MELANCHOLIA

“My Taste for… Everything Like Mummy is Decided.”

Paean of Nostalgia For mid-60s Horror

Mention horror films today and you can bet your life titles offered up will include Hostel, Saw, Wolf Creek, Cabin In the Woods, or Blair Witch Project, - even Hellraiser. A wide divide exists now between what was once celluloid horror and what is now perceived as horror film. What then distinguishes the taste for early Hammer and Roger Corman? I believe it might be a taste for melancholy. 



"From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were - I have not seen

As others saw - I could not bring

My passions from a common spring..."

Edgar Allan Poe (Alone)



One might suggest a mote of melancholia divides the gothic horror (Hammer etc) enthusiast from the fan of the so-called splatter or gorno movie (or “exploitation trash” if you‘re Mark Kamode). The moviegoer entranced by the subterranean depths of Castle Dracula or the antics of Vincent Price’s Roderick Usher, or Christopher Lee’s Count Drago, or Boris Karloff keeping dark secrets in The Terror, must align himself with a sensibility that originates with an earlier age, with the first ‘tourists’ who found new pleasures during the eighteenth century, in the contemplation of old ruins. For ruins were believed haunted and now implied the possibility of sinister development.

Percy Bysshe Shelley in his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (pub.1817) would write,

“ While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped

Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.”

William Beckford’s heroine (in Vathek pub.1786) is made to declare, “I myself have a great desire to… visit the subterranean palace, which no doubt contains whatever can interest persons like us: there is nothing so pleasing as retiring to caverns; my taste for dead bodies, and everything like mummy is decided.”

Make no mistake, Forrest James Ackerman could without doubt, claim credit for many of us finding our way via the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland to Shelley, Keats, Poe, Beckford, ‘Monk’ Lewis, Mary Shelley and Ann Radcliffe. Thankfully I also had the dubious benefit of a local bookshop known affectionately by local residents as “Dirty Dick’s”.






St Alban Street, Weymouth, Dorset : In a busy little side street in Weymouth could be found 'Dirty Dick's bookshop'. Long gone, it is now a lighting shop. Today, across the street, can be found a rather agreeable fantasy bookshop called Imagine Books where earlier this year I purchased an old copy of Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker which I am pretty sure I originally purchased in Dirty Dick's! (well, maybe not the same actual copy!!!). In my day Imagine Books was a fascinating antiques shop aptly named Ye Old Curiosity Shop. You could see a mummy's hand in a glass case there (not for sale) amongst other curios worthy of a movie set.

 



Of Paper Rounds & Paperbacks

In Weymouth my Sunday newspaper round was generously paid. The shop was a small beachside store in Wyke Regis and I was the lone paperboy, responsible for delivering to houses spread over several square miles on a Sunday morning. In order to carry so many newspapers (whatever the weather), my father attached two ex-army canvas bags to the rear of my bicycle, one each side of the back wheel. It worked a treat.

And where else was I to spend my well earned income if not at the cinema (or the roller skating rink)? On ‘monster mags’ of course! And if I didn’t find the latest Famous Monsters (always a month or two later than the American cover-date) at the paper shop in Weymouth's St Edmund Street, then it was to ‘Dirty Dick's’ that I went in search of new treasures.

                     

A weekly visit to Dirty Dick's bookshop with it’s big windows displaying intriguing, and eye catching (if not downright lurid and politically incorrect) adult magazines, (no pc in those days!) mostly from the USA, was one of anticipation of the unexpected; the collector’s raison d'etre.
One could rely upon the proprietor’s ever changing stock of American magazines to throw up a not-seen-before Creepy, Eerie, or Monster World, or Shriek, or Monsters Unlimited... sometimes reduced to a shilling!



Yet more importantly the stock of newly published paperbacks offered the young reader the ideal introduction to the classics behind the Hollywood monsters.

