An 80s Newspaper Clipping

A few weeks ago, I was flicking through my copy of Skeleton Crew and found this newspaper clipping.  I can only assume I ripped it out of the Kettering Evening Telegraph (dated 20th September 1986 - 36 years ago!) to take into work so my friends & I could plan what we were going to see at the cinema.  We went a lot in those days.

Just look at that terrific selection of films!    While Cobra was the first 18 certificate I got into (as I wrote about here, though according to my diary I saw it in Corby), I managed to see The Evil Dead, Rocky IV and Karate Kid 2 at one of the venues shown, at those astonishing prices (I remember a double-bill would cost £2.50 except, I presume, on Mondays and Thursdays).

I loved these places and they held a lot of history for me.  Dad took me to see my first James Bond film at Corby cinema (as I wrote about here), I saw a lot of great films at Kettering (Dad took me and Claire to Star Wars, Nick & I saw Raiders Of The Lost Ark, which I wrote about in What Gets Left Behind, Dad & I saw ET, the list goes on) and when Bentley’s opened it quickly became a favourite.

Attendance must have been falling (probably not helped by the fleapit nature of these cinemas, well past their prime) but the independents were clearly knackered and on their last legs when the multiplexes arrived and did away with them.  Sixfields in Northampton dealt the first blow and the Odeon in Kettering finished the job.  I'm not a big fan of the multiplex (I still go to them, obviously) because to me they feel like heartless, sterile places, more interested in selling food and drinks than anything else.  Yes, Kettering Ohio had holes in the ceiling and seats were missing and it was often better to sit down in the dark so you couldn’t see the state of your seat, but it felt real, like a proper cinema, where everyone there cared about the films.

On the bright side, independent cinemas have made something of a comeback and we often go to the Northampton Filmhouse (which was originally called the Errol Flynn), where Jon & I saw a brace of Hitchcock, Alison & I watched the INXS Live Baby Live film and I took Dad to see Dunkirk where the soundtrack almost rattled the speakers off the wall - it's small and comfortable, well run and shows an eclectic range of films.

 And yes, I know I sound like a dinosaur.

Another clipping I kept, this one from 1982
If we fancied a change, we'd sometimes go to the ABC Northampton (now a Jesus Army Centre) or the Palace Wellingborough (now a pub called The Cutting Room).  Later, when we had our own cars, we'd go to the midnight movie at The Point in Milton Keynes (the only multiplex I ever had any fondness for, it now stands by the MK shopping centre looking knackered and forlorn).

I took this picture in 2005, knowing that the building
would eventually be knocked down and wanting to
have a record of it...

Kettering Ohio started life as the Savoy Cinema, opened as a dual purpose cinema and theatre on 21st May 1938 with Spencer Tracey in The Big City plus a variety show on stage. It was built over the remains of the Coliseum Theatre which had opened in 1910 but burned down in 1937.

The Savoy had 1,150 seats in the stalls and circle as well as a full stage (the Northampton Repertory Company performed regular seasons between 1949 and 1951) and was taken over by Clifton Cinemas on 25th August 1944.  In 1968 the circle was split off to make a smaller (485 seat) cinema called the Studio, with a bingo hall taking over the stalls and stage area.  In 1973 the screen was split into two (known as Studio 1 & 2, seating 160 and 140 respectively).  After briefly closing in 1986, it re-opened as the independent Ohio and finally closed in 1997 when the Odeon opened.

The Ohio is a key location in my novel In The Rain With The Dead (Magellan, the baddie, makes his base there) and I wrote about the cinema as it was being demolished in 2014.



Bentley’s of Burton Latimer was originally The Electric Palace, which opened in August 1914 with an auditorium that seated 500.  It became a Watts Cinema in 1938 but closed in 1960.  In 1985, Ashley Wyatt bought the building, renovated it and opened Bentley’s as a 182-seat cinema in January 1986 though it closed the following year.  It was re-opened in 1994 by Brian McFarlane (who owned the Ohio) but closed soon after.  The venue is now an Italian restaurant.

You can just see the wording "cinema" on the back of the auditoriums.
Photograph from the late 80s.

