Ten Most Memorable Times At The Movies

This MEME originally did the rounds way back when but I thought it'd be nice to revisit it.

"This is not about the best movies you've ever seen. Describe ten experiences watching a movie that stick in your mind as being particularly memorable - for whatever reason."

Star Wars
Still my favourite film of all time, I saw this when it first came out in the UK in early 1978, when I was 9.  As I've written about before (which you can read here), I was very aware of the film and very eager to see it.  We'd already tried to get into one showing but it was  full, so Dad took me and my friend Claire back to Rothwell.  We headed off down the Rec. to play - it was cold and there was a lot of fog - and only realised the time when we could hear Dad calling us, to go to the next showing.  My main memory from that day is watching the Star Destroyer come over the camera in almost the first shot and I knew I’d never seen anything like it before in my life.

I was lucky enough to see it in the cinema a few more times - a double-bill with The Empire Strikes Back and then a triple-bill (what a marathon that was) with both Empire and Return Of The Jedi - and I also caught the special editions at the cinema too.

Even better, I got to watch the films again with Dude and it was wonderful to re-experience them through his eyes!

Dead Ringers
My friend Craig & I went to the cinema a lot in the late 80s/early 90s, alternating between the Kettering, Burton Latimer and Corby ‘theatres’.  Can’t do that now, can we, Mr Odeon?  I’d loved David Cronenberg’s films since watching Videodrome (which I wrote about here) and Scanners in the mid-80s, so rushed along to see this.  It wasn’t a popularly held view - including me and Craig, there were only 6 people in the cinema.  It’s the quietest I’ve ever heard an audience file out - all of us looked shocked and white faced - but what a brilliant film it is.

Basic Instinct
Not the greatest film ever, I know but Alison & I went out as mates on a cinema trip to The Point in Milton Keynes.  We booked a double bill, watched Waynes World first and then went to get something to eat.  Midway through I asked her to go out with me so therefore our first film as a couple was Verhoven’s sleazy thriller.  Well, it could be worse…

The Land Before Time
Back in the late 80s, I often took my kid sister Sarah to the cinema during school holidays (video was starting to get a real grip, but we didn’t have a player, so the only place to see big Disney films was at the flicks).  I picked this particular film out of the many because it vividly reminds me, every time I think of it, of the difference between kids and adults (I would have been in my late teens, Sarah around 5 or 6).  One of the dinosaurs’ mothers dies, right near to the start and the kids in the audience went mental (it was quite a spectacular death if I remember rightly), laughing and shouting.  I thought it was very sad and looked around, trying to see if I was alone in that and wiping away a stray tear.  Turns out I wasn’t - whilst most of the kids were thoroughly enjoying themselves, most of the adults seemed to have “something in their eye”.

Whore
I went to see this at The Point, in Milton Keynes, with a friend of mine called Julie.  It was my suggestion - I'd enjoyed the Ken Russell films I'd seen to that point and I liked Theresa Russell a lot.  The film started.  It was vile.  It got worse.  To date - and I’ve seen a lot of films at the cinema - this is only film I’ve ever walked out of.

Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger
1977 - my friends and I went on our own to a matinee showing of this (I assume none of our parents wanted to sit through it).  The cinema was chaotic, popcorn everywhere, a lot of noise and we 8 year olds were thrilled to be there on our own.  The noise quietened down during the film and I remember I liked it - a feeling no doubt helped because of the presence of Ms Lambs Navy Rum herself, Caroline Munro (who, many years later, I got to meet - as I wrote about here).  A friend of mine, who’d already seen the film, kept telling me about this huge seal that came out of the ice to attack the goodies and I was, quite frankly, terrified.  Then I saw it and, for the first time, realised that my imagination, on occasion, could be far more powerful than what film-makers could get on the screen.

