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).
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...
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.
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.
Following the huge international success of their album Kick, INXS toured it extensively starting in August 1987 and running through to November 1988 (including five UK dates during June). Understandably burned out by the end, the band took a year off during which most members started musical side projects, before reconvening to record X, which was released in September 1990.
INXS, 1991 from left - Jon Farriss (drums/keyboards), Garry Gary Beers (bass), Tim Farriss (guitar), Michael Hutchence (vocals), Andrew Farriss (keyboards, guitar, harmonica), Kirk Pengilly (guitar, saxophone, vocals)
On the strength of Kick, the profile of the band had been steadily rising and it’s perhaps difficult now to remember just how big INXS were at that time. Kick peaked at number 2 in Australia, number 9 in the UK and number 3 in the US album charts and was certified Platinum in Australia (x7), the UK, the US and Switzerland, was a Gold record in France, Germany and Hong Kong and Diamond in Canada (a category Tim Farris later admitted he didn’t even know existed - it apparently represents sales of 1m). Total sales to date are approximately 12.8m copies.
X had a lot to live up to and opened well, reaching number 2 in the UK and number 5 in the US charts, racking up plenty of sales along the way - Platinum in Australia (x2), the US (x2) and the UK, hitting Gold in Germany and France. Combined with the X Tour, it managed to spend an aggregate of eight months on the UK chart, returning to the Top 40 in July 1991.
In 1988, Michael Hutchence met soap-opera star and singer Kylie Minogue and when they ran away together in 1989, it brought the band to a whole new audience and level of publicity. In 1991, INXS received a Grammy nomination for 'Best Rock Performance by a Group', whilst USA Today reported they were tied for second place as 'musical artists with the most videos played on MTV' (at the time, they had 37 different clips). At the 1991 Brit Awards in March, INXS won 'Best International Group' (having previously been nominated in 1989) and Hutchence won 'Best International Male'. They were also recognised as 'Best International Band' at the first Australian Music Awards.
The X Tour kicked off in October 1990 at the Mackay Entertainment Centre in North Queensland. It hit the UK on November 25th with two nights at London Docklands Arena, a four night run at Wembley Arena, four nights at Birmingham NEC (where Alison & I would see them in 1997 as part of the Elegantly Wasted Tour), one night each at SECC in Glasgow (should have been two but the first was cancelled by weather), Manchester GMEX, Brigton (The Brighton Centre) and Bournemouth (Bournemouth International Centre) before two nights at The Point Theatre in Dublin. The UK dates ended in January and, in all, the tour played to 1.2m fans through 80 cities over four continents.
After a successful ‘homecoming’ leg in Australia during April and May, INXS returned to Europe for a series of headlining festival shows from 28th June through to 16th July, the highpoint of which (according to most band members) was the 13th July sold-out show at Wembley Stadium.
So the stage was set, with Summer XS taking place six years to the day after Live Aid had been staged at Wembley Stadium, as INXS continued to enjoy rock giant status both in the UK and around the world. And I was there.
My now slightly sun-bleached ticket - look at that price!
Saturday 13th July 1991 was warm but overcast. I’d stayed up late the night before to watch the excellent Dogs In Space, which starred Michael Hutchence and was written & directed by Richard Lowenstein, who directed a lot of INXS videos from Burn For You onwards (his latest was Suicide Blonde, from the X album). I was quite excited, since my then-girlfriend Liz (who had seen INXS at one of their Wembley Arena gigs in late 1990) had talked me into going to see the show and raved about them - slightly older, she was a fan of long-standing. I knew of them, of course - I started going to nightclubs in 1986 so I was around as Kick broke out - and I bought X on vinyl a couple of weeks before the gig and really enjoyed it.
Me & Liz, 1991 - I wore that t-shirt a lot!
I picked up Liz and then her friends teenaged daughter (who took her friend), we piled into my Fiat Panda and took off down the M1, listening to an INXS mix-tape Liz had made. By the time we reached the North Circular, we were all singing along as the signs for Jellyfish, one of the supporting bands, started to appear. In fact, they were on pretty much every lamp-post we passed.
