Kaiju Notes: Invasion of Astro-Monster (Ishirô Honda, 1965)

FEATURING:

Godzilla!

Rodan!

King Ghidorah!

1.

The sixth film to feature Godzilla, 1965’s ‘Kaijû Daisensô’ [‘War of the Monsters’], known to English speaking viewers as ‘Godzilla vs Monster Zero’ or, as Criterion’s box-set has it, ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’, feels very much of a piece with its predecessor, 1964’s Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster. The two films pretty much play as if they could have been shot back-to-back, although shooting dates listed on IMDB and variations in the credited crew suggest this was not in fact the case.

Nevertheless, they both include the same line-up of monsters (minus Mothra this time around – apparently she was initially in the script, but got nixed for budgetary reasons), both feature enjoyably wacky sci-fi storylines, and both are undermined by a lacklustre, kiddie-friendly approach to the requisite kaiju action.

For its opening hour in fact, ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’ gives little indication of its status as a kaiju movie. Instead, it plays more like one of Ishirô Honda’s straight SF movies, outlining the no nonsense interactions between humanity and a sneaky alien race who have popped up on the newly discovered Planet X, in a manner reminiscent of the director’s 1957 classic ‘The Mysterians’.

2.

On the plus side, a lot of the Showa-era retro sci-fi stuff showcased in ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’ is really rather delightful. Though these films are ostensibly set somewhere in the vicinity of the present day, the film begins with Akira Takarada and token caucasian Nick Adams (last seen around these parts as the exceptionally grumpy male lead in AIP’s Die Monster Die!, released the same year), manning a rocket-ship en-route to Planet X, which appears to be hanging way out there somewhere beyond Pluto. (Because hey, why not, right? I mean, the way things are progressing here in whizzo 1965, we’ll be shooting square-jawed guys out to the far end of the solar system in brightly coloured rockets before you know it! [2020 sad face. : ( ])

Soon, our astronauts are happily stomping about on the Planet’s rocky surface, and though, disappointingly, they do not encounter The Man From Planet X, they do observe these groovy sort of periscope / stairway things which pop up from under the ground, disrupting their radio contact with Earth, and hear Japanese language loudspeaker announcements informing them that they’re heading down below to meet the neighbourhood’s resident technologically superior alien race.

These guys, it transpires, have been forced underground because King Ghidorah (whom they call ‘Monster Zero’) has ravaged the surface of their world, Reign of Fire style. The Xiliens (as they actually call themselves) thus propose a deal, wherein they will ‘borrow’ Godzilla and Rodan from Earth to help resolve their three-headed space-dragon problem, and in return they’ll give us…. a cure for cancer! Pretty great deal, huh?

But wait! These guys all wear identical black leather jumpsuits, have no discernible facial expressions and wear wavo-type sunglasses at all times, concealing their eyes. As our two-fisted astronauts soon realise, they are clearly not to be trusted. But, back on Earth, the prospect of trading a couple of bad-tempered dinosaurs for the health and happiness of millions understandably proves just too tempting for the powers-that-be to resist.

Indeed, the Xiliens will even handle transport on the deal - which must have come as a relief to the the U.N. mail room staff - and the images I will probably remember most fondly from ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’ are those of the Xiliens’ dinky little UFOs tracking down our two resident kaiju in their hideaways (Godzilla has been chilling at the bottom of Lake Myojin in Japan’s Nagano Prefecture, for some reason) and transporting them through outer space suing high powered tractor beams. What fun!

3.

This reminds me, incidentally, of an issue that always bugs me in these ‘60s Godzilla sequels – once humanity is aware of their existence, how do the Japanese government seem to keep LOSING these giant, city-flattening monsters during the interim between movies, only to be surprised when they unexpectedly pop up somewhere new?