Fatal Attraction
For our first date (I do pick them, don’t I?), I took my new girlfriend Sara to see this at the Northampton ABC - a beautiful old Art Deco theatre, complete with a balcony and organ that came out of the stage, which is now a Jesus Army Centre (thanks for that, Mr Out-Of-Town Multiplex).  I enjoyed the film and, as soon as it appeared that Glenn Close was dead in the bath, I knew what was going to happen.  This is why, when she leapt out of the water only to be shot by Ann Archer, I was watching the rest of the cinema-goers rather than the screen.  And I swear it was as if everyone moved into the seat directly behind them, a living, screaming ripple effect.  I’ve never seen anything like it since.

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

Never the biggest Star Trek fan, I don't think I'd even see Wrath Of Khan (probably my favourite of them all) when this was released but one of the tabloids offered free tickets if you queued at the nearest relevant cinema and that seemed like a good idea.  The closest one to us was the Northampton ABC so me, my friend Steve and his sister spent a happy few hours in the queue, chatting to our fellow would-be patrons.  We got the tickets, I enjoyed the film and later wrote an essay about the day, which won an English prize that year at school.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Nick (who I've known since 1976 and is still my best friend) and I had a falling out during the summer of 1981.  Not being friends wasn’t at all pleasant but, typically for pre-teens, as horrible as it was neither of us was going to back down (and I can’t even remember what caused us to fall out).  It just so happened that, at the same time, Raiders Of The Lost Ark arrived at the cinema and nobody I knew wanted to see it - they either didn’t like spiders or snakes or ghosts.  Quite by chance, our mum’s met in the high street and, whilst talking, discovered both of us wanted to see the film but didn't have anyone to go and see it with.  I can’t remember now who made the first move but we made up, went to see the film and haven’t fallen out since.  The irony is that now I like horror films and Nick doesn’t, yet it was me at the time who covered his eyes when the first ‘angel’ turns into a ghoul at the climax!  It's a fact Nick has never let me forget.

A brilliant, stirring film, Raiders remains one of my all-time favourites.

An American Werewolf In London

I've long been a fan of the film (I wrote a retrospective on it here) and adore it but had only ever seen it at home or with friends, first on murky VHS, then on gorgeous DVD (where I finally realised the figure steaming in the night air was the original werewolf and not Jack, as I'd always thought).  When a company called Luna Flix began showing open air films at Stanwick Lakes, my friend David & I jumped at the chance to go and see this, the evening of the showing coinciding with a full moon, which was terrific.  The film looked gorgeous, it was great to see it under the stars and on a big screen and the whole experience was great fun (I wrote about it here).

I could also discuss the Live & Let Die/The Spy Who Loved Me double-bill my Dad took me to see, in 1978 - the first Bond films I’d ever seen at the cinema (but I already did, in-depth, at this blog post).


So what are your memorable moments?

If You Think Reading Is Boring...

Regular readers of the blog will know I've been writing my own stories since I was eight, but reading for longer than that.  I take reading seriously, I take book collecting seriously and I'm a real advocate for people losing themselves in a book.  And since it's World Book Day on Thursday, what better time to start than now?

I love the tactile nature of books (I've still not converted to Kindle yet), I love the smell of books, I love the delight of finding a new bookshop and losing myself amongst the shelves (especially 2nd hand ones).  In these current times, I'm really missing that.

I love the delight of finding a new author to enjoy, I love the thrill of starting a new book and falling in love with the style and the characters and the flow of the language and I love the sense of satisfaction - mixed with a certain sense of loss - when you close the book for the last time and put it on your lap and rub the cover and want to say "thanks, mate, I enjoyed that".

The book can be anything you want and you don't have to spend a lot of money on a glossy hardback, or read a certain title just because it's at the top of the charts.  Outside of lockdowns, go to the library (if you have any left near you) or buy a paperback, or download an ebook, or go into a second hand or charity shop (when you can) and pick up something for 20p.  It doesn't matter how you do it, it doesn't matter what you read, just pick something up and open the cover and start.

Dude, in 2014, reading his latest Coronet Snoopy collection and me, in a B&B in Bridlington in 1988, reading my latest horror anthology purchase

And here's an icon of our times, who enjoyed reading...

Halloween Horrors (Painted Movie Posters)

It's Halloween, when all the ghosts and ghouls come calling (usually for chocolate), when the evenings are dark and the air smells of woodsmoke and the thoughts of us all turn to the idea of watching or reading something scary and creepy.