We parked in the multi-storey next to the stadium, crossed the bridge, found our gate and settled down as we waited to be let in. The girls were chatty, Liz & I talked and watched the world go by, we went on memorabilia buying sprees and ate our lunch. Finally the gates opened and we legged it - it was the first time I’d ever been to Wembley so of course I took the opportunity to run onto the (covered over pitch) and pretend I was representing England. As did so many other blokes my age it became silly.
The four of us made our way towards the front and found some seats to the left of the stage, close enough that we could see people up there (if not clearly), though the huge video monitors would also come in handy as the day wore on. The festival feel was maintained by having a whole host of bands on the programme which started in the early afternoon (INXS came onstage at about 8.45). Another of my main reasons to go was the fact that Debbie Harry was playing and I’d been a Blondie fan since the late 70s, though I'd been too young to get to any of their concerts.
The Summer XS line-up was:
Jellyfish - don’t remember anything of their set at all, though they were apparently “a melodic San Francisco rock band” (and got in trouble for plastering their posters everywhere)
Roachford - who were excellent, I went onto the pitch for a dance when they played
Jesus Jones - didn’t like them before I went, didn’t like them any better when I left
Deborah Harry - who I adored. I left the girls in the seats and pushed my way as far to the front as I could possibly get and then rocked out with the best of them. She played 11 songs and ended her set with the superb “Atomic”. Fantastic.
Hothouse Flowers - who were better live, I thought, than when I’d heard them on the radio
The INXS show was being recorded as part of the Live Baby Live project, under the supervision of Mark Optiz and the band’s manager, Chris Murphy decided it should be filmed as well. In an interview at the time, he said that although he thought X was good “the band had grown lazy, the new songs were too slick and too much like Kick. I was worried. I knew I had to do something to bring it back to the basics, back to the strengths of the band. Doing the film and releasing the live record accomplished that. It was a way to remind the public of how powerful INXS was live, in case they’d written them off as a band who only released pop songs.”
INXS spent £250,000 filming the concert whilst Murphy convinced Polygram, their European record label, to stump up the rest. On the night, the fact the band was barely breaking even on the show weighed heavily on Andrew Farriss, though he has since revised his opinion. “I am so glad we did it,” he said in interview with Anthony Bozza. “Thank God we did, that same band is not here any more. Michael is not here any more.” Andrew was so overcome with expectation of the event, he famously escaped to a bathroom where he spent ten minutes alone, enjoying a beer and smoking a cigarette. In documentary footage, Michael Hutchence comments that the gig is making £1m and he was only getting £5k of that.
Murphy hired David Mallet to film the concert and he used sixteen 35mm cameras, including two on roving helicopters, to capture everything. At the time, Mallet was an up-and-coming talent who’d cut his teeth on promo videos for Queen (Bicyle Race in 1978 and I Want To Break Free in 1984, which Brian May credits with the band losing US fans), Blondie (Hanging On The Telephone in 1978), a host of Bowie videos (including the iconic Ashes To Ashes in 1980) and many more. His work on Bowie’s Glass Spider tour in 1988 and Madonna’s Blond Ambition in 1990 convinced Murphy he was their man. Mallet also shot the video for Shining Star in 1991 and has since gone on to a strong career in concert films.
By the time INXS came on stage, I was ready. Opening with two big songs from Kick got me into it straight away and they followed up with a few songs from X that were fresh in my mind but it was Original Sin that locked it for me, vibrant and alive with the all-out jam session at the end. I do remember loving the rest of the gig, I remember being invigorated by the whole thing though I must confess that most of my memory of the show itself now comes from the DVD. But no matter - as Mark Opitz said in interview, the band were incredible on the night and they were. In fact, watching the film again (as I did when I wrote this post), they were clearly on fire and for a first gig by a band relatively new to me, I couldn’t have asked for anything better!
Lately (with a beautiful sax part opening from Kirk Pengilly) followed Original Sin in real life but it was never filmed (it’s an extra on the DVD). Then came The Loved One, which remains one of my all-time favourite songs and it was launched with an introduction from Hutchence. “This is a big gig. Really happy to be here, la-di-da-di-dah - this is the biggest pub we’ve ever played. Is this what they call a fucking rave or what?”