The Forum Cinema opened on 7th April 1973 as a Jerry Lewis Cinema (part of the US based Network Cinema Corporation), featuring two screens (each seating 325) as part of a new shopping centre being built in Corby.  It was almost immediately bought out by the Walker chain, re-named Oscar cinema and then, in 1980, Focus cinema before Ashley Wyatt took it over in September 1983 and renamed it Forum Cinema.  The number one screen was eventually twinned, with number two becoming a laser quest games centre and the cinema closed (to become an over-25’s nightclub called Talkies) on 24th September 1992.  The Forum Cinema site was demolished in the summer of 2005 when the shopping centre was rebuilt.

I like to think I sound like a wistfully melancholic dinosaur now...

sources:
Cinematreasures.org - Savoy, Kettering
Cinematreasures.org - Forum, Corby
Cinematreasures.org - Bentleys, Burton Latimer

Cinema Listing (blast from the past)

A few weeks ago, while browsing through my copy of Skeleton Crew (for a forthcoming blog post), I found this.  I can only assume I’d ripped it out of the Kettering Evening Telegraph (dated 20th September 1986) to take into work so my friends & I could plan what we were going to see at the cinema.  We went a lot in those days.

I posted this on Facebook where it got a wonderful reaction (Phil Sloman wrote “what a time to have lived” while Gary McMahon wrote “Ah… those were the days”).  The slate of films seems like a terrific cross-section (Cobra was the first 18 certificate I got into (as I wrote about here, though according to my diary I saw it in Corby) and I saw The Evil Dead, Rocky IV and Karate Kid 2 all at one of the venues shown), the prices are astonishing (I remember a double-bill would cost £2.50 except, I presume, on Mondays and Thursdays) and local friends shared memories of specific venues.

I loved these places and they held a lot of history for me.  Dad took me to see my first James Bond film at Corby cinema (as I wrote about here), I saw a lot of great films at Kettering (Dad took me and Claire to Star Wars, Nick & I saw Raiders Of The Lost Ark, which I wrote about in What Gets Left Behind, Dad & I saw ET, the list goes on) and when Bentley’s opened it quickly became a favourite.

Attendance must have been falling (probably not helped by the fleapit nature) but the independents were clearly knackered and on their last legs when the multiplexes arrived and did away with them.  Sixfields in Northampton dealt the first blow and the Odeon in Kettering finished the job.  I've never been a big fan of the multiplex, I’ll still go obviously but to me they're sterile places, more interested in selling food and drinks than anything else.  Yes, Kettering Ohio had holes in the ceiling and seats were missing and it was often better to sit down in the dark so you couldn’t see the state of your seat, but it felt real, like a proper cinema, where everyone there cared about the films.

What a time to have lived indeed...

On the bright side, independent cinemas now seem to be making a comeback and we often go to the Errol Flynn in Northampton (Jon & I saw a brace of Hitchcock there, Alison & I watched La La Land and I took Dad to see Dunkirk where the soundtrack almost rattled the speakers off the wall) which is small and comfortable, well run and shows an eclectic range of films.

 And yes, I know I sound like a dinosaur.

Another clipping I kept, this one from 1982
If we fancied a change, we'd sometimes go to the ABC Northampton (now a Jesus Army Centre) or the Palace Wellingborough (now a pub called The Cutting Room).  Later, when we had our own cars, we'd go to the midnight movie at The Point in Milton Keynes (the only multiplex I ever had any fondness for, it now stands by the MK shopping centre looking knackered and forlorn).

I took this picture in 2005, knowing that the building
would eventually be knocked down and wanting to
have a record of it...

Kettering Ohio started life as the Savoy Cinema, opened as a dual purpose cinema and theatre on 21st May 1938 with Spencer Tracey in The Big City plus a variety show on stage. It was built over the remains of the Coliseum Theatre which had opened in 1910 but burned down in 1937.

The Savoy had 1,150 seats in the stalls and circle as well as a full stage (the Northampton Repertory Company performed regular seasons between 1949 and 1951) and was taken over by Clifton Cinemas on 25th August 1944.  In 1968 the circle was split off to make a smaller (485 seat) cinema called the Studio, with a bingo hall taking over the stalls and stage area.  In 1973 the screen was split into two (known as Studio 1 & 2, seating 160 and 140 respectively).  After briefly closing in 1986, it re-opened as the independent Ohio and finally closed in 1997 when the Odeon opened.