For my fifth Halloween post (following paperback covers, Top Trumps, VHS cover art and behind the scenes special effects shots), I've decided this time to go with something else I love, namely painted movie posters.  Looking at some of these again reminds me of being a young horror film fan in the late 70s and early 80s (when BBC2 began showing Universal horrors in the early evening), seeing gaudily gorgeous posters for films I wouldn't get to see for quite some time (and which, sometimes, didn't live up to my imagining of what they'd be).

So with all that in mind, enjoy this Halloween treat of posters that (very occasionally) promise more than they deliver...

1959

Produced by Gene Corman, this is the perfect horror film poster (something the Corman team did very well indeed).  I really want to see this, even though I know the monsters won't look anywhere near as convincing as they do here (which isn't saying a lot, I realise).

1963

I first read about this in Stephen King's Danse Macabre and couldn't wait to see it, though by the time I eventually did (late one night on BBC2, if I remember correctly), I was waiting for King's suggested last line.  He wrote that there was a legend of a lost ending, where Xavier - having plucked his eyes from their sockets - shouts "I can still see!"  Unfortunately, it's just a terrific rumour - Roger Corman said, in interview, that the scene was discussed but never filmed.

1965

There's so much to love about this film, it makes for perfect Halloween viewing.  An anthology film (an Amicus speciality), this features "Werewolf" with Neil McCallum, "Creeping Vine" with Alan Freeman (which is properly creepy, though it'd sound silly if I explained it), "Voodoo" with Roy Castle and his trumpet, "The Disembodied Hand" with Christopher Lee and Michael Gough lending real weight and "Vampire" with Donald Sutherland (and a cracking ending).  Peter Cushing plays Dr. Shreck in the framing story.

1970

A so-so film (it feels very long) but a great Arnaldo Putzu poster

1971

A brilliant poster from Vic Fair which does so much without really doing a great deal.  How could you not want to see the film are seeing this?

1972

Swinging Dracula on the Kings Road (with added Caroline Munro gorgeousness).

1973

Another terrific Amicus anthology film, well served by an Arnaldo Putzu poster.  This features "Midnight Mess", a creepy vampire story (with some great in-camera effects) with Daniel and Anna Massey, "The Neat Job" with Terry-Thomas, "This Trick'll Kill You" with Curt Jurgens, "Bargain In Death" with Michael Craig (and, in a nice touch, Robin Nedwell and Geoffrey Davies as two trainee doctors - they'd appeared together in "Doctor In The House", an ITV sitcom) and "Drawn And Quartered", with Tom Baker and Denholm Elliot (as well as Terence Alexander, who gets a bigger head on the poster) and some great views of early 70s London.  The framing device sees five strangers boarding a descending lift in a modern London office block.

1976

We can't be sure what H. G. Wells would have thought of this but surely, bearing in mind all the animals they could have chosen for the poster, was a giant chicken really the best one?

1977

Also known as "Shocklines" (the title I first saw it under, as a VIPCO release), I was first aware of it when I saw an advert in Starburst magazine.  The film itself is slow and creepy but those underwater nazis are as effective as the poster art makes them out to be.

1978

A cracking little horror film (you'd be better off with this than the remake), Joe Dante is on top form with a John Sayles script, make-up effects by Rob Bottin and piranha effects by Phil Tippett, amongst others.

1981

Unnerving, dark, claustrophobic and frightening, this is an excellent film (which I wrote about, in detail, here) that was unfairly classed as a Video Nasty for while.  Best seen knowing very little about it, you're wrong-footed from the start and all the way through.  Great stuff.

1981

There's never a great deal of subtlety in a Lucio Fulci film but they're all the more fun for that.  I first saw this on a VIPCO tape (and if you remember that label and their claims, then you'll understand why I thought it was a confusing mess), re-watched it on another label and liked it a great deal more.

1981

A wonderful Graham Humphreys poster for a funny little film that was, sadly, a bit out of step with the times for when it was released (though it did get a Look-In cover).

