heavily suggests that these comic creations are about to make an exciting
Doctor Who on-screen debut after forty two years,'
Screen Rant claims. All of this is entirely possible, Big Rusty being a noted fan of the well-remembered comic strip in question. And he is, of course, the man who created the equally cute-but-deadly Adipose.
Potential spoiler alert ends. Hello, everyone back again? Ter-rif-fic.
And now, dear blog reader, it's review time. Starting with
Strange New Worlds:
Lift Us Up Where Suffering Cannot Reach. 'Your new uniform is
very ... yellow!' This blogger quite enjoyed this one, though not quite as much as
last week's really funny episode. This was a bit more old-school
Star Trek (with a large dollop of Bertolucci's
The Last Emperor spooned on top, an inch thick, for good measure). We'll call this episode 'functional and workmanlike' with a couple of genuinely great moments on the one hand and hope, on the other, that the next episode goes back to being surprising and different.
The Man Who Fell To Earth:
Changes. 'Here on Earth, the amount of choices humans allow themselves is
dizzying.' This blogger keeps on expecting each week that the next episode of
The Man Who Fell To Earth might, just, be the first substandard one. And, it
never happens. Life-affirming, funny, complex, thrilling, perceptive, high-concept, touching, beautiful ... but never,
yet, substandard. 'I have learned that joy has a price.' London has never looked so pretty. Or so alien. So, what did we learn from this episode, dear blog reader? Well, we learned that if you give Chiwetel Ejiofor magnificent lines of dialogue all episode, he'll perform them, magnificently,
all episode (but then, we kind of knew that anyway). The episode was like a Charlie Parker riff (a metaphor which it took quite literally at several points), going off at all sorts of tangents but always returning to a basic - call-and-response - core. Humanity is, the episode claims,
jazz. Because, as the episode also suggests, music itself is mathematical. 'He needed a lot of electrical interference so he created a tornado! Fuck, is he dropping houses of people's sisters too?' Again, the dialogue is never-less-than wonderful ('Aren't you an alcoholic?' 'Yeah.
Hence the drinking!')
From The North favourite Montserrat Lombard and Jimmi Simpson almost-but-not-quite steal the episode in one scene. Sarah Hadland nearly steals it in two. But, Chiwetel
owns it throughout (apart from all the bits that Clarke Peters and Naomie Harris
own). 'The burden is love. You don't understand.' 'I'm
trying to.' My advise to the producers is to take their own words and make them into their own special mantra: 'If you fuck this one up, it's
an actual sin!' Best TV drama of the year, so far, dear blog reader? Christ, yeah.
Nicola Bryant has
warned people that attended an SF convention in Great Yarmouth recently to take a Covid test after she tested positive for the potentially deadly virus. Nicola attended the two-day
Great Yarmouth Comic-Con at the town's racecourse last weekend before discovering that she was, you know,
diseased. She had appeared at the convention alongside Colin Baker and Christopher Biggins. Who has
never been in
Doctor Who so what the frig
he was doing there is anyone's guess. All of us here at
From The North wish Nicola a jolly speedy recovery and hope that she is, soon, no longer infectious.
And, speaking of former
Doctor Who cast members currently having a bit of a 'mare, John Barrowman has described 'carnage' as a car
ploughed into pedestrians in Berlin near where Barrowman was standing at the time. 'My friend Mikey Kay told us to sit by a tree just in case anything else happens because it's something that's between us and any other vehicles that might come,' Barrowman was reported as saying by the
South Wales Argus. The incident is believed to have seen at least one person killed and eight others injured. Taking place near the popular
Kurfuerstendamm shopping boulevard in the West of the German capital, police spokesperson Martin Dams said that the suspected driver of the vehicle has been detained. Barrowman later told the
BBC News website that the car had careened through tables of people sitting outside having breakfast, before smashing into the storefront. 'It was just horrific,' he said. 'I saw somebody being resuscitated, I saw somebody being literally thrown onto a stretcher and put into an ambulance.'