In gradual succession I added to my bookshelf Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, (and Dracula’s Guest), Poe’s tales of terror, classic ghost stories, Robert Louis Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde), H P Lovecraft and Robert Bloch. I still have a few of these paperbacks on my shelves today, some 47 years later!

And what treasures they reveal; Three Gothic Novels (The Castle of Otranto/ Vathek/ Frankenstein; published by Penguin Books,1968) has a defining preface by Mario Praz, a revealing and page-turning introduction to the whole genre, his The Romantic Agony in a nut-shell. Here we find the steps to the subterranean passages of Castle Dracula or indeed Roissy (Histoire d’O) are worn with time and are hung with the cobwebs of themes eternal.

Here are found the inaccessible castles in the mist, the doomed Byronic ‘hero’, the fatal nobleman, the dangerous follower of dark practices, the seductive femme fatal, the persecuted damsel in distress, and the ghosts and spectres, the gorgons and hydras, that are transcripts, types… “the archetypes are in us and eternal” (Charles Lamb).



“The tale of terror… has found its best medium in the film.” - Mario Praz





Cameo: The 'fatal lover' of Mario Praz' The Romantic Agony: Christopher Lee, never more cooly menacing than as the sinister Dolmance in Jess Franco's Eugenie. Also above: the castles of Pit & the Pendulum, and Fall of the House of Usher, Hazel Court in Curse of Frankenstein and Jane Fonda in Spirits of the Dead (Histoires Extraordinaires 1968), Vincent Price and  Bela Lugosi.

Hammer Horror: Answer me this: How was it that Hammer with its constraining budgets, dusty clichés and often, second-rate actors, consistently achieved some of the most splendid moments of screen excess directly akin to Shelley’s evocation of the Medusa, “the tempestuous loveliness of terror”? Here a ghostly spectre rises from its grave in Hammer’s Twins of Evil (1971), floats across a grave yard and enters the study of a man engrossed in melancholic distraction, revealing itself finally to be a beautiful and desirable young seductress.

 






Forever Haunted: Vincent Price as Verden Fell in Roger Corman's Tomb of Ligeia (1964) "Hypnotism's effect on memory interests me more than it's curative powers... Through it one is able to call to mind things long forgotten... or to forget things best not called to mind..."

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OUTER SPACE!

 

COMICS, THE SPACE RACE,
MONSTER THRILLS & MORE!

The Jellymen Are Coming...
It is the hanging onto the things that give us pleasure that makes one a collector – and later too, the saving, rescuing, even conserving or restoring things – but no horror or fantasy film fan really ever needed, in reality, an example of a Forrest J Ackerman. We were already ‘collectors’ at an early age; comics, bubble gum cards, cigarette cards, matchbox tops, and general ephemera such as postage stamps, foreign coins, old keys... anything slightly curious or exotic!

If you were not influenced by your peer group at school then to be influenced by your parents was a distinct possibility. My father, having grown up in the East End of London with little to call his own, made sure my sister and I were well supplied with comics (and sweets!) on Fridays, 'pay-day'. So at the end of the week copies of Dandy or Beano appeared, - Beezer and Topper were his preference (and he was a big fan of Jane and Garth in the Daily Mirror), or War comics passed onto him by work mates. Later pocket-money was proffered and at the local shop down the road, the choice of comic, be it Victor or Valiant, Hornet or Hotspur, Lion or Tiger... was often influenced by the ‘free gift’ on offer that particular week!

Below: a regular free gift in UK comic weeklies
(photo: Lew Stringer from his BLIMEY! blog)

 

Trips to the open air market in Harlow's new town centre were an opportunity to purchase second hand copies of imported Action, Superman, Batman or World’s Finest. ‘DC Comics’ were much favoured, a little rarer in those days, and a taste of another world – America with its big cars, bubble gum and “Tootsie Rolls”, sky scrapers and Cape Canaveral, and within the DC pages, "100 Toy Soldiers" for just $1.25!