1987

Graham Humphreys again, giving us some of the highlights from Sam Raimi's bizarre and very funny sequel.

1987

A clever and fairly subtle poster for a darkly intense and unsettling modern vampire tale, long before those creatures of the night got all spangly and sparkling.  I love the film (especially the uncomfortable sequence in the bar when you suddenly realise that everyone's in trouble) and I think this poster serves it well.


Happy Halloween!

Visions Of Ruin is out now!

I'm pleased to announce that my horror novella, Visions Of Ruin, was published on March 30th by NewCon Press.

A week in a seedy caravan at 'The Good Times Holiday Park' is not exactly the holiday sixteen-year-old Sam has been dreaming of, but he knows his mum is struggling and doing the best she can. At least he meets someone his own age to hang out with – Polly – but neither of them is prepared for the strangeness that ensues. 

Beautifully paced and full of deft touches that bring the 1980s setting to life, Visions of Ruin is set during a rainy weekend at a caravan park on the edge of rundown seaside town. 

Me, on a Surrey bike, just outside Holimarine Corton, summer 1986.
Picture by Nick Duncan, who shared a lot of seaside adventures with me back then.

Having spent the last four years writing three mainstream thriller novels (the first two of which, DON'T GO BACK and

ONLY WATCHING YOU, have now been published by The Book Folks), I've only dipped a toe back into horror when people have asked for short stories.  But the genre is in my blood and when Ian Whates asked if I'd like to write a novella for him, I jumped at the chance - I like and respect him a lot and I'm proud to be associated with NewCon Press.

I started writing this just after I finished DON'T GO BACK and the idea took a little while to come together until I realised I could combine two of my apparent obsessions - teenagers in the 80s and a rundown east coast British seaside resort. Once that had clicked in my head I was off and running and the writing process itself (as well as drawing several maps of the caravan park central to the story) was hugely enjoyable and brought back a lot of good memories of holidays in the 80s.

The book is available as ebook and paperback editions and there's also a 60 copy Limited Edition  hardback which I thoroughly enjoyed signing the book plates for.

pictures by Dude

Being published by two companies has meant a bit of a "it's like buses" situation at the moment with my writing but I was really happy to see the early response to this and was thrilled when it hit Number 1 in the Hot New Releases (Teen & YA Ghost Stories) Amazon chart.

Amazon - 31/3/22

When he announced it in the NewCon Press newsletter, Ian wrote: "I am delighted to welcome Mark West back to NewCon Press' publishing schedule. Mark's short fiction has appeared in several of our anthologies over the years, including Ten Tall Tales and Hauntings, but this time he contributes a longer piece, Visions of Ruin, which will be the 9th entry in our NP Novella series. I rate this as Mark's most accomplished work to date, and was bowled over by it on first reading."

“A taut ghost story that transported me back to the 80s, with plenty to intrigue and unsettle along the way. A pleasure to read, with a terrifically neat ending.” 

– Alison Littlewood

Visions Of Ruin can be ordered directly from the NewCon Press website here.

£3.99 (ebook)

£9.99 (Paperback)

£19.99 (Signed Hardback, LTD ED)

The book is also available on Amazon at this Universal Link

Thanks to Ian Whates for both asking for and then enjoying the story enough to want to publish it, Nick Duncan for sharing all those adventures with me on the east coast in the 80s, Teika Marija Smits who helped push me to start, Alison Littlewood for her kind words and, as always, David Roberts & Pippa for the Friday Night Walks and the mammoth plotting sessions. 

Writing News!

I have some exciting writing news that, to be perfectly honest, I'm chuffed to bits with.  As of last week, when I signed the contract, I became a writer for The Book Folks.

Although the bulk of my published work is horror, I got some great feedback on my novellas Drive and Polly, both of which were dark thrillers.  To that end, as long-time readers of the blog will know, I've spent the last few years working on mainstream thriller novels and going through every writers nightmare of submission and rejection (and rejection, trust me, absolutely does not get any easier whether it's the first, the tenth or the fiftieth).

But now my books have a home and I couldn't be happier.

JENNY WAS A FRIEND OF MINE will be published in early 2022.  Here's the tag-line I put together as part of the submission package.