'We're not into music, we're into chaos.' This blogger mentioned in the
last From The North update how much he enjoyed the early episodes of Danny Boyle's
Pistol. There have been some rather sniffy reviews from the usual suspects, of course, but it seems this blogger was not alone in finding something to enjoy. Take the
Metro's Josh Stephenson for one: '
Pistol kicks off with a David Bowie fantasy, a spot of light thieving and then a high-speed car chase - and it doesn't take its foot off the accelerator from that moment. Danny Boyle's ode to The Sex Pistols will certainly get your blood pumping ... As a whistle-stop tour of punk history, it certainly covers most of the bases. Despite a lively script from Baz Luhrmann's frequent collaborator, Craig Pearce, this is very much a Danny Boyle passion project. The irrepressible director hasn't been this twitchy since
Trainspotting and at times it can be a little off-putting as
Pistol is edited to within an inch of its life. There are frequent cutaways, bundles of vault footage spliced in and the whole show is shot in 4:3 aspect ratio to really hammer home that this is set in the 1970s. But, by that same token, I'll be darned if it isn't entertaining.
Pistol moves at such a clip and with such a restless energy that it's impossible not to be dragged along with it - even if you are kicking and screaming at it to slow the heck down occasionally. But let's address the elephant in the room: can
Pistol truly be punk? This is the question that is going to inspire a million think pieces up-and-down the land and, yeah, they have a point. Danny Boyle is a multi-millionaire with a string of high-profile movies under his belt, it's a show launching on Disney of all places (you simply cannot be more establishment than
that) and Pistols frontman John Lydon has declared it, gulp, Middle-Class. You can't really argue with
any of those points - but we would argue with the framing.' Yeah. What
he said.
This blogger, incidentally, has a new favourite scene from
Pistol - from episode four, the gloriously rude-titled
Pretty Vaaaycunt. We find The Pistols on tour in the North and they arrive at a very nice-looking hotel in Whitby where they've been booked to play. They're met by a charming, eager-to-please receptionist, Bernadette, who walks with them through the hotel, saying that they'll be performing after the disco and that they're free to use the buffet until then (which is useful since McLaren's only given the roadie, Boogie, enough money to cover petrol and accommodation, not food. Meaning Jonesie's had to go shoplifting). She tells them that the North Yorkshire Hairdressers' Association are 'beside themselves with excitement' and then notes 'I haven't actually heard your music, but I've read a lot about you.' Bernadette then leaves them to attack the buffet with gusto. We hard-cut to a little later, the dance floor is packed with ladies from the North Yorkshire Hairdressers' Association grooving around their handbags to 'Boogie Nights'. The disco ends, The Pistols come on and launch into 'Pretty Vacant' and the dance floor immediately clears ... except for one guy, with an anarchy symbol hand-drawn on his shirt. Soon, he's joined by a girl in pink lycra pants with heavy mascara.
Suddenly Jonesie says, '
Hey, it's Bernadette' (indeed it is, we've just seen her getting made up in the toilets). A smile breaks out on cynical Mister Rotten's face. 'This one's for Bernadette and her boyfriend' he says as the band plow into the next song. The cherry on the cake is that the song they chose is '
Satellite', a particular favourite of this blogger. It's not one of The Pistols' better known numbers (it's the b-side of 'Holidays In The Sun') but it's probably the closest The Pistols ever got to a proper, honest-to-God love song (albeit, a bit of a left-field one). The scene is
beautiful and it reminded this blogger of something Elvis Costello once said in an interview about what touring was like in the early punk period when you'd turn up in a town and the audience such gigs attracted would be mostly curious, rather dismissive, punters plus 'about three kids in bin-liners' who were trying to create their own version of The Bromley Contingent. And were basing what to wear on what they saw was going on in London via the
NME. That's also, in part, what 'Satellite' deals with ('Suburban kid, you got no name', 'You try and join the scene but you're too obscene'); as Lydon himself once
noted - this was
before he became a vile, Trump-supporting bigot - 'It's the story of the travelling nonsense, around the satellite towns and picking up enough money to survive for a day or two. We
had to do it, but in a way, that's what built The Sex Pistols crowd. They came from all those godforsaken new towns; Milton Keynes, St Albans. As bad as it was in London for young people, they had
nothing at all in the satellite towns. No social scene.' See, once upon a time, he
was a functioning human being - something that Anson Boon's superb portrayal of him in
Pistol does remind the viewer of far better than anything Lydon himself says or does these days. Now, reportedly, having failed to stop the production, he's got his lawyers
checking it for inaccuracies. And, it is claimed, the man who wrote the lyrics for 'God Save The Queen' and 'Anarchy In The UK' now thinks the
Her Maj is lovely, believes anarchy is
a 'terrible idea' and, is being
generally obnoxious and twatty about pretty much everyone and everything. So, no change there, then.
