In this strange complex of time and space anything can happen

Having managed to get back up to date with Things I've Been Up To, I can now attempt some of the other catch-ups I said I was going to do in this entry in February: LJ / DW. Today, I will have a crack at catching up on films I've watched, including links to Twitter threads if they exist but not full cross-posts of their content, and otherwise just a sentence or two per item.

41. Night of the Living Dead (1968), dir. George A. Romero, broadcast 16 September 2022 - a Cellar Club screening, which I live-tweeted at the time. It's a perfect example of people's personalities disintegrating and being brought into conflict with one another under extreme stress in an enclosed setting, much like The Thing.

42. Dracula AD 1972 (1972), dir. Alan Gibson - watched with Joel in a disused church in Morley on the 50th anniversary of Dracula's resurrection (i.e. 18 September), which I wrote about separately. An amazing experience! We watched it on my tablet, but also connected it to Joel's sound-bar using Bluetooth, which meant really impressive sound quality. I heard some background dialogue as they're all gathering in the church which I don't think I'd ever really picked up before, about the shrouds Johnny had brought and what sizes were available. Joel also wrote this very funny in-universe blog post based on it afterwards.

43. The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), dir. Alan Gibson - I think we came straight home and watched this afterwards, as the obvious follow-up viewing? I know we talked about it and exchanged thoughts and views as we watched, and I know I enjoyed it, but I've seen it so many times I don't think I can remember and specific thoughts that were unique to this viewing now.

44. Never Take Sweets From A Stranger (1961), dir. Cyril Frankel, broadcast 23 September 2022 - another Cellar Club screening which I tweeted along to at the time. It's a b/w Hammer film, but not a Gothic horror. Rather, it's a surprisingly progressive and thought-provoking treatment of the topic of child sexual abuse. What's depressing is that it sets out quite unequivocally all of the factors which help abusers to get away with their activity, such as members of the community rallying round when the children and then their parents try to speak out to dismiss their claims and defend and protect the abuser, basically out of fear of even admitting to themselves that such a thing could be happening. And here we are, 60+ years later, still regularly watching the same patterns play out. :-(

45. Faust (1926), dir. F.W. Murnau - a fairy-taleish version of Faust, in which he does a lot of terrible things, but is redeemed by love at the finale rather than being dragged off to hell. It comes four years after Nosferatu, and is very definitely both more lavish and more technically developed, reflecting the evolution of the film industry and Murnau's career between the two. It did perhaps drag a bit towards the end, though.

46. I Sell The Dead (2008), dir. Glenn McQuaid - a horror comedy about resurrectionists who begin specialising in dealing with the undead. Quite fun, definitely a lot of unexpected turns, and a nice gothic horror aesthetic to it.

47. Ed Wood (1994), dir. Tim Burton - I hadn't seen this one since the mid-nineties, so it was quite the revisit. I'm not wild about the Tim Burton / Johnny Depp machine these days, but this is really a classic, with very sympathetic and moving portrayals of everyone involved.

48. Return of the Vampire (1943), dir. Lew Landers - an obvious follow-up watch to Ed Wood, as it features Bela Lugosi as Dracula in all but name (he's actually called Armand Tesla), appearing to trouble a particular group of characters first during the First World War and then again during the Second. I'd seen it before, but I think Joel hadn't. I remember noting down various ways in which it had clearly influenced later Hammer films on my first watch, such as the disintegration scene in the ruined church at the end of the movie, and I may have noted this one already anyway. But just in case I didn't, the staking scene in the crypt which is shown via a silhouette on the wall must also surely have fed into Hammer's portrayal of Van Helsing staking Jonathan Harker in Dracula (1958).

49. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), dir. Stephen Norrington - very silly fin-de-siècle crossover action movie, brought round by Joel as escapist distraction on the evening of the day when my Dad texted to say that cancer had been identified in one of the polyps in his bowel. It required no intelligence of any kind to follow the plot, which was telegraphed throughout in six-foot-high letters, and of course I enjoyed spotting all the different characters from a range of Gothic and crime fiction of the era, so it definitely helped.

50.The Mutations (1974), dir. Jack Cardiff, broadcast 7 October 2022 - another Cellar Club tweet-along. It was very accomplished both visually and aurally, had some superb seventies fashions, and generally hit a sound moral note about the mutated characters it depicted (in a similar and I think directly referential manner to Freaks), but did get a little bit silly towards the end.