The show is superb - in sound and vision - and Mallet’s cameras catch it well, with plenty of highlights to savour. During the opening to Mystify, the crowd sing along so Hutchence stops and holds out the microphone towards them and they bounce around once the band kicks in. How cool must it be to see an audience do that for one of your songs? There’s the moshpit run during Wild Life, the crowd going mad for Suicide Blonde, Hutchence kissing Andrew Farriss at the start of What You Need (which also includes the "play the fucking riff, Timmy!” incident). Kick, Need You Tonight and Never Tear Us Apart sound huge and the set concludes with the best version I’ve ever heard of Devil Inside - the band always used to close on Don’t Change and whilst that would have been good, it really works well as it is.
“We had already headlined at plenty of stadiums and festivals, but this was different. Wembley is the most prestigious stadium in Europe - if not the world - and it was going to be magical. There were 16 cameras, 72,000 extremely psyched people and some great opening bands and we were ready to turn Wembley Stadium into the biggest pub on the planet.”
- Kirk Pengilly
“For us as Australians, Wembley was always thought of as one of those places you knew you that you wanted to play - if you were lucky. To even have the opportunity to perform there was a dream. There were something like 200 people backstage which was a bigger crowd than some of the pubs we'd played in! It was nuts and I couldn't really take it all in.”
- Andrew Farriss
“This gig was a prize; it meant that all those years of touring, playing gigs the world over paid off this one night. We had played many concerts that were bigger but selling out Wembley Stadium was a prestigious hallmark for us, especially considering England’s affection towards INXS took years to develop.”
- Jon Farriss
“When we took part in Live Aid in 1985 it was made all the more special knowing that our performance was being projected onto the large screens at Wembley Stadium. Wembley was the pinnacle of venues around the world, the place you read about in music magazines growing up in the 60’s and 70’s. To sell out Wembley Stadium was certainly a dream come true.”
- Garry Gary Beers
“It was INXS Day on BBC Radio, MTV, you name it, we were everywhere you looked or listened, it was kind of surreal, which is always a good thing. The whole gig was kind of like a big pressure cooker of 'let's see just how nervous we can make the band', but the tension had the opposite effect on me. I had to struggle to keep the smile off my face.”
- Tim Farriss
Selling out Wembley Stadium was a big deal - AC/DC are the only other Australian band to do the same. INXS had played the venue before, supporting Queen during the “Kind Of Magic” tour in July 1986 (which I didn't see, though had the opportunity to - really wish I had done now).
According to Billboard magazine, the concert grossed £1,426,617 and the audience was a sell-out capacity of 73,791.
The day after arguably one of their biggest gigs ever, the band and Mark Opitz recorded Shining Star (which Andrew Farriss had written on the road) at London’s Metropolis Studios.
* * * * * Live Baby Live, the live CD and concert film video, were both released on 11th November 1991 (when I bought my copies). The film, which looks glorious but isn't in widescreen (presumably since TV's weren't set up for that then) is well-edited and perfectly captures the scale of the event (shots of the crowd and stadium) without missing any of the intimate bits - such as the little nods between Kirk Pengilly and Tim Farriss (plus the fabulous ear signals during What You Need as Hutchence sings “Hey you, don’t you listen” and Kirk gestures to Tim, who had screwed up his riff). It also captures the sheer energy of the show, the tightness of the musicianship and the real sense of camaraderie amongst the band. For me, watching it on VHS back in the day was a revelation - I thought I’d picked up a lot from the video monitors (and I thought Kirk was the coolest thing ever in his red suit and black shades) - but I clearly hadn't. I'm happy to say that even now I still find new bits every time I watch it.
Track Listing:
"Guns in the Sky" "New Sensation" "I Send a Message" "The Stairs" "Know the Difference" "Disappear" "By My Side" "Hear That Sound" "Original Sin" "The Loved One" "Wildlife" "Mystify" "Bitter Tears" "Suicide Blonde" "What You Need" "Kick" "Need You Tonight" "Mediate" "Never Tear Us Apart" "Who Pays the Price" "Devil Inside"
On the re-issue, there’s an excellent 40 minute behind-the-scenes documentary which shows the band in preparation for the gig with a real sense of nervous excitement about them all, which is refreshing to see.