Considerable congratulations are due to the
Epic Stream website and their writer, Arianne Gift, for the article (if you can describe a load of ludicrously
speculative bollocks as such)
Pistol Season Two Release Date, Spoilers & Update: News Bits You Should Know About Potential Sequel. Which is a quite
stunning example of the old journalistic stand-by, 'I'm getting paid by the word so I'm going to use eight hundred of the fekkers where six ("there isn't going to be one") would do.' Sample text: 'It's undeniable that a
Pistol season two is
unlikely to happen [this blogger's italics], whether or not Danny Boyle directs it. The show was intended to be a mini-series and it did an excellent job of portraying The Sex Pistols' rise and demise. Stranger things have happened and it's likely that FX will approve a second season of
Pistol, which will center [sic] on the band's split.' You mean, the band's split
that was already covered in the last third of the final episode, Arianne? 'Even if it were given the green light,
Pistol season two is unlikely to be released before the spring of 2024.' Or, in other words,
there isn't going to be one. Mind you, this
was a band that once released a compilation LP called
Flogging A Dead Horse so, you never know ... Yes, actually, you do -
there isn't going to be one!
On a (somewhat) related theme, in the last bloggerisationism update, the segment on
Pistol used a very well-known and widely reproduced photograph of some of the staff and patrons of Sex to illustrate it.
This very one, in fact.
It features, as you can probably spot, the (in)famous King's Road shop's co-owner, the fashion designer and, now,
Dame Vivienne Westwood (far right ... a political position, incidentally, presently occupied by Mister Lydon), the late and much-lamented
Jordan (second right, baring one of her bare boobies for the camera), future rock-Goddess Chrissie Hynde (third right, baring her shapely bum) and the lonely boy himself, Steve Jones (far left, wearing a tits t-shirt and a cheeky grin). The chap in the middle, with a pair of lurid red strides and, seemingly, having his own sex pistol well and truly fondled is the very excellent
Alan Jones, then a regular DJ at early Pistols gigs and a friend of the band and, particularly, Sid Vicious; these days, he's a highly-respected film critic, author, broadcaster and acknowledged expert on the Horror genre. However, if you were reading the
Gruniad Morning Star in November 2017 when an interview with Jordan
That's Me In The Picture used this image, the identity of the rather fetching-looking redhead in a rubber dress sandwiched between the Jones boys and giving Alan's groin a squeeze was said to be 'unknown'. Actually, she isn't unknown at all, her name was (and, presumably, still is)
Danielle Lewis and she was a regular customer at Sex during that period. A dear blog reader who asked to remain anonymous (hi, Stephanie!) asked this blogger after the last blog was published where this photo came from. It was, in fact, part of a David Dagley shoot for the soft core porn magazine
Forum for their June 1976 issue as part of an article written by Len Richmond called, rather wittily,
Buy Sexual. An interview with Richmond, scans of the full article and further photos from the session, including Danielle subjecting Chrissie, Jordan and Viv's asses to a dose of, ahem,
submission - all in the name of publicity, obviously - can be seen in a splendid 2016 piece at the
Flashbak website, which you can check out
here.
Insomnia having driven this blogger from his stinkin' pit again (a regular occurrence at The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House these days), this blogger stumbled on the first episode of
UFO -
Identified - in an early morning broadcast on The Horror Channel on Tuesday. Apparently, they're showing the whole series in an 8am slot. Presumably, just to remind everyone what a genuinely
great series it was. Gabrielle Drake in a purple wig, Benny Cumberbatch's mum, futurist cars like something off
The Jetsons and the ladies on Skydiver wearing string vests. What's
not to love?
Or, to put it another way ...
Unfortunately, that was immediately followed on The Horror Channel by an early episode of
Space: 1999. Just to remind us that not
everything Gerry Anderson did was, actually, good.