For my generation, born even before war-time rationing had ended, the race to put men into space was the true Wonder of the Age. Rockets and spacemen – how we looked forward to the future! And whilst we busied ourselves pasting newspaper clippings of the first satellite missions, into our scrapbooks, we were captivated and thrilled by the wonders of DC Comics and our home-grown Topper, Beezer and Eagle weeklies.
Between the launching of the Russian Sputnik in the autumn of 1957 and the launch of Telstar in the summer of 1962, we thrilled to the Jellymen (Feb 1960 - September 1960), The Black Sapper (1959) and his futuristic tunnelling machine called the Earthworm, Robot Archie (the most popular strip in Lion during the 1960s), Captain Condor – Space Pilot, and Dan Dare – Pilot of the Future!

The Jellymen, I should point out, were not creatures from space but creatures from the depths of the sea - and somehow all the more terrifying. A few short years later we were kept in suspense by The Iron Eaters, another centre pages adventure in the Beezer, in which Earth is threatened by huge iron-eating sponges from space. Blowing one up in spectacular fashion only resulted in a multitude of mini-sponges on the rampage! Both The Iron Eaters and The Jellymen were drawn by the uniquely talented Ken Hunter.

TV watching c.1960, Harlow, Essex




Scary: ITV's Pathfinders In Space

 

Television, even if it remained for many of us quite small and in black & white for some years to come, was another opportunity for suspense and monsters. Whilst our parents thrilled to Quatermass & the Pit (1958), the last of a trilogy that kept the whole nation in thrall during its initial outing, us youngsters had to wait until 1960 for our very own space thrills in Target Luna (featuring a trip around the moon!), and its sequel Pathfinders in Space (in which two space ships set off on the first trip to the Moon and encounter a third ship of unknown origin). I recall the cliff-hanger sequences of the crew exploring the Moon's surface scared the pants off us! Target Luna and the three sequels were enormously popular at the time. One episode was broadcast on Christmas Day 1960 and the production team claimed it had the second highest audience of the day after the Queen’s Speech. An academic study of children's attitudes to television viewing found the Target Luna audience to be, "discerning, intelligent and capable to handle new and innovative subject matter”.

Kids Stuff: Target Luna

A rather more ‘adult’ sci-fi thriller for which I was somehow allowed to stay up late, during the autumn nights of 1961, was the outstanding A for Andromeda, about messages from outer space and a computer creating an artificial girl in the form of newcomer Julie Christie. It was highbrow stuff and shot Christie to film stardom!


Girl from Outer Space: Julie Christie



String-puppets entertained us with the futuristic Supercar (1961), and Fireball XL5 (1962) and Dr Who made his first appearance on our TV screens, with monsters, galore in 1963. The whole family thrilled to that one; strange planets, giant moths and fearsome Daleks!

Bug Eyed Monsters! : Did we really hide behind the settee?
The very first Dr Who, fondly remembered: William Hartnell (1908 – 1975)



Puppet drama & Dr Who's Daleks become comic adventures in the popular TV 21



Yet it was scares of another kind which found us all sat around our TV set in 1966 and later in 1968; Mystery and Imagination (24 episodes). Who now remembers David Buck introducing each week, yet another remarkable and sometimes spine-tingling TV production of classic Poe (‘The Fall of the House of Usher’), Sheridan Le Fanu (‘Carmilla’), or Louis Stevenson (‘The Body Snatcher’), and later ‘Frankenstein’ (11/11/1968) and ‘Dracula’ (18/11/1968) staring Ian Holm and Denholm Elliott respectively? These two productions are outstanding. They are surely as close as any filmmaker has come in attempting fidelity to the original gothic novels.