The Live Baby Live album reached number 8 in the UK, number 3 in Australia and number 72 in the US (though it sold over 1m copies there). Shining Star, the single recorded directly after the concert and the only new material on the album (it’s heard over the closing credits of the DVD), was released on 2nd November. It reached number 31 in the UK, number 21 in Australia and 14 in the US Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The CD single was backed with live versions of Send A Message (from Summer XS), Faith In Each Other (Sydney 1990) and Bitter Tears (Paris 1991).
The album - produced by INXS and Mark Opitz - featured several songs recorded at Wembley, as well as highlights from gigs in Paris, Dublin, Glasgow, Rio de Janeiro (“Hey, hey Rio?” before launching into Suicide Blonde), Montreal, Spain, Switzerland, Melbourne, Sydney, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Las Vegas.
Track Listing:
"New Sensation" "Guns in the Sky" "Mystify" "By My Side" “Shining Star” "Need You Tonight" "Mediate" “One X One” “Burn For You” “The One Thing” “This Time” "The Stairs" "Suicide Blonde" "Hear That Sound" "Never Tear Us Apart" "What You Need"
Summer XS memorabilia - taken from the DVD insert
Part of the DVD documentary, showing the audience gathering. I wonder if I'm in one of those shots?
An excellent gig and an excellent memory, a great band at the top of their game and I'm chuffed to have been there.
* * *
The show (with Lately now included) was released on vinyl in 2019 and so was the film, re-edited in HD from the original negative to give a proper widescreen presentation. Alison & I went to see if at the Northampton Filmhouse and it was bloody brilliant (I wrote about it here).
“We were just six blokes from Australia that treated Wembley Stadium like just another pub gig,” Tim Farriss wrote in the liner notes. “We went in with a PA and a few lights and played our asses off. No ego ramps, no back-up singers, no props, no grand pianos, just the six of us – and the audience went nuts! That’s all we needed!”
sources:
band interviews from the Live Baby Live DVD re-issue liner notes, no credit (released by Sanctuary Visual Entertainment) INXS: The Official Inside Story Of A Band On The Road, text by Ed St. John
Gig information from Billboard Magazine Story To Story: The Official INXS Autobiography, by INXS and Anthony Bozza
Sport Aid, supported by Band Aid and UNICEF, organised Run The World on Sunday 25th May 1986, timed to coincide with a UNICEF development conference. It was a worldwide event where, at 3pm GMT, a total of 19.8m runners ran, jogged or walked 10km to support African famine relief charities.
Coming up the hill out of Rushton, heading for Rothwell. Mark Guyett & I are in the centre of the picture (he's on the left).
Official events were held in 274 cities over 76 countries - 200,000 Londoners completed the course in our fair capital, 50,000 ran in Barcelona, 30,000 in Athens, 20,000 in Dublin and 10,000 in Melbourne. The leg of it that I ran, with my friends Nick Duncan and Mark Guyett, started and ended in Desborough, going through Rushton and Rothwell on the way. I remember that it was a warm day, I remember the happy atmosphere and camaraderie amongst us all and I especially remember the seasoned runners coming back from the finish line as we passed Montsaye School and calling out “only another mile to go” as they went.
Nick and me, in training. As hard as it might be to believe now, those shorts were in fashion at the time.
Over $37m was raised and it apparently still holds the record as the sporting event with the most participants in history. I’m proud to have been part of it.
As I recall, entry was contingent on you buying a t-shirt and they were iconic at the time - most of us wore them for some time afterwards. I kept mine and tried it on for the 30th anniversary and was chuffed to find that it fitted me! There's no picture evidence but it still fits today!
I was aware of Fangoria magazine long before I finally found a copy, sometime in the mid-80s, most likely from mentions in Starlog magazine, the Young Ones episode Nasty and the furore around the Video Nasties. Recently, I managed to re-connect with my past and picked up - from ebay - the first issue I ever read.