Back to
UFO and, because The Horror Channel seems to be showing the series in the
ATV transmission order rather than production order (which, broadly speaking, makes more sense), Thursday morning saw a broadcast of
The Cat With Ten Lives.
This blogger has always
loved that particular episode, one of the maddest of mad plots in a series
full of mad plots. Magnificent over-acting from the always reliably-bonkers Vladek Sheybal, a delightfully-
wired Alexis Kanner and, of course, that darned cat! It was made during the second recording block but was broadcast third in the series broadcast order so, therefore, there's no Gabrielle Drake but plenty of Wanda Ventham instead.
Logic Let Me Introduce You To This Window moment: Why does Jim Regan (Kanner) knock on his own front door when returning home from Moonbase? Doesn't his (soon-to-be-abducted-by-aliens) wife trust him with a key?
By the way, dear blog reader, has anyone else ever noticed how uncannily alike the Moonbase habitat pods and an Adidas Telstar®™ (that thing this blogger always
claims his brain is the size of) appear to be? Just Keith Telly Topping then ...?
Apropos nothing-in-particular other than this blogger suddenly remembering part of a meandering (but, enjoyable) conversation he had with his good fiend Young Malcolm two or three lunches ago at Little Asia. This was with regard to Sherlock Holmes adaptations. This blogger has noted a few times in the past that he tends to, at least in part, base how much he enjoys a particular adaptation on how well he feels John Watson has been played in it. As the late Tim Pigott-Smith (who played both Holmes and Watson in different stage productions) once said in a rather good BBC2
Forty Minutes documentary (1987's
The Case Of Sherlock Holmes), Watson's often been given a bit of a rough deal in many versions (he is, after all, supposed to be
twenty nine years old in
A Study In Scarlet).
This blogger believes that John Watson is one of the greatest literary characters ever created - an ordinary man witness to extraordinary events - but, he is easy to get completely wrong if you play him, simply, as a comic foil. So, this blogger tends to prefer either the younger 'man of action'/'Watson, fetch your gun' type performances or somewhat more cerebral older ones rather than a presentation of him as, well, an
fool, basically. In the case of the latter, step forward, for instance, Nigel Stock in the 1960s BBC Peter Cushing series; a man who seems in genuine danger of being unable to ties his own shoelaces and who often looked as startled as someone who has just discovered a hamster has run up his trouser leg. Nigel, to be fair,
did make something of a career playing this sort of (ahem) stock character - blithering idiots, basically. Him tripping over his own feet and giving the location of the great escape tunnel away to Ze Chermans thus stopping Ian Chesterton from getting out of
Stalag Luft III for example. This blogger would include Nigel Bruce in the same category but, the last time he expressed less-than-satisfaction with Mister Bruce's performance on his (old)
Facebook page, The Lord Thy God Steven Moffat (OBE) took umbrage at this, chided this blogger to within an inch of his life for such foolish foolishness and, effectively, bullied this blogger into buying the complete Rathbone/Bruce collection on DVD. Which, to be fair,
was a kindness to Keith Telly Topping in the long-run. Particularly as this blogger purchased the box-set dirt-cheap on Amazon! Therefore, this blogger has come to, if not exactly love Mister Bruce's Watson then, at least, learn to
live with it.
Anyway, this blogger's favourite takes on the roles include Ian Hart (in one very good TV adaptation and, him aside, one stinking awful one); David Burke and, then, Edward Hardwicke in the superb Granada/Jeremy Brett series (
that goes without saying, really); André Morell (absolutely superb opposite Cushing in Hammer's
Hound Of The Baskervilles), Donald Houston (in the very under-rated
A Study In Terror), Colin Blakely (possibly this blogger's favourite Watson of all in Billy Wilder's
The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes. 'Doctor Watson, he is your ...