Forced to confront a dark secret she’s spent fifteen years trying to bury, Beth discovers that sometimes, the past is murder.

Set in Seagrave, a British seaside town that feels very much like Great Yarmouth and is, indeed, just down the coast from Lowestoft, the novel is told in two timelines and was great fun to write.  I started it just before the pandemic and it (the story and the town) became a lovely place for me to visit, to get away from reality for a while and ended up at 208k words in first draft (the fourth draft, which Erik at The Book Folks accepted, was 95k words).  Plotted out with my good friend David during a walk one Friday evening, it took a few twists and turns in its progress from idea to finished tale and features tension and suspense, some scary parts, some funny bits and a few sad moments too.  I'm really proud of it and very pleased it will start my career with The Book Folks.

JENNY will be followed by:

HANGMAN

HUNTED

and a fourth novel, which isn't even planned yet.  

A huge thanks to everyone who has helped me get to this point, who's either supported me, listened to me (like poor Dude, who endured countless lockdown walks over the fields, listening patiently as I worked through ideas for JENNY and gave me a few of his own), offered advice or read my stuff and liked it enough to tell me.  And, of course, David for those brainstorming sessions and the Friday Night Walks with Pippa.

Once I have more details on the books and their publication dates, I'll let you know all about them.

900th blog post!

Blimey, welcome to my 900th post!  After deciding to stick to a regular posting schedule (every Monday), I've thoroughly enjoyed working on the blog (especially in the depths of the pandemic) and, as ever, I'm surprised at how much I've managed to fit in since the last milestone catch up.

Since the 800th post (back in July 2019), life has been a bit weird (to say the least), but the blog's been consistent and something very nice for me to get lost into.  In that time, I've had two short stories published, Mr Stix came out as an e-book and I self-published my novella The Exercise (which became, briefly, the No.1 Amazon Hot New Release!).  I also wrote another thriller novel (the previous two didn't attract agency interest, sadly) and remembered my first time in print. 

I went to Edge-Lit 8 and reminisced about FantasyCon, since all other cons were disrupted by covid and, bloody hell, I've really missed them), The Crusty Exterior revisited horror firsts (on video) and celebrated its 5 Year Anniversary, I got to interview Sue Moorcroft at Rothwell Library and I celebrated my creative years in 2019 and 2020 (along with the 'novels' teenaged me wrote).  I also presented two sets of the Westies (in 2019 and 2020).

On the blog, I've written some book reviews, some behind-the-scenes essays (on movie miniatures and matte paintings), had fun researching some retrospectives (on The Six Million Dollar Man, Looking For Rachel Wallace, Skeleton Crew, Will You, by Hazel O'Connor, Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, For Your Eyes Only at 40, Raiders Of The Lost Ark at 40), carried out some Q&A's (with Gary McMahon, Sue Moorcroft, Peter Mark May & Richard Farren Barber, CC Adams, Priya Sharma, Penny Jones, Dan Howarth, Sue again (for Under The Italian Sun)), discovered an obscure gem, 1978's brilliant The Silent Partner and checked out the real-life locations of my novella The Mill.

I caught up with some Three Investigators book reviews, shared a love of novelisations (with The Professionals, The A-Team, The Six Million Dollar Man and Dead & Buried and looked at another Old School Horror (the cracking Death Tour), as well as highlighting Halloween Top Trumps.

I've written some Nostalgic pieces (on posters magazines in 2019 and 2020, the joy of Christmas Annuals in 2019 and 2020, the Usborne Book Of Ghosts, The Empire Strikes Back Letraset, Summer Specials in 2020 and 2021, Starburst magazine, More Comic & Magazine ads (in 2020 and in 2021), Mr Benn, Fangoria magazine) and wrote about the INXS singles Burn For You, Devil Inside, Suicide Blonde and Just Keep Walking, for their various anniversaries as well as the band's 1991 Summer XS gig at Wembley (the first time I saw them).  I also celebrated 5 years of the King For A Year project and continued the Ten Favourite Covers thread (with some Hitchock anthologies, More Childhood Terrors, The Golden Age of 2000AD and The Three Investigators).  I enjoyed some cover art from Bullet comic, Look-In and 70s British comics (in 2020 and 2021) and also celebrated The Art Of... Bob Larkin and Bryan Bysouth.