51. Gods and Monsters (1998), dir. Bill Condon - a biopic about James Whale in later life, and thus a fairly natural follow-up to us watching Ed Wood a couple of weeks earlier. It stars Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser, both putting in excellent performances, and deals with Whale's homosexuality and his sense of lost opportunities and the loss of his health as he approaches the end of his life. Moving, well made and definitely recommended.

Hmm, that's got us reasonably far, but that feels like all I can manage for today, and there are still a lot to do. I watched 81 films in 2022 in the end, and have kept up a similar rate in 2023 so far. I might have to resort to simple lists of titles yet, but let's leave that decision for another day.

I was planning to write about my holiday to Romania today, but then I woke up after a much needed lie-in to the news that Christopher Lee had died, and the truth is it would probably never have occurred to me to want to go to Romania at all if it hadn't been for him. So I will write about him instead.

I've long known that I first saw him in Hammer's Dracula (1958) when I was eight years old, and thanks to the Radio Times online archive I've recently been able to pin that down a little more precisely. On 28th December 1984, BBC Two broadcast a late night double-bill of The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula. My Dad recorded it on our at that time very new and exciting home video recorder, and soon afterwards (I don't know exactly how soon, but within a few days or weeks, I think) decided that these X-rated films would be suitable viewing for his eight-year-old daughter.

He knew what he was doing. Dracula in particular struck a chord with me which has resonated ever since. Within a year, I had bought and devoured the novel. Within two, I had moved outwards into the wider world of vampire fiction. Within three I had bought my personal horror bible, and was busy working my way through its Vampire chapter with a particular focus on Hammer's other Dracula movies. I have carried on in much the same vein ever since - and it was absolutely definitively Lee's performance as Dracula which started it all.


If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have spent my teens steeping myself in Gothic fiction and horror movies. As a result, I would probably never have felt inclined to drift into the Gothic sub-culture in my Bristol days, or have made all the friends I did then and later as a result. I could never have watched The Wicker Man when I got to Oxford, might never have felt the same resonances in the city's May Day celebrations, and would never have had the Wicker Man holiday which thanatos_kalos and I enjoyed two years ago in Scotland. Indeed, I would never have watched any of the awesome movies on this list - or any of the rubbishy second-rate ones, either, which I have hunted down and sat through (often accompanied by the ever-patient ms_siobhan) just because he was in them. Nor would I recently have bothered reading all about the real life Vlad III Dracula. My parents going to Romania in 1987 would have meant nothing particular to me, and nor would I have joined the Dracula Society and gone on the holiday there with them which I have just got back from.

While we were in Romania, Christopher Lee had his 93rd, and sadly we now know his last, birthday. We happened to be in Sighișoara, where the real life Vlad III Dracula was (probably) born, so I marked the day by nipping out of our hotel early in the morning, crossing the town square and tweeting this selfie from outside the house where he grew up.

To mark Christopher Lee's birthday, here's me this morning in front of the house where the real Dracula was born. pic.twitter.com/xotHgrqSLH

— Penny Goodman (@pjgoodman) May 27, 2015

Little did I know that the man who had sparked off my interest in Dracula in the first place was already in hospital. Little did I know how few days he had left.

I won't try to claim that I have always considered Christopher Lee to be the perfect human being. I've said plenty of uncomplimentary things about him in the past on this journal. There's no need to repeat them today. But he brought such wonderful stories so powerfully to life - not indeed just by acting in them with such presence and professionalism, but by doing it to such an inspiring degree that already by the mid-1960s people were writing roles and producing stories so that he could inhabit them and bring that magic to them. There is no question that the whole world of fantastic drama and fiction has been immeasurably stronger for his contribution to it. So I am truly, truly grateful for the wondrous worlds those prodigious acting talents have transported me to, and for the real-world doors and pathways they have opened up to me as a result. And though I never met him, and now never will, it felt good to share the same planet with him for the past 38 years. I am very sorry now that that time is over.

Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.

IMDb page here.