glass of tea, yes?'); Bobby Duvall (in the, also under-rated,
The Seven Per-Cent Solution); James Mason (in
Murder By Decree, particular the 'you've squashed my pea!' sequence); Donald Churchill (in a little-seen 1980s TV movie version of
Hound opposite Ian Richardson's Holmes); John Mills (as an old-but-wise Watson in
The Mask Of Death), young Mister Freeman of course (in
Sherlock. You knew
that, right?) and, for sending the whole 'Watson is an complete moron' thing up to the nth degree, Arthur Lowe (opposite John Cleese in the even more little-seen
The Strange Case Of The End Of Civilisation As We Know It ... And I Feel Fine). Bill Paterson was pretty good in the
Baker Street Irregulars TV series too, as was Jude Law in the two Guy Ritchie movies and Donald Pickering in an Anglo-Polish TV series -
Sherlock Homes & Doctor Watson - made in the late 1970s which this blogger never even knew the existence of until Young Malcolm pointed Keith Telly Topping in its direction of
YouTube). This blogger is sure he's probably missed some decent ones - though, Patrick Macnee giving his best for the cause in the thoroughly rotten
Sherlock Holmes In New York (opposite a woefully miscast Roge Moore), sadly,
isn't one of them. Patrick was, thankfully,
much better in the two Harry Alan Towers-produced Holmes TV movies he made with Christopher Lee in the early 1990s. For additions, suggestions, comments (or abuse), dear blog reader, please start your own blog and do your own list! It's what the Interweb is there for.
This blogger recently
wrote about the joy of the rarely-seen British horror movie
The Corpse turning up on Talking Pictures. It seems it's not just Talking Pictures that's doing a service for fans of British horror and SF movies of the late 1960s. Another rarity from the same era, Gerry Levy's 1969 curiosity
The Body Stealers (also known as
Thin Air) was shown on The Horror Channel this week (bizarrely, in the middle of Wednesday afternoon).
This was made by Tigon Films, run by Tony Tenser who has
also been the subject of
a recent From The North piece about his previous production company, Compton Films. (This blogger doesn't just throw these things together, you know?) The movie features a pre-
Barratt Homes adverts Patrick Allen, Sean Connery's brother, George Sanders wondering whatever the Hell happened to his film career, two of this blogger's favourite actresses, Hilary Dwyer and Sally Faulkner and a reused flying saucer from
Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 AD. True story.
Prior to a previous TV showing, Alan Jones (yes, him again. See above) writing in
Radio Times gave
The Body Stealers but one star out of five, calling it a 'talky, laughably low-budget and hopelessly inept clone of
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.' All of which is completely true (he was always a perceptive lad, that Alan Jones). But it was also, undeniably,
a right good laugh.
How can one
not admire a movie made for about twenty pee which has a
trailer claiming it to be 'a masterpiece of suspicion and suspense'? That's, surely, worth a viewing on bare-faced-cheek value alone.
Interestingly, that same day, insomnia
again drove this blogger from his kip early and he turned on The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House widescreen TV at something like 5.30am, catching the last few minutes of one of Tony Tenser's earlier productions,
The Black Torment (1964) on Talking Pictures. Vaguely reminiscent of Hitchcock's
Rebecca (albeit with a fraction of either the production values or the quality)
The Black Torment was, as this blogger wrote in his book
A Vault Of Horror, 'a basic bodice-ripper melodrama shorn of Hammer's literary pretensions or Amicus's novel casting ideas. At heart, it's a reasonably stylish period costume drama with lavish sets and lots of good actors doing their best with a hack script. (Patrick Troughton's
Oirish, beggorah, sor accent is particularly noteworthy in this regard.) The film's dialogue is often trite ... and the plot is shallow and somewhat anaemic. Yet the film is utterly impossible to dislike, overcoming its several limitations with a pugnacious Byronesque swagger.'
One claim concerning the movie which this blogger alluded to in
A Vault Of Horror (where
The Black Torment had the misfortune to be chronologically sandwiched between two of this blogger's favourite movies, horror or otherwise,
The Masque Of The Red Death and
Doctor Terror's House of Horrors): Many years later, Derek Ford (who co-wrote the script with his brother, Donald) alleged in an interview with
Shivers magazine that, with production falling behind schedule, Tony Tenser simply ripped ten pages from the script and told the director, Bob Hartford-Davies, '
Now, you're back on schedule!' 'The fulcrum of the plot is what he ripped out,' noted Ford, sadly. This appears to be an apocryphal story (and, indeed, it has been described as such by
The Black Torment's cinematographer, Peter Newbrook) until one actually
watches the movie. A number of scenes
do, indeed, seem to be missing: Notably, there is a sudden change in the characterisation of Elizabeth (Heather Sears). On her second day in her new home and, with no prior warning that she is even a little bit upset, Elizabeth hysterically tells her husband, Richard (John Turner) that he is not the man she married and that there is 'evil at work in the house.' Whether this was down to, as Ford claimed, the removal of certain important scenes or, simply, due to bad writing in the first place, we shall probably never know.