In addition, I celebrated being 5 years on from my heart attack and Dude turning 15, walked with The Black Hand Gang, watched INXS on the big screen, discovered the Tresham Dovecote with Dude, remembered Running The World 35 years ago, told a real-life Portugese ghost story and remembered the joy of Photo Stories.

The past two years have been an odd time, with more than half of it spent in various forms of lockdown and I've really missed the interaction of friends and family.  Stay safe and healthy and here's looking forward to post 1000.

Photo-stories and me...

When I was a kid, a major ambition of mine was to make a feature film.  Regular readers will know I'm endlessly fascinated by the behind-the-scenes process on films (especially miniatures and matte paintings) and that started in my childhood, fed by watching Clapperboard and reading Look-In.  I particularly loved it when Mum & Dad let me stay up to watch Film (whatever year it was) with dear old Barry Norman.

Growing up through the 70s and 80s, video cameras were a pipe-dream and cine cameras were far more expensive than my family could afford so you can perhaps understand why this became a kind of Holy Grail for me. To try and create something visual, I ended up making various "photo-stories", which satisfied me for a while.

(for those who don't know, "photo-stories" were a staple of some boys and girls comics back in the day, replacing hand-drawn panels in a comic strip of posed stills.  Girls comics used them for problem pages, whilst I remember Eagle comic featuring a strip called Doomlord, amongst others.  There were also photo-novels - novelisations using film stills rather than prose - but the less said about them, probably the better).

What reminded me of all this was discovering some photographs over the weekend, of one such 'strip' I wrote.

The above picture was taken in 1981 and features my Dad, me and my school friend Geoff Burbidge. We were making a story about a bounty hunter (or in effect, a very close homage to a strip called Man Tracker from The Crunch comic, which I wrote about here).  I also used this image as the cover of a novel (or, as it'd be deemed now, a long-ish short story) I wrote in 1982 called Hadley Hall Comprehensive (and which I blogged about here).

Left - Nick walks away as Geoff (in my Dad's old trilby) threatens me.  Look at those clothes - Harrington jackets, jeans and trainers!  What a look!
Right - Nick's brother Chris (I recruited absolutely anyone who showed the slightest expression of interest!) takes aim at Nick and Geoff.  Wonderfully, this shot inadvertently captured history.  The billboard and waste-ground Chris & I were standing on is long gone, the new library in its place.  The private house beyond the awning is now a Tesco Express store.

I never gained the means to make films of my own and so I never got the chance to enter the Clapperboard Young Filmmakers competition.  I did eventually make some films on VHS, with a school friend called Matt Ratcliff, but that was much later in the 80s and into the early 90s and all of them were zero-budget horror flicks.  I'll tell you about them one day.

Now, of course, everyone with a smartphone has the technology to make films but my focus has shifted to writing only (though some of my ideas do start off as me seeing them in filmic terms).  Years back, however, Dude & I made several LEGO stop-motion epics and we both had a great deal of fun with that.

I wonder how things would have turned out if I'd had the technology at my disposal then that I do now?

Nostalgic For My Childhood - Mr Benn at 50

David John McKee was born (on 2nd January 1935) and brought up in Tavistock, South Devon.  He studied at the Plymouth College of Art and, after he left, supported himself by painting as well as selling one-off cartoons to the national press.  His first book, Two Can Toucan, was published by Abelard-Schuman in 1964.

He was approached in 1970 by the BBC who wanted him to produce something for the Watch With Mother strand of programming.  He told The Guardian in 2017, “I showed them the first Mr Benn book I’d written and they requested 13 stories. When they asked how it would be animated, I just said: “I’ll ask somebody.” It was complete innocence.”

The animation style, in collaboration with Ian Lawless, helps add to the series charm in that it relies on simple camera moves - pans and zooms - across detailed McKee drawings, though the characters do ‘walk’ after a fashion.