I watched this film on Sunday night with Mum and Dad. It is famous above all for its jazz soundtrack - and this is why Dad in particular wanted to see it. The story takes place over the course of a single evening, at a party held to celebrate the first wedding anniversary of a jazz musician and his wife. This means that jazz is integral to the whole story. Throughout the film, a series of different jazz musicians are jamming with each other on a stage while everyone else sits around listening and chatting and drinking cocktails - and there are several scenes which simply focus entirely on the music, letting the plot ride out for a while as the musicians play. In fact, a major part of the film's appeal (certainly to my Dad) is that the musicians at its centre aren't just actors – they are professional jazz musicians of the time, playing for real as part of the film. The sound-track is considered a must-have for all 'serious' jazz fans, and Dad has had a copy of it pretty much ever since it came out. It clearly is very good, as well – I can see why he's always liked it so much.

There's another whole side to the film besides the jazz, though. Around it is woven a story about the jazz musician, his wife and their supposed friend, which is essentially Othello reworked for a modern setting. Each of the main characters from Shakespeare's play is readily identifiable, and in several cases the names of the re-invented characters contain direct references to the originals. So Aurelius Rex, the black jazz musician, is Othello; Delia Lane, his white jazz-singer wife whom he can't bear to let out of his sight is Desdemona; Johnny Cousin, himself a jazz drummer who wants Delia to sing in a new band he's forming, is Iago; Emily Cousin is Iago's wife, Emilia; Cass Michaels, a member of Rex's band, is Michael Cassio (Iago's fall-guy); and Rod Hamilton, who owns the venue where the party is taking place and secretly pines after Delia, is Roderigo.

Towards the end of the story we began wondering whether this was going to go the whole hog, and end up with everybody dead on a bed, but someone we felt that this didn't seem in keeping with the feel of the film so far. We were right, too – for a moment or so the audience was allowed to think that both Delia and Cass were dead, but they turned out to be OK after all, and although Cass had to be carried from the premises on a stretcher, Delia got to walk off into the early dawn with a deeply contrite Rex.

I don't know whether it's because everyone involved in the film knew they were retelling a Shakespeare story, or just because that's the kind of feel the director was going for anyway, but the composition of the shots, the body language and the verbal delivery were all very theatrical. There were a lot of American accents (most, but not all, genuine) and a lot of people calling each other 'cats' and saying that things were 'wild' or that they 'dug' them. But although there were quite a few shots of people standing around nodding, swaying or tapping their toes to the jazz, no-one ever burst out into the wild ’60s-style dancing I’d been hoping for when Dad said what the film was about.

Roderigo was played by a fresh-faced young Richard Attenborough, but more amusing was Patrick McGoohan as Johnny Cousin (i.e. Iago). He would, of course, go on to prove definitively just how good he is at being superficially nice while also secretly being hard, scheming and slightly creepy five years later in The Prisoner, so it was fun to see him getting a little practice in here – and even better when he casually chucked the line 'be seein' ya' after a departing character. I thought Paul Harris as Aurelius Rex really stole the show, though – which makes me very surprised to see from IMDb that this was his first film, and very sad to see that he did so few others. Doesn’t mean he didn’t have a busy career in the theatre, of course, but since IMDb doesn’t cover that, and he’s one of several actors with the same name, it’s a little difficult to tell.

Anyway, great stuff if you like jazz, The Prisoner or modern re-workings of Shakespeare. But probably best give it a miss if you don’t.

Click here to view this entry with minimal formatting.

I'm rather behind with my Who write-ups, for fairly obvious reasons. I've been needing to watch quite a lot of Who recently, but haven't felt entirely up to writing about it, so that I currently have a back-log of five watched-but-unwritten stories, and have started on a sixth. I'm now starting on the catching-up process before it gets too completely ridiculous.

( Fourth Doctor: Nightmare of Eden )

Meanwhile, the real reason why I had watched Nightmare to Eden was because I suspected that its monsters, the Mandrels, had scared me witless as a child. Even after seeing it, though, I wasn't quite 100% sure, so I took the opportunity to check with my Dad last weekend, and I've now realised that it wasn't true. I reminded Dad about the whole story - how he used to scare me by pretending to be a particular Who monster, and about the Madam Tussaud's exhibition where I'd refused to go past one. But I very carefully didn't say anything about my own theories - just let him say what he remembered about it. He confirmed that I must have been about three or four at the time, but said that the monster in question had had horns, and that he used to pretend to be it by waggling his fingers over his head, while lurching towards me. The lurching matched the Mandrels, but the horns didn't; and he also went on to say that he thought the monsters might have been called Trilithons.