Back on Talking Pictures, Friday Night saw another Brit-horror rarity getting an airing as part of their
The Cellar Club strand (immediately after one of this blogger's favourites, Hammer's years-ahead-of-its-time
The Plague of The Zombies). Pete Walker's
The Flesh & Blood Show (1972) was an early effort from the future director of
House Of Whipcord,
Frightmare and
House Of Mortal Sin, all three of which this blogger rates
very highly.
The Flesh & Blood Show, with a script by Alfred Shaughnessy, isn't as good as those (or, indeed, as good as his earlier
Die Screaming, Marianne for that matter) but it manages to overcome the limitations of its miniscule budget and features a fine cast - including Ray Brooks, Jenny Hanley, Luan Peters, Patrick Barr, Robin Askwith, Candace Glendenning, Judy Matheson and Jess Conrad - all giving it their best shot; this blogger really enjoyed seeing it again for the first time in, probably, the best part of two decades. As with most of Walker's work, it was somewhat spat-upon by 'serious' critics on its initial release, but his work has been re-evaluated in recent years and he now has something of a cult following amongst the Horror
cognoscenti.
Now, of course, we come to that inexcusable part of
From The North dedicated solely to this blogger's on-going medical thingies. For those who haven't been following this on-going saga which seems to have been on-going longer than ... this century: This blogger
spent several weeks feeling pure-dead horrible;
had a week in hospital; was
discharged; received
B12 injections; then
more injections; recovered his
appetite somewhat; got a
diagnosis; had a
consultants meeting;
continued to suffer from fatigue and insomnia; endured
another endoscopy; had another
consultation; got
toothache; had an
extraction; which
took ages to heal and had
yet another conversation with his consultant.
Fishing for sympathy, dear blog reader? This blogger doesn't even understand the concept.
Keith Telly Topping was off to Church Walk early on Friday morning to receieve his three-monthly B-12 infusion (can it
really be slightly over three months since Keith Telly Topping
got out of the hospital, dear blog readers? It only seems like ... two-and-a-half months). He was supposed to be seeing Nurse Janice whom this blogger went to school with sometime last century but, she was off (Keith Telly Topping suspects that she took one look at her appointments for this week, thought 'oh no! Not
him!' and, promptly, had a day on the sick.) Instead, this blogger saw the lovely Sister Sarah who administered the very painful jab. And no, this blogger is
not being a big baby, it goes straight into the muscle and, therefore, hurts like jimbuggery. So, please be kind to this blogger, he's feeling a bit delicate at present.
Thereafter, purely due to this blogger having a bus pass for the day, there were brief stops at ALDI and Morrisons for some essential Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House supplies (plus, in the case of the latter, some
extremely necessary brecky).
Arriving home, totally pure-dead cream-crackered, this blogger briefly considered that he should probably get Stacey the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House strimmer out sometime over this weekend since the very unmanicured lawns of The Stately Telly Topping Manor are looking like they're in need to a damned-good seeing-to. Indeed, anything which tries to grown in that there jungle (weeds apart) has the life expectancy of the average Spinal Tap drummer. And, an equally bewildering array of reasons for shuffling off this mortal coil. So, this blogger will probably attempt to do some work on it on Sunday if he's feeling up to the task and hasn't spontaneously combusted by then. If you, subsequently, hear that yer actual Keith Telly Topping has been the subject of a 'bizarre gardening accident,' dear blog reader, you will know what to blame that on. And remember, you can't
dust for vomit.
This blogger hasn't had Walter the Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House wok out of the cupboard for what seems like forever so, on Monday, he thought to his very self - 'Keith Telly Topping,' he thought - 'it's about time Walter got put to the good use for which he was always intended since this day's trip to Morrisons
did involve the purchase of mushrooms, spring onions, prawns, garlic, black pepper and basmati rice.' So, here's a
before shot ...