Superb Gothic thrills:  Mystery & Imagination

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END NOTE: "Dan Dare (full name Colonel Daniel McGregor Dare) was chief pilot of the Interplanet Space Fleet. He was born in Manchester, England, in 1967 and educated at Rossall School. Although not a super-hero, he sometimes pulled off exceptional piloting and often proved extraordinarily lucky. He excelled at jiu jitsu, but he most often found non-violent solutions to predicaments. He was bound by a sense of honour, never lied, and would rather die than break his word. His lean-faced character was recognisable by the outer tips of his eyebrows, which were wavy. His uniform looked like a typical British Army type (Frank Hampson used his own World War II army uniform as a model), though a lighter green. In place of British rank insignia it had coloured stripes and circles on the shoulder boards. His cap badge was a vertical, antique rocketship in a circle with one five-pointed star on either side. Initially, Dare was to be portrayed as a chaplain."

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Famous Monsters:

Peter Cushing OBE

26 May 1913 - 11 August 1994

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"X" films for Sailors!

Thrills In The Dark…

(or Lost Cinemas of My Youth:

Harlow, Weymouth & Portland)

My earliest memory of film-going is of wanting to hide behind the cinema seats in fear, not surprisingly, of the flying ‘monkey-men’ in Wizard of Oz. This would have been in the later half of the 1950s. I was extremely young and it is little wonder that later in life I so easily found a taste for being scared in the dark by movie monsters!

This must have been at Harlow New Town’s temporary cinema the Regal, which was opened in 1952 (the year I was born) in a factory on the Temple Fields industrial estate where my father worked. The Regal Cinema was the first post-World War II cinema to be constructed in England. It was designed to be either a factory unit or a cinema, by the Harlow Development Corporation architect F. Gibberd.

The Regal Cinema opened on 8th August 1952 with Michael Dennison in Angels One Five. It was the first cinema in the newly constructed town. All seating was on a single floor. It was taken over by the Rank Organisation on 28th February 1955, although it was never re-named Odeon.



Crowds gather for the opening (1952) of the temporary cinema, Harlow



 

When the new Odeon, situated in the town centre, the High, opened on 1st February 1960, the Regal was closed and the staff were transferred to the new cinema. The Regal was converted into a factory, known as Regal Works. Since 2003, it has been converted into offices, known as Regal House.

The new Harlow Odeon (1961) before shops were built either side

At the newly opened Odeon I recall being on first-aid duty as a very young St John’s Ambulance cadet for several Saturday mornings. Old black and white fifties matinee ‘cliff-hanger’ serials were still being shown in those days and were lapped up by the audience of predominantly young and very noisy boys. This was our “Saturday morning flicks”.

Family outings to the Odeon were a huge treat. The films were big too and included El Cid (1961) and Taras Bulba (1962). Usually the outing was rounded off by a visit to the Wimpy Bar, a new thing then. I recall it all seemed very “American”. My mother always ordered a Rum Baba!

I remember as us kids got older and more independent of our parents, we would ask complete strangers to “get us in” at the Odeon, if the “A” certificate forbade unaccompanied minors. One such film was The Long Ships (1964) and I remember we remained in our front seats at the end of the film in order to see it for at least a second viewing! You could in those days.

The Odeon in Harlow New Town was the first new cinema to be built for Rank after the war (others were completions of pre-war schemes) and it opened with Follow A Star. It was designed by T. P. Bennett & Son and had 1,244 seats on a single floor in the stadium plan. The projection suite was suspended above the rear stalls and had an almost level throw to the large screen.

In June 1987, it apparently closed for tripling and the rear stalls were converted into two smaller cinemas whilst the front retained the original box and screen. Refurbished in 2001 the cinema was re-branded with the new Odeon style. Yet it sadly closed in August 2005.

The closed Odeon, Harlow

Seaside cinema:
In 1963 my family moved from Harlow to Weymouth. I was eleven. The cinema choice (two cinemas = two screens; no multiplexes in those far off days!) was between the rather grand Gaumont in St Thomas Street, Weymouth (renamed the Odeon in 1968) or the less grand and quite small Odeon in Gloucester Street, (renamed the Classic in 1967). Both cinemas kept the eager film fan such as myself, busy with such new releases as First Men In The Moon, 633 Squadron, The Moonspinners, and The Train (quickly followed by Von Ryan‘s Express). One teacher took our class to see Becket.