The Ohio is a key location in my novel In The Rain With The Dead (Magellan, the baddie, makes his base there) and I wrote about the cinema as it was being demolished in 2014.



Bentley’s of Burton Latimer was originally The Electric Palace, which opened in August 1914 with an auditorium that seated 500.  It became a Watts Cinema in 1938 but closed in 1960.  In 1985, Ashley Wyatt bought the building, renovated it and opened Bentley’s as a 182-seat cinema in January 1986 though it closed the following year.  It was re-opened in 1994 by Brian McFarlane (who owned the Ohio) but closed soon after.  The venue is now an Italian restaurant.

You can just see the wording "cinema" on the back of the auditoriums.
Photograph from the late 80s.

The Forum Cinema opened on 7th April 1973 as a Jerry Lewis Cinema (part of the US based Network Cinema Corporation), featuring two screens (each seating 325) as part of a new shopping centre being built in Corby.  It was almost immediately bought out by the Walker chain, re-named Oscar cinema and then, in 1980, Focus cinema before Ashley Wyatt took it over in September 1983 and renamed it Forum Cinema.  The number one screen was eventually twinned, with number two becoming a laser quest games centre and the cinema closed (to become an over-25’s nightclub called Talkies) on 24th September 1992.  The Forum Cinema site was demolished in the summer of 2005 when the shopping centre was rebuilt.

I like to think I sound like a wistfully melancholic dinosaur now...

sources:
Cinematreasures.org - Savoy, Kettering
Cinematreasures.org - Forum, Corby
Cinematreasures.org - Bentleys, Burton Latimer

Goodbye Ohio (another piece of history goes...)

When I was growing up, in the 70s and 80s, most towns had a cinema and multiplexes hadn’t yet invaded (the first one I knew of was The Point, in Milton Keynes, which I didn’t visit until the mid-80s).  Although I went to the cinema in Corby (my Dad took me to see my first James Bond double-bill there, as I wrote about here) and latterly Bentleys in Burton Latimer, my first port of call was The Savoy in Kettering, where I saw “Star Wars” amongst many, many others.  Owned by EMI from the 70s, it was relaunched - after a short closure - as the independent Ohio cinema in 1986.  This coincided with me and my friends learning to drive so we made plenty of visits there through to the end of the 80s and most films released in that period were watched in the glamorously named Studio 1 or Studio 2, sitting on seats that had seen better days and trying to ignore the large holes in the ceiling.  Yes it was a fleapit, yes it was a bare bones operation but I loved it - the projectionist was also the man who took your money (and occasionally served you for sweets and drinks too) - and when I started going out with Alison, we’d often go there for a double-bill (£3 each for both films) on a Saturday night.

The main entrance, 2005

Two angles on Russell Street, 2005

The cinema finally closed in 1997 when an Odeon Multiplex opened up on the outskirts of town, though the Sixfields Multiplex in Northampton had surely taken away a lot of custom - yes, they were more expensive but they were also new.  I thought they were soulless too but I’m maybe sometimes just a nostalgic fool.

The cinema remained empty and most of the glass in the windows was smashed, which I always found really sad whenever I walked by and more was vandalized over the years.  When someone dug out a hole in the wood panel covering the doors, I had a peek inside and the floor was strewn with litter and rubble.

In December 2000, I began writing my novel “In The Rain With The Dead” and needed a location for my baddie, a demon called Magellan, to hide out in, that was derelict and where he wouldn’t be disturbed.  It didn’t take long for me to think of the Ohio (the book is set in my fictional town of Gaffney) and so I used it - lock, stock and barrel - in the novel.  It first appears in the flashback section - ostensibly set in the 90s, but actually written as the 80s:

Bentleys Cinema, on Russell Street, had once been an Odeon and was built with art deco grandeur. Now, however, the ground floor had been converted into a bingo hall and the cinema was crammed into what had once been the upper tiers. It was lovingly called the ‘flea pit’ by its patrons, who were invariably teenagers and couples in their early twenties, that didn’t mind sitting in a cold auditorium, with a sound system that was around long before Dolby and seats that occasionally didn’t work.