And and
after ...
Meanwhile, on Friday evening, for us supper at The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House, a fluffy two-egg mushroom omelette with lightly buttered toast and a nice milky cup of Rosie was the order of the day.
On 6 April (yes, that is, indeed, almost exactly
nine bloody weeks ago), this blogger rang Sky to see if he could get his monthly TV and telephone package reduced in price (as he tends to do about once every eighteen months or so). They, very kindly, said that they would be quite prepared for this eventuality and, furthermore, even though Keith Telly Topping hadn't asked for it, they offered him, free of charge, a new and updated, super-doopah-fast Interweb router due to Keith Telly Topping being a long-term customer (ever since the BSkyB days, in fact). The bills changed within days (saving this blogger slightly over a tenner a month, which was nice) but, the router didn't turn up at The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House. This, despite four separate e-mail contacts with the company (and then, four separate phone calls back to this blogger from different individuals at Sky of increasing levels of importance, this blogger imagines, trying to satisfy his concerns). All of these people this blogger spoke to, let it be noted, were very pleasant, apologised for any inconvenience caused and assured this blogger that they would get it sorted and he should receive the router forthwith - if not sooner. Well, except for one lady who spent most of her time trying to sell this blogger a mobile phone he didn't want. But the others were clearly trying their best to resolve the delay. Anyway, on Tuesday of this week - a full
sixty two days after contact was first established -
finally, this arrived at The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House.
The hot news: It's
very nice! And it
is certainly much, much faster than the old one. Configuring it and getting it up-and-running was easy, even for a complete technophobe like this blogger (it only took about ten minutes, if that). So, here are a couple of, hopefully useful, life lessons for you all, dear blog fiends. If you are ever offered something-for-nothing, don't believe you'll get it until it actually arrives in your sweaty hands.
And, secondly, never be a afraid to be a right bloody pain in the arse to someone (or, indeed,
several someones) if you think they're not doing what they promised to do in a timely-enough fashion. Such is The Whole of The Law.
Twin Peaks creator David Lynch has
paid tribute to Julee Cruise, who recorded the TV show's haunting theme, as 'a great musician, a great singer and a great human being.' Cruise sang
'Falling' from Lynch's acclaimed 1990 drama, a particular favourite of all of us here at
From The North, with the song reaching the top ten in the UK singles chart. She also performed on the soundtrack to Lynch's 1986 film
Blue Velvet. Cruise's husband Edward Grinnan earlier wrote on
Facebook that the sixty five-year-old had 'left this realm on her own terms.' In his tribute on
YouTube, Lynch said: 'I just found out that the great Julee Cruise passed away. Very sad news. So it might be a good time to appreciate all the good music she made and remember her as being a great musician, a great singer and a great human being.' Cruise first collaborated with Lynch after working as a talent scout for composer Angelo Badalamenti, who had been asked to work on
'Mysteries Of Love' for the
Blue Velvet soundtrack. Cruise struggled to find a suitably ethereal vocalist, so decided to have a go at singing the song herself. 'I actually never sang in that trademark "Julee Cruise voice" before I worked with Angelo and David,' she told the
Gruniad Morning Star in 2017. 'I was always a real belter, lots of power. Working with them changed me.' The trio worked together on the 1989 LP
Floating Into The Night, with Lynch writing the lyrics and Badalamenti composing the music. The LP included 'Falling' and other songs which would feature in
Twin Peaks the following year. Cruise also
appeared in the series and in the 1992 spin-off movie
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and the 2017 revival
Twin Peaks: The Return. Which was the winner of
From The North's
'Best of' list for that year. 'It was so much fun to be part of something that just went
ba-boom!' she told the
Los Angeles Times in 2017. 'You didn't know it was going to do that. What a nice surprise life takes you on.' Cruise recorded a second solo LP,
The Voice Of Love, with Lynch and Badalamenti in 1993 and Lynch directed her in an avant-garde one-hour concert film,
Industrial Symphony Number One, in 1990. Beyond those collaborations, she also toured with the B-52s, filling in for Cindy Wilson during the 1990s and performed with Bobby McFerrin. Though, we should probably forgive her for the latter.