I mean, even leaving aside the fact that you’d presume an entirely new branch of science must have developed around the necessity of tracking, studying and containing these protean beasts, you’d think that someone would at least take the time to notice a giant and infamous monster stomping his way across a renowned beauty spot and submerging himself in a lake? Instead though, we seem to begin each movie with a round of “hmm, where could Godzilla possibly have gone?”, “oh my gosh, he’s just popped up over there, in another impressively scenic location!”, “ahh, run away, send in the little tiny tanks!”, etc.

I realise that kaiju hi-jinks must have become normalised to a certain extent in this movie-world, and that earth-bound monsters like Godzilla and Rodan perhaps don’t pose quite such an existential threat as they once did, but c’mon guys - the least you could do is keep an eye on them!

4.

The presence of Nick Adams in the cast of ‘..Astro-Monster’ - presumably flown in by Toho in recognition of the Godzilla films’ phenomenal success on the export market – also served to draw my attention to the strong sense of ‘Westernisation’ (Americanisation?) which predominates in these ‘60s kaiju movies – a trend which is particularly noticeable here, as Adams is pointedly established as “one of the guys”, hanging out and bantering (in dubbed Japanese) with his fellow astronauts. (He even offers his Asian buddies some typically forward American romantic advice, although it is he, rather than they, who ends up getting involved with a female Xilien spy – ah, the irony!)

In the original 1954 ‘Godzilla’, you’ll recall, domestic scenes retained the kind of distinctly Japanese character one would reasonably expect of a mid-century Toho or Daiei film, with characters seated at floor level, sometimes in traditional dress, and interacting with their family members in the warm yet somewhat formalised manner which continues to define many Japanese households to this day.

By the time we get to the likes of ‘..Astro-Monster’, or the same year’s truly demented ‘Frankenstein Conquers The World’ (also starring Adams) however, our central characters are predominantly young, single (or newly married) city-dwellers, who are generally depicted as living independently of their extended families, dwelling in groovily-furnished yet anonymous high rise apartments. They wear suits and twin-sets, swap snappy, casual dialogue with their co-habitants, swig highballs or martinis and sit down (at a raised table) to eat steak and chips for dinner.

For viewers familiar with the more traditional, inward-looking Japanese cinema of this era, this lack of a pronounced national identity can at times feel positively eerie, lending an uncanny, alienated aura to the stories’ cheerily two-dimensional human stories. Quite how audience responded to all this at the time, I’m unsure, but it must have been difficult for them not to have interpreted it to some extent as a statement of the filmmakers’ cultural sympathies.

In a sense, Toho could be seen to be taking the ‘borderless’ philosophy adopted by their far smaller rival Nikkatsu [see my posts here and here for more more discussion of this] to a weird new extreme within their sci-fi/monster movies, and the possible reasons for this are many and varied.

Most obviously, this ‘Westernised’ feel could be read as a nod to these films’ proven success overseas, whilst it also seems to me to reflect the grander, ‘worldwide’ and quasi-futuristic, scale of the movies’ subject matter, which often invokes the idea of international cooperation in space exploration or kaiju-fighting.

Beyond this though, I can’t help but feel that gives voice to some extent to the corresponding desire shared by many Japanese citizens in the post-war era for their country to move toward the adoption of a more homogenised [for which read: American] international capitalist culture. In other words, the very same yearning which can be identified in so many of Nikkatsu’s youth films, although it finds a less conflicted, more openly aspirational expression here.

In fact, I can easily imagine Yukio Mishima and his fellow resurgent nationalists absolutely spitting feathers about Toho’s perceived kow-towing to American cultural imperialism in these films, in the unlikely event that they ever found time to go and watch them in between kendo practice and brooding on the finer points of Bushido.

5.

I think it is probably safe to assume that, by this stage in the Godzilla franchise, Ishirô Honda’s heart simply wasn’t in it anymore. Though ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’ still delivers a wealth of brightly coloured fun for the kids (and the man-child retro-sci-fi enthusiasts alongside them), hitting all the beats one would reasonably expect of a Honda sci-fi movie, a feeling of tiredness and