Fangoria magazine was launched in 1979 as a companion to Starlog, which covered sci-fi films. The first issue, published in July, was edited by “Joe Bonham” (Ed Naha and Ric Meyers) after which Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin took over. Initially focusing on fantasy films, the magazine didn’t really gain traction until positive audience response was noticed for an article celebrating effects artist Tom Savini (and his gruesome work for Dawn Of The Dead (1978)), at which point Martin was given the chance to shift focus. The seventh issue, with a cover story of The Shining (1980), was apparently the first to achieve a profit and set a formula the magazine stuck with for at least as long as I read it. Martin remained as editor until 1986 (he left to work with Frank Henenlotter on the screenplays for Frankenhooker (1990) - still a real favourite of mine - and Basket Case 3 (1991)) and was eventually replaced by Tony Timpone, who successfully steered Fangoria through to the 2000’s. Chris Alexander took over in 2010 but the magazine was caught up in various strifes of the publishing company, leading to sporadic issues, radical design changes and lack of focus. After being missing in action for a while, it’s apparently up and running again now but has never tempted me back.
I discovered the magazine in a newsagents on Newland Street in Kettering, popping in so often to check for new issues I ended up friendly with the man who ran the shop. I bought almost every issue from there, so much so that Alison & I always referred to it as The Fango Shop (something Dude picked up too - he’d come in to buy “Dad’s horror comic” with me, though he never read it), though sadly the shop’s now under new ownership. Much later, when I discovered The Cinema Store in London, I was able to pick up some back issues for reasonable prices but, sadly, that place has now long-since disappeared too (it's almost like there's a trend, eh?).
But back then, Fangoria turned out to be everything I ever wanted it to be - and more!
I think my first regular issue was Fango 58 (I wish I could be sure but, sadly, lent a friend my entire run, from 1986 to 1990 or so and have never seen them again) and it was just perfect for me - full of interesting behind the scenes articles, news, book reviews, wonderfully gory colour pictures and a complete love for the types of horror films that I adored. It made stars of the make-up effects people (like Rick Baker, the afore-mentioned Tom Savini, Rob Bottin, the KNB boys and many more), the writers and directors of the types of films you’d see with gaudy covers in video shops and the lesser known actors who made those films so damned watchable.
The 80s was also a boom time - the slasher cycle might have been running down slowly but horror was big news, with Freddy and Jason and Re-Animator (1985) and all else. I was going to the cinema, watching these things on double bills with friends, catching up with titles I’d missed on VHS and often on the recommendation of Fango, whose articles had whetted my appetite.
Not that the magazine wasn’t misunderstood. Since my kid sister Sarah was only about 3 or 4 at the time and frequently wandered into my bedroom to see what I was doing, I had to hide Fango away lest I scar her for life. Years later, Alison tolerated it well but I remember my sister-in-law once asking me if a picture she saw was real. I enjoyed the Fango sense of humour and community - I felt like I belonged - but it really wasn’t a mainstream gang by any means and I was perfectly alright with that.
The Bloody Best, I can see now, is a money-making compilation but as a greatest hits package, it worked brilliantly. Just look at the articles in the issue - David Cronenberg, Tom Savini, Dick Miller, Brian DePalma, Wes Craven, George Romero, Elvira, Re-Animator, Nightmare On Elm Street (Englund and his make-up) as well as Stephen King and Peter Straub. It’s difficult in this day and age, where everything is online and we know about films as soon as they’re announced, to fully convey the size of its impact but imagine being a teenaged horror fan, opening up a treasure trove like this.
As I mentioned, I found the magazine (in a bundle with Bloody Best 3 and 4 too!) on ebay and bought it with birthday money from my parents (I told them they’d bought me Fango and Dad, with a smile in his voice, said “is it still gory…?”) and re-reading it has been wonderful. The magazine is filled with articles that instantly throw me back to 1986, that I read so often I could practically quote them and pictures so vivid they’ve never left my minds eye.
While you can’t go back (and I have absolutely no intention of seeking out the latest Fango), occasionally you can visit the old days and sometimes that’s just as good.