Festive Road, artwork by David McKee

Mr Benn lives at 52 Festive Road, which McKee based on his own street in Putney.  “I changed Festing Road to Festive Road, because Festing sounded too much like festering,” he told The Guardian.  The fancy-dress shop, key to Mr Benn’s adventures, was “based on a dusty junk shop in Plymouth. I went into it once, to ask about something in the window, and the owner really did appear ‘as if by magic’, as the narrator in the series says.”

The book and television versions of Mr Benn share the same format.  Always dressed the same, in a black suit and bowler hat, Mr Benn visits a fancy-dress costume shop where the fez-wearing shopkeeper suggests he try on a particular outfit (usually linked to something that happens early in the story, such as a game children are playing in the street).  Mr Benn leaves the shop through a magic door at the back of the changing room and has an adventure, tied in to whatever costume he’s wearing, before the shopkeeper reappears to lead him back to the changing room.  In a clever move, although Mr Benn has returned to his normal life, he has a small souvenir from the adventure.

“I wanted Mr Benn to be Mr Everybody. Bowler hats were more common in the early 1970s. There was a respectability to them, plus Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy are favourites of mine,” McKee told The Guardian.  “I was heavily influenced by fables, because of their apparent simplicity. I like stories with a moral, that have a reason for being there – I don’t like a character to wake up and realise it was all a dream. That’s why I introduced the souvenir that Mr Benn always takes back with him, to say that it really did happen.”

The music for the series was composed by Duncan Lamont (using the pseudonym Don Warren) while Ray Brooks provided the narration (and for a long time, whenever I saw him act, as soon as he spoke I just saw Mr Benn).  “Grandmas come up to me and say their grandchildren are fed up with today’s cartoons,” he told The Guardian, “but they love the simplicity of Mr Benn, the fact that he’s very moral, always sorting out people’s problems – including dragons.”

Each episode, directed by Pat Kirby and made by Zephyr Films, lasted for 15 minutes.  The first six episodes, starting with The Red Knight, were broadcast on Thursday afternoons on BBC1 at 1.30pm from 25th February to 1st April 1971.  The last seven were shown on Friday afternoons on BBC1 at 1:30pm from 21 January to 31 March 1972.  The series was then repeated, twice a year, for the next twenty-one years.

The episodes were The Red Knight, Hunter, Clown, Balloonist, Wizard, Spaceman (my favourite), Cook, Caveman, Zoo Keeper, Diver, Cowboy, Aladdin and Pirate.  A 14th episode called Gladiator, based on McKee’s 2001 book Mr Benn - Gladiator, was broadcast in January 2005 on the Noggin channel.

In its 2001 poll for their 100 Greatest Kids TV shows, Channel 4 ranked it number six.

“The BBC dropped [the Watch With Mother name] later,” McKee told The Guardian, “but for me it was important: it made you conscious the audience wasn’t just children.”

David McKee went on to make films for Save The Children and wrote more books then, in 1980, co-created King Rollo.  The TV series of the same name was written by him, with narration from Ray Brooks and music by Duncan Lamont and produced by King Rollo Films, which McKee co-owned.  The company also achieved success with other series including Eric Hill's Spot the Dog, Lucy Cousins' Maisy and Tony Ross' Towser as well as the animated stories within the Fimbles programme.  McKee also wrote Not Now Bernard (which I read to Dude as a bedtime book when he was small but found it really sad) and created and wrote the Elmer The Patchwork Elephant series of books.


Happy birthday, Mr Benn and thanks for all those childhood adventures!

sources:
The Guardian: How We Made Mr Benn 
The Guardian: Mr Benn Back To Life
Wikipedia

The Tresham dovecote

This year, for our family holiday, we'd planned to go to Spain but the pandemic put paid to that so I spent my fortnight off work at home, doing plenty of writing and going out for walking expeditions with the family.