Edward Judd and Lionel Jeffries: First Men In the Moon (1964)

For a few short years my newly acquired addiction for horror movies was played out between these two cinemas (plus what my mother called a “fleapit”, on Portland) - that is, up until I left school and left Weymouth.

Weymouth was a brief bus ride from home in Wyke Regis. An after midnight twenty-minute walk back from town was necessary if I had attended the Friday night Late-Night Horror show at the Classic (youngsters had it easier in the USA where vintage horrors were then being shown weekly on television!).

I have fond memories of the Classic and the classic horror movies (some twenty or thirty years old!) shown therein. After the renaming in 1967 I recall the Odeon in St Thomas Street usually had the latest big releases leaving the Classic booking lesser films. However, the inventive manager at the Classic would take full advantage of the “X”-ploitation end of the cheap films available, having occasionally a week long programme of horror movies, a different double bill each day! It was a bit hit and miss. They were often the cheaper b-movies of their day, - but what a joy! 

Friday nights at 10.30 or 11pm was usually “late-night horror night” with Roger Corman classics such as The Terror (1963), or Universal classics such as House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945) – all rather grainy, scratched and with the occasional jump or bump. No digital in those days! Missing bits of dialogue were the norm with such old films and often caused moments of unintended mirth.

Now long gone, the Classic apparently opened in 1933 (as the Odeon), built for and operated by Oscar Deutsch’s Odeon Theatres Ltd. It was a converted bus garage and originally seated 541 in stadium style on one floor. Apparently this was the second circuit Odeon cinema, which is interesting as most of the subsequent Odeon’s were purpose built and renowned for their lavish architectural design. The site in Gloucester Street, Weymouth was a modest affair in comparison, but when it opened there were extensively painted rural Dorset scenes as mural decorations on the auditorium walls.

The murals were painted over in around 1939. It was all red flocked wallpaper and red drapes by the time I took my seat in the dark in 1963/64 to watch such films as Dr No (rebooked following the huge success of From Russia With Love). On 10th December 1967, the Odeon became the Classic before changing hands yet again when it became part of the Cannon Group and was re-named Cannon.



The "Classic" Weymouth, when previously named "Odeon"



As a young teenager I got to know the manager at the Classic and would beg posters or film stills. He was only too willing to oblige if duplicates were waiting to be sent down the line along with the film. He even booked one or two of my suggested horror features. Barbara Steele in The Revenge of the Vampire (1960) (aka Black Sunday) was one, just then made available to the UK, after an eight year ban. I saw Frankenstein (1931) and the Bride of Frankenstein (1935) at late-nights at the Classic too but the Classic could also be relied upon for excellent movies of the time including 2001 - A Space Odyssey and Barbarella!

By the social standards of the 1960s, Black Sunday
was considered unusually gruesome, and was banned
in the U.K. until 1968 because of its violence. It was
released in the UK as Revenge of the Vampire



Later in 1994, the Weymouth Classic became part of Peter Walker’s Picturedrome Theatres Ltd. and was renamed the Picturedrome. The cinema continued as part of the Picturedrome chain until its closure on 31st October 1999, which was due to the opening of the Cineworld multiplex in New Bond Street. In around 2004, the old Classic was demolished, apart from the south facing wall, and by March 2005, flats had been built on the site.

The larger ‘Odeon’ (initially Gaumont) in St Thomas Street in Weymouth town centre (where I recall seeing Planet of the Apes and The Boston Strangler upon release) had a long and chequered history. The premises were originally known as The Jubilee Hall and it was presenting film shows as well as live entertainment as far back as February 1909. Throughout the 1920’s it went through several name changes (as it would throughout its life) including The Royal Jubilee Hall and The Opera House.