Later, when Magellan moves in, I wrote (in early 2001) about what had been there and imagined what several years of dereliction had done to the place:

     Back then, the ticket booth was at the top of the stairs, the drinks fridge and popcorn machine next to it. At the end of the counter was an open area, with doors leading to the toilets and projection booth. In the open area were some easy chairs, a pool table and a tabletop version of Space Invaders. Above the chairs, windows looked out onto Russell Street.
     Now, with the smashed windows letting in the grey evening light, he surveyed the decaying, desolate foyer, far removed from its original splendour. The ticket booth and popcorn maker were covered with a sheet that had probably once been white but which was now a dusky brown and riddled with holes. The drinks fridge seemed to have been attacked with a bat, pieces lying over the counter top and across the floor. Half the chairs were gone, those remaining had had their cushions ripped out, stuffing and springs trailing onto the floor like silvery intestines. The pool table and Space Invaders machine had gone. The heavy drapes that had been sucked through the window were stained and mouldy.

I took some photographs of the exterior in 2005, when Christopher Teague at Pendragon Press published the book and it was a sorry sight.  Even though houses encroached it and weeds (and trees) sprouted from the walls, even as it looked sadder every year, it stood proud.  Last week, my friend Jon & I walked down Russell Street and I saw, to my great dismay, that the demolition had started.  It might have been a long time coming, but very soon Kettering is going to lose a building that so much of its youth enjoyed (for whatever reasons) and which features so prominently in their memories.

The demolition has started, 4th June 2014

Sadly, I can't find any images of the cinema when it was operational but several urban explorations have taken place since it closed and the results photographed and reported on here, here, here and here.  Apart from the inevitable decay that you'd expect, the site has also seen the handiwork of vandals and graffiti artists and seeing that lovely old place treated so shabbily is unpleasant.  This is Studio 2 (entry to the left of the picture).

photograph by 'infamous explorer', all rights reserved

So long, Ohio Cinema, I’m glad I knew you when you were operational, I’m so pleased that I was able to pay homage to you and whenever I talk about Gaffney, rest assured the cinema is ALWAYS on Russell Street.

The Next Big Thing

THE NEXT BIG THING is a chain of book and author recommendations. The way it works is this, one author tags up to five others, who then each tag five others until the Elder Gods are satisfied that we are all hard at work telling their stories and you're all hard at work reading them. 

Stephen Bacon tagged me on his blog and now it's my turn.

1) What is the working title of your next book?

It doesn’t really have one, though I’ve referred to it as “Never Tear Us Apart” a few times (I’m a big INXS fan).

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
As with most of my projects, it’s been rattling around in my head for years and was originally two completely separate stories before they started to entwine with each other.  It deals with a lot of things that I’ve been exploring over the past few years - an out-of-season British seaside town, grief, ghosts and a haunted place.  And love, always love.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Horror!

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I haven’t thought about it, to be honest.  I very rarely do, for me the lead characters are more often than not me and my friends.  Though Isabel Mundy, in Conjure, was definitely Monica Bellucci and Saskia, in The Mill, was Esther Hall.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A couple of lost, lonely people try to connect at an out-of-season seaside town and there’s a house that eats people.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I haven’t even started it yet, though I can say with a good degree of certainty that it won’t be self-published.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

See the answer to question six.  If I’m looking at a full-length novel, the first draft would probably be written anywhere between six months and a year.  Hopefully quicker.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

There isn’t anything in particular that I’m using as a touchstone for this, to be honest, though that might change once I start writing.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

It was a desire to write another novel, to be honest.  I started publishing in the small press in 1999 and worked my way up from short stories to a novel (In The Rain With TheDead) and a short novel (Conjure) and then I hit a writers block that took me out of action for a couple of years.  Since then, I’ve been slowly getting back into things, publishing short stories and novelettes and working my way up to novellas (two are due from Pendragon Press next year).  The next logical step seemed to be another novel and I wanted to write something dark and personal and bleak and scary and now seemed as good a time as any.  I’ve stripped back the premise of my novelette The Mill and used the spine of that for this, plus added in a ghoulish landlord, a man who has ‘the gift’ and a house that’s always hungry.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

If you like haunted house stories, ghosts and frightening things, I would hope you’d like this.  If, like me, you have a thing about sad coastal towns, this could work for you and I hope the relationship angle would touch people too.