( Revisiting those childhood monsters )

So, The Horns of Nimon goes to the top of my to-watch list. But ideally not before I've written up a few more of the stories I've already watched.

I believe I may have mentioned as much on this LJ before, but just to reiterate - my Dad is teh aces! When he arrived at 9pm last night, I only had one working telephone socket in my house - a bit inconvenient, since it was in my study, and I couldn't guarantee to hear it if I was downstairs and the study door was closed. Now, I have no less than four working telephone sockets - a little excessive for my needs, perhaps, but they were all part of an old system which was just there anyway, so he figured he might as well reactivate them all while he was at it. I am incredibly impressed at his cleverness.

He also brought a plastic outdoor table and chairs, which will be nice as hollyione is coming to visit me tomorrow, so we can enjoy sitting out in the garden with drinks while her daughter plays around us. We decided to take them straight through to the garden from the car when he arrived, and of course being 9pm it was dark, and the automatic light I have above the patio doors switched itself on as I opened them. And what should I see in its beam, sitting in the middle of the lawn? A hedgehog! I wasn't terribly surprised, as I see foxes and squirrels all the time, but hedgehogs are a bit more secretive, and I obviously haven't been out at the right time to encounter one yet. He didn't even seem very scared or anything - he didn't roll up in a ball, but just sat there, and after a while decided that maybe he would shuffle off somewhere a bit quieter. It was very exciting, and I hope I shall see more of him.

Anyway, now Dad has headed off towards Dundee, where he will be picking my Mum up from a Medical History conference and then going to the Moray Firth area for a holiday. Apparently the main attraction is dolphins, which can be seen by the dozen in the bay.

Meanwhile, in completely unrelated news, a film of I, Claudius is apparently on the cards. Could be very exciting if it happens, although I may be forced to kill myself if Leonardo DiCaprio is cast as Claudius. As Caligula, though... I could go with that.

Well, that was an absolutely lovely birthday.

I spent the morning loafing around in my dressing gown, opening presents, responding to LJ comments and setting up a Scrabble game on Facebook. My sister had sent me a Porpora CD from my Amazon wish-list that I'd wanted for ages, so I'm really happy about that although I haven't listened to it yet, as well as a brilliant book on Art Deco houses, which wasn't on my wish-list, but was a really excellent choice. I spent ages sitting on the sofa, poring over it wonder and awe, and occasionally getting to say things like, "Ooh, my window catches are like that!" It's great, and will be a very handy guide to choosing the right sorts of rugs, light-shades and so on.

Mum and Dad had also sent me a couple of CDs, but they weren't my 'real' present - just copies they'd made, in fact. No, my real present is this lamp:

( Pic under here )

It's stood for years in a pub in the centre of Birmingham, where my Dad likes to go on a Saturday afternoon to mark people's PhD theses, and whose landlady he has become good chums with over the years. So of course he told her about my new house, and she'd already said that if he ever wanted any of the nick-nacks in the pub, he just had to make an offer. And he did! It's not here yet, but it looks like Dad will be making another visit late next week to help me sort my curtains out, so he will probably bring it with him then.

After lunch, I finally got dressed, and headed into town for some Serious Shopping. Two pairs of shoes, innumerable hair accessories and biscuits and a large roll of fabric later, I arrived in the Swan so laden down with packages I was having trouble getting through doors, to be joined by no less than six lovely friends. And since I'd only decided to do anything on my actual birthday at 1pm that day, I was touched beyond belief that so many people were willing to come out and join me with only 4 hours' notice. I think that's a real sign of being properly settled in here now, if I have friends who'll do that.

Finally headed home at about 7pm, and then just whiled away the rest of the evening eating my dinner, watching House and working out how to use the staple-gun I've bought in order to re-cover my dining chairs. Just perfect, really.

Tonight is the final night of the Saturnalia, the Solstice has been accomplished successfully, and tomorrow is Christmas Eve. What could be better?

I'm up in Brum at my parents' house, and, as in some previous years, we are holding a Christmas party tonight. We've spent the day preparing, and now we've entered that lull where it's not yet worth getting dressed up and attending to the last-minute tasks like taking things out of the fridge and putting them on the table, but we've pretty much finished all the medium-term preparation. We have ham, pâté, salmon, cheeses, salads, olives, peppers, quiches, pizza, ciabatta, mulled wine, chocolate brandy cake, fruit salad and about a dozen other delicious things I can't remember now. Seasonal music and musicians are on standby (I shall mainly be playing the recorder this year), silly crackers are waiting to be pulled, the tree sparkles beautifully in the corner, and I have a lovely new dress hanging in the wardrobe. It should be a good 'un.