In 1926 extensive building work and alterations were carried out on the site under the supervision of cinema architect William Edward Trent. The new look theatre included a balcony lounge, a cafe, dance hall and two boxes in the auditorium. The proscenium was 38 feet wide, the stage 30 feet deep and there were eight dressing rooms. Seating capacity was for 1,400 in stalls and circle. The venue reopened as the Regent Theatre under the ownership of Provincial Cinematograph Theatres(PCT) on 2 August 1926 with a live show entitled “Welcome Home”. The first film was Elaine Hammerstein in  Parisian Nights screened on 8th August 1926. PCT were taken over by Gaumont-British in the 1930’s and the site was renamed as the Gaumont on 26th February 1951.

Since demolished: Weymouth's "Gaumont" that became "Odeon"

On 22nd September 1968, it was re-named Odeon. Subsequently the Odeon became the Top Rank Club, which lasted until 8th February 1976 when The Rank Organisation leased the site to CC Leisure Ltd. who renamed it as The New Invicta Cinema & Bingo Hall. However, this only lasted for little under a year due to poor public support and the site was closed on 29th January 1977. The last films screened here were The Language of Love and Blue Sextet. The building operated as a bingo club from 7th April 1977, and was closed and demolished in December 1989. The site became a car park and by 2004 the area was re-developed as Debenham’s store and other retail shops, adjacent to the new Cineworld multiplex.

Portland's Regal:　

Another local cinema that could be relied upon for vintage horror fare was the Regal on Portland, a bus ride away, across the Chesil Beach causeway.

The "Regal" Portland, before it burnt down (photo: Geoff Kirby)



This was another nice old cinema but one which on occasion attracted a dodgy type of clientele. I remember a rather scruffy older gentleman who not only attempted to pick my pocket in the dark but eventually dozed off leaning up against me. Had I been old enough to have the courage to complain, or indeed if the theatre had not been so full as to permit a change of seat, I would have enjoyed the film all the more. But there you are; experiences in the dark. What that particular film was I can no longer recall, though I do remember seeing Hammer’s Dracula (1958) (the Horror of Dracula in the USA) for the first time on that particular screen (no videos in those days!) and was very grateful to the Regal for that! - and the Boris Karloff feature Black Sabbath (1963) (a Euro-Horror considered a classic nowadays, directed as it was by Mario Bava!). On this occasion the effective make-you-jump moments were enough to send several teenage girls running for the exit during the Karloff segment (based on Tolstoy's 'The Wurdalak'), causing much murmur and further anticipation amongst the, once again, capacity audience, for possible further shocks to come!

The Regal, Portland, had been built in 1932 and is mainly remembered for its rather specialised entertainment for sailors from the nearby Royal Navy Dockyard as it frequently showed steamy 'X' Certificate films.

Later, like so many cinemas it became a popular Bingo Hall. In the 1990s it had become 'Rumours Nightclub' and featured a large model aircraft hung from the ceiling of the dance floor.

Like so many other buildings on Portland, it caught fire one evening. The burned out hulk disfigured the shopping area until it was demolished and eventually the site was cleared and a small development of houses was built.

The majestic Mr Lee in Hammer's first "Dracula" (1958)

One last note on old cinemas

I have sat in the dark in some real flea-pits in my time. There was one shabby little cinema in Bristol (long gone, I imagine) where I took myself on a Saturday afternoon in 1969 to see a particularly seedy double bill which included Night of the Doomed (aka The Faceless Monster or Nightmare Castle) - now also considered something a classic of 60s European horror). The cinema was tiny. Once you had paid for your ticket through the box office window one stride from the street, you stepped through a tatty old curtain straight into the darkness of the auditorium!



One time in Leyton, East London, the occasional stifled scream (nothing to do with the vintage Hammer film being shown) alerted the rest of us in the meagre early evening audience, to the fact that there were live rats (not a horror movie theatre gimmick!) scurrying about at floor level amongst the discarded sweet wrappers. I spent the whole film with my feet up on the chair in front of me trying to ignore the occasional rustling of silver paper chocolate bar wrappings beneath my seat!

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