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!
We’re living in extraordinary times and, it seems to me, it’s even more important now to seek out and acknowledge the bright spots of humanity that exist all around us. One of those happened to me this weekend and it all started with a post I published a year ago.
“a whole new experience in boys' papers! It's for the boy of today - packed with never-before told stories with true life features on the men who have faced the crunch in their lives.”
One of my favourite things about this blog are the retrospective essays I write. I’m a self-confessed nostalgic and had a happy childhood I enjoy being reminded of and these posts allow me to not only research and investigate this thing I love, but they also act as a connector with other people. I’ll explain.
In 1979, I started reading a comic called The Crunch and, at the time and ever after, I never knew anyone else who read it. Unfortunately, in the sands of time, I’d lost my collection but managed to buy back a few random issues on ebay and looking through them brought back my childhood instantly. So when The Crunch’s fortieth anniversary rolled around, I decided to write a retrospective (which you can read here), which led to a lovely few hours of research and absolutely no idea as to whether anyone would either connect with it or even be interested.
As it was, the post was well received (over 600 views as I write this) and the comments and emails I got after it were nicely positive, as readers a) reminisced, b) didn’t realise anyone else remembered the comic and c) loved that it took them back to being a kid.
I was more than happy.
Then, in September, a fellow called Jason left a comment, having enjoyed the post and mentioned he had a few spares. We emailed briefly and he said he’d sort through his copies and send me some over, if I was interested. I absolutely was (one of my favourite strips was The Mill Street Mob and none of the issues I had featured it). He emailed again, this past Friday, to say he’d sorted them, asked for my address and - once again - refused any payment.
On Saturday morning, a large box was delivered and, confused, I opened it up to discover that Jason had sent me almost a complete run of the comic! Astonished, I emailed him back, urging him to let me pay him for at least the postage and he replied with “they were all spares and [it’s] so nice to hear they are appreciated, that feeling of nostalgia is rare and Crunch aficionados are even rarer! Enjoy!”
I was genuinely touched because if the essay gave him a reminder to revisit a beloved old comic, then his gesture more than paid that off. Crunch readers, clearly, are lovely people.
If you’re reading this Jason, thank you for giving me the chance to delve back into that wonderful old comic and as Crunch readers go, you're one of the best!
I've discussed this incident on the blog before but with Halloween coming up - and the fact that it happened 30 years ago this August - I thought it worth another mention. I adore the horror genre but I'm relatively rational and, like everyone else, I've often placated my son when he's scared with the phrase "there's nothing there."
But what if there is?
Me and Craig, Cabo da Roca, Portugal. It was 1990, we all wore short-shorts like this, honestly...
I've loved ghost stories since I was a kid and as a ten-year-old there wasn’t much better than losing myself in a Three Investigator book, or a Peter Haining or Mary Danby collection. I formed ghost hunting groups with friends (one day, I might tell you about the ghost at Blue Bridge, who was said to be Old Nick himself), read as much as I could and scared myself silly with real-life ghost books from the library. Happy days.
I have had three brushes with what I think are perhaps most accurately described as unidentified phenomena. One was with my childhood friend Nick and he still talks about the incident, almost forty years later. Two were with my friend Craig – one was an unidentified flying object and the other, this one, was about ghosts.
In 1989, he & I went on holiday to Portugal. He worked for a travel company, we got a reduced rate, we had a great time. Our hotel was a lovely place, run by a bear of an Englishman, with local staff. Beyond the restaurant/club house was a patio area, then two blocks of apartments – we were on the ground floor of the first, facing back towards the house. We got on well with fellow guests, there was a good atmosphere in general, it was a cracking holiday.
Towards the end of the week, having sworn off drink for a few days (we were twenty and didn’t realise the shots were doubles), we’d had a meal and enjoyed the evening in the club and gone back to our room. It wasn’t a big room – through the front door, the bathroom opened off the hall, then the main room had twin beds, patio doors (which faced out towards the main house) and built in wardrobes across from them (against the back of the bathroom wall). I slept in the bed nearest the wardrobes, Craig had the bed by the window.