Going out into the garden this morning, I found that the mild weather we've had this autumn / early winter has meant a real profusion of interesting leaves, berries and even flowers which I could incorporate into the display of winter greenery that I normally put together to go on the mantlepiece above our fireplace. And, at long last, my Dad and I together also came up with a solution to the logistical problem I usually have when putting the display together - that the mantlepiece is rather narrow, the greenery gets quite heavy once you've got a few holly branches and bits of variegated bushes in there, and a blob of blu-tack just isn't adequate to hold it all together. Instead, this year, I picked out a suitable log from the wood-pile, and he split it in two and then drilled some holes in it for me, so that it could sit on the mantlepiece and have twigs poked into it. It works very well - and is making me wish I'd brought my digital camera up here to photograph it. Oh well - I'm sure it will be appreciated by the party-guests tonight, and maybe I'll be able to borrow the parental camera for blogging purposes? Yes - I'll go and enquire about that right now, I think!

I'm rather behind with documenting things I've done recently, and a combination of tiredness and busy-ness makes this unlikely to change soon. So, in the 10 minutes before I have to go and give a lecture, I present a really rushed outline of what I've been up to in the past few days:

Friday: went to Brum to see Andreas Scholl with La Mia Mama. The concert was entitled 'Senesino, Handel's Muse', and consisted entirely of arias originally written for the castrato Senesino (with a few instrumental interludes to give Scholl's voice a rest). Since Senesino was a contralto rather than a soprano, these can now be sung by Scholl, and he did so brilliantly. My stance on Scholl is that although I recognise his technical brilliance, my personal taste is such that I'm not actually that bowled over by the tones of his voice, especially when it is in the centre of its range (both in terms of pitch and volume). There's a slight rough, rushing sound around the edges which I'd prefer to do without. However, when called upon to swell and fade a long note, hit unusually high notes or perform complicated ornaments, the rushing sound vanishes, and he suddenly becomes some kind of vocal deity, causing jaws to fall in astonishment. Overall, I prefer the very pure sound of Robin Blaze's voice. But I admit that Scholl does beat Blaze when the stakes get really high, and he will always be more suited to operatic work for that reason.

Afterwards, we queued like a pair of fangirls for autographs, and I also bought the CD which Scholl has already produced of the evening's programme. Then went home and bought 'The Last Castrato', a collection of recordings made in the early 20th century by a man named Alessandro Moreschi. This was in response to the pre-concert talk, which had been all about castrati, and had revealed to me that there exists not one tiny snippet of this guy singing, as I'd thought, but in fact a whole plethora of the stuff. It also made me realise that, although not necessarily to modern tastes, he was a better singer than I'd previously believed. It'll take a while to arrive, since it's coming from America, but I can't wait to become more familiar with this voice.

Saturday: woke up in Brum having spent night with parents. Sat over coffee watching Dad replace the batteries in his 30-year-old Grundig 'Yacht Boy' radio, and explain how everyone in the country had been sent little stickers saying '3' and '4' like the ones on it when the change was made from the Third Programme and the Home Service to Radio 3 and Radio 4.

Then proceeded up to Manchester for angeoverhere's 30th birthday, where I caught up with some of my Bristol buddies and met some new faces from B'ham, Leeds and Manchester itself. We hung out for the afternoon in a gay bar called Taurus, and then headed for a Syrian restaurant in the evening, while Manchester made a fine attempt at exploding in celebration of Bonfire Night. Slept pretty well, and then had lunch together the next day, before heading back down to Oxford on the Sunday to finish off a lecture in a panic and deliver it on the Monday. It went fine, though. They always do.

Have also started to watch Imperium: Augustus recently, having finally worked out how to switch the Dutch subtitles off. It's very, erm... special, and will be blogged in detail later. And had a quick look on Monday at The Masque of the Red Death, realised the costumes aren't quite as amazing as I'd remembered, but have still had some decent ideas for the ball.

Well, it's lucky I'm such a quick typist (although I'm sure this is full of mistakes). Now for that lecture!

Edit: some small editing after the event to fill in details, clarify points and correct errors.