And now for the tagging... You can read their answers to the same questions on Wednesday 28th November.

Go for it, Andrew Murray, Neil Williams, Jay Eales, Steve Harris and David Price

Insight to "In The Rain With The Dead"

Dude & I went into Waterstones on Sunday and he picked up a copy of my book. He read the acknowledgements (where he gets a mention) then said “I can’t read this, it’s too long for me.”

“It’s too gory as well,” I said, “plus there’s a lot of swearing in it.”

He looked at me, open-mouthed, then said quietly, “You put swears in your story? Oh Dad, that’s naughty…”

In The Rain With The Dead

“In The Rain With The Dead” is now available as an eBook from Tim C Taylor’s Greyhart Press.

This is a revised, leaner version of the novel, which originally appeared from Pendragon Press in 2005 (an edition that is completely sold out now). “In The Rain With The Dead” features Jim and Nadia, once teenaged sweethearts, reunited now after a decade apart and Magellan, a demon who is desperate to make Nadia his own.

“A tale of lost love and gut-wrenching terror”.

If you choose to give it a chance - and I hope you do - I hope you enjoy it.

Pick it up from Amazon.co.uk here

"In The Rain With The Dead" in the Greyhart Press catalogue

An ambition achieved!

For years - literally decades - one of my major writing ambitions has been to wander into a bookshop and see one of my novels on the shelves.

Well, today it happened.

Kettering Waterstones. Bottom shelf, three copies of "In The Rain With The Dead".

Oh yes!

I'm writing!

I’ve just this minute sent off my finished short, for consideration in the NewCon press anthology and I’m basking in the glow that comes from having worked the story up, written it, got some critiques and completed three drafts, in a week. That’s the kind of speed I thought I’d left behind in the early noughties, so I’m taking it as a sign that joining the Northampton SF Writers Group was a great move on my part.

I’ve also been making other plans to keep myself up to speed and so, suddenly, I seem to have a whole plate full of things:

* I have my “collaboration that isn’t”, with a fellow writer I like and respect. I’m using the lost film idea I had a while back and I’m hoping to leap into that next week.

* I have some more artwork to complete for Pendragon Press, for a project that Chris Teague has just announced. He’s producing a PDF ‘sampler’, taken from the anthology “Tourniquet Heart”, which he edited and was released through Prime Books back in 2002. My story “Up For Anything” appeared in that and will also appear in the PDF, along with a host of other writers. I am producing little photo-montages for each tale.

* The zombie novel. Come on!

* A four-writer-thingy collection, with Simon Marshall-Jones, Adrian Chamberlain and Mark Deniz. We’re at an early stage with the project at the moment (Simon & I discussed it at the Terror Scribes gathering and Mark came on board this week) so there’s not much to tell, but it’ll be published next year, press to be announced. Could be interesting.

So there we go, all of a sudden, I’m a busy boy. And, following the comments from Mick Curtis about “In The Rain With The Dead” and my joy at producing a short in a week, my confidence is riding high!

Let’s go!

I'm chuffed!

Had an email today from the wonderful Mick Curtis, who's just read "In The Rain With The Dead". He wrote - and I quote - 'I loved it! I liked the characters so much that several times I was tempted to look at the end of the book to see if they’d be ok or not'.

This has really pleased me. Writers mostly work in a vacuum - you write the story, sell it (hopefully) and then, later on, it gets published and makes its own way into the world and you're not there to defend it but have to hope that it'll be okay. When someone takes the time to let you know what they thought - and, moreso, when they clearly liked the thing - well, that's just a wonderful feeling.

My writing schedule seems to be filling up now, between the short I'm currently revising, the lost film novella and another new project and kind words like those of Mick only make me feel more confident about what I'm doing.

Cheers, Mick!

Jamie

I got an email today, from a chap in Tasmania called Jamie Turner. He first got in touch with me around the time "In The Rain With The Dead" was published - he liked my stuff and wanted to wish me well. Every couple of years, we exchange emails and it's incredibly reassuring to know that somehow, the words that I bash out, actually do speak to someone who is - in this case - on the other side of the world.

Thanks again, Jamie - your support really does mean a lot. I hope you enjoy "Conjure".