Dude and the dovecote

One day, I had to go to Corby Diagnostic for a blood-test and Dude came along to keep me company.  As payback for him, we went on a Pokemon hunt around the town and nearby Geddington and then, on the way home, he found a Pokemon gym in the middle of nowhere.  Careful navigation got us to the very small village of Newton and further investigation led us to the Newton Field Centre, set into a church quite - oddly enough - some way from the houses.  I suggested to Dude there might be a spooky reason for this and we riffed some ideas for horror stories before wandering up the public footpath.

Off to the left was a dovecote, the source of the Pokemon gym and a building I didn't even realise was there.  Intrigued, we tramped across the field, found a very small door and - not quite knowing what to expect - went inside.  It was apparently built with space for 3,600 broods and it was a peculiar sensation, looking up and up and seeing all these holes around the wide open central space. 

"The dovecote was built c.1580 from roughly dressed course stone with very little mortar.  Its size is most unusual - fifty-three feet nine, by twenty-three feet seven, with the height to the eaves twenty feet and to the roof-ridge about thirty-five.  Now, more than four centuries later, it, the church and fishponds are all that remain of the Tresham family mansion, a place where it is said the Gunpowder Plot meetings were held."
information from the VADs J L Carr page

Dude through the small doorway

I'm lucky enough to live in an area rich in history - especially that of the Tresham family, who designed Rothwell's old Market Square building and the wonderful Triangular Lodge, as well as being prime conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot - and finding places like this really fires up the creative part of my brain.  This location will absolutely feature in my writing at some point, both the interior and the exterior and a friend pointed out there are footpaths that can get you from Kettering to the dovecote and back, so I'll be heading there again for more research and photographs.

Google maps screengrab shows the distance of the church from the houses and how big the Tresham estate must have been.

If you have a dovecote near you, I'd definitely go and check it out - who knows, it might inspire some stories for you too!

The Real Life Mill

In 2011, Greyhart Press published my novelette The Mill as a stand-alone title.  It was originally published in the acclaimed Pendragon Press anthology We Fade To Grey in 2008, edited by Gary McMahon (who, in asking for it, succeeded in pulling me out of a writers block that had consumed me for two years).  A story about grief, guilt and coughing ghosts, Mark Morris in his introduction called it "one of the most moving pieces of writing I have read in a long time".

Almost everything about The Mill has a touch of autobiography, not least the key location and The Folly, as we called it, can be found at the end of Shotwell Mill Lane in Rothwell,  From above (thanks Google), it looks like a very small wooded area but within it are the ruins of the old mill.  When I was growing up, in the 70s and 80s, we often played down there (war games worked particularly well, with the old cellars and walls) and it wouldn't be unusual, during the summer holidays, to head down with your mates and discover four or five other groups of kids there.

The River Ise separates Rothwell and Desborough and The Folly is shown in the centre of the photograph

In 2012 (you can see the post here), I explored the site with Dude and found it extremely overgrown and difficult to navigate - it obviously wasn't used as a playground any more.

Dude, in 2012, standing in front of the right hand cellar

During the lockdown period, two things happened.  My wife and I, trying to find long walks in a relatively small town, followed an old footpath map and discovered several places I didn't even know existed, one of which led us to walk back by The Folly.  It was a lovely day, no-one was about and so I took the chance to grab a few photographs.

The same cellar Dude is standing in front of in the other photo - so those trees have sprouted well in the past 8 years...

Further around from the cellars, I wonder what the grave-shaped opening is for?

If you've read the story, I hope you found the Mill itself to be quite a scary place.  I've never been to the real location in the dark but, with its well out of the way location and the whispering trees, I can imagine it's quite eerie.  When I was researching the idea, in an attempt to lend as much truth to the descriptions as I could, I looked everywhere to try and find a photograph of the original mill.  I failed and so made the whole thing up (or, I suppose, did what a writer is supposed to do).  Then, quite by chance, my mum spotted a picture (she remembers the building before it was demolished) someone had posted on a Rothwell Facebook page.

This originally appeared in the Kettering Evening Telegraph in December 1939 and, to my delight, Shotwell Mill looks as creepy as I've always hoped it would.  What do you think?

Kettering Evening Telegraph, 22nd December 1939

Sometimes, it appears, real-life can be even more creepy than a horror story...

You can find more details about The Mill here