On this particular night, nothing spectacular had happened. We chatted for a while, then went to sleep.
A red guard from Flash Gordon. My version didn't have a gun...
I woke up and knew it was the middle of the night, though it wasn’t particularly dark (we tended to keep the curtains open). As my eyes got accustomed to the light, I was very surprised to see someone crouching down beside the bed, staring at me. My over-riding memory of it now is that it looked like one of the red guards from the Flash Gordon film – a monks habit, with the hood drawn up and some kind of gas mask/breathing apparatus obscuring the face. I don’t remember reacting to this interloper, but watched as he stood up and walked carefully around my bed and along the back wall. As the thing reached the end of Craig’s bed (with me now up on one elbow, watching it go), Craig sat bolt upright in bed (and that startled me more than my ghost had).
“What time is it?”
I fumbled for my watch. “Ten past three.”
“Okay,” he said and laid back down. I couldn’t see my ghost any more, so I too laid down and went back to sleep.
The next morning, he was up bright and early and went to reception to make a call. When he got back, he explained he’d wanted to ring his parents, as he was really worried. I asked why and he explained he’d woken up to see two people sitting on the end of his bed, watching him. His first thought was that it must be his parents, checking he was okay, but when he rang home, they were fine and healthy.
As we sat there, on our beds in the early morning Portuguese sunshine, I told him about the thing I’d seen. As we talked, it came to me that maybe my ghost had been moving slowly because he was threading his way between things I couldn’t see, perhaps guests at a party. Guests that might, conceivably, be sitting at the end of Craig’s bed saying “look at that, a ghost person in bed.”
Completely stumped as to what was going on, but convinced the party angle was the one to go for, we trooped off to reception (I don’t know that we expected to find out, maybe that a party had been going on years before, until a fire broke out and killed everyone, but it would have been a start). We knew the girl behind the counter, who was very nice and had taught us a few words and phrases in Portugese and haltingly tried to explain ourselves.
“We were just wondering if there’d been a party in our room.” She checked the pigeon hole for our room and came back with our passports. “No, we’re in there, we just wondered if there’d been a party in there before.”
She frowned at us, so we told her the story. About halfway through, she started to hyperventilate. Towards the end, she looked genuinely upset. When we got to the time part, she was very agitated. So much so that she went to get the manager’s wife (a fearsome, if friendly, lady – when I got sunstroke just after arriving, she made sure I got grilled chicken for dinner to help me, even though it wasn’t on the menu). We re-told our story, conscious of the poor receptionist who was, by now, sitting in the backroom being comforted by her colleagues.
The manager’s wife listened to our story, looking at us to make sure we weren’t pulling her leg. She tried the obvious – were monks on my mind, there was a brand of drink called Sandeman whose logo was a man in a cape, all manner of stuff – but realised our story wasn’t going to change. She took us to one side and said, “If you promise not to mention this again, whilst you’re here, you can have free meals for the rest of your stay.”
Did my years of wanting to be a ghost-hunter kick in? Was my drive to discover the paranormal world enough that I would refuse? No, I’m now ashamed to admit that Craig & I thought with our bellies and went for the free meal option.
So, story ended right? We saw something we couldn’t explain, we freaked out a receptionist (who might have been prone to over-react, who knows?) and we were then offered hush money. I’d love to report that we experienced more phenomena but we didn’t – I was wary about being in the room on my own for the duration of our stay, but neither of us ever saw anything untoward in that room again.
It was all finished, except for something we overhead that night at dinner. Sharing our floor in the block were ex-employees of BOAC. Friendly, chatty and very funny, we got on well with them (bearing in mind they were perhaps fifty years older than us) and our little table was next to the large one they occupied.
Obviously, part of our deal was to tell no-one and we adhered to that. So imagine our surprise when the BOAC table started to talk about their previous night. Every one of them had woken up – either from hearing something or through a bad dream – and all of them were tired. We couldn’t resist and leaned back.
“What time was this then?” we asked.
There was general murmuring from the table, as people thought back about it.
So what time did five or six couples – a total of seven separate rooms – all wake up, on the same night, when nothing untoward was happening?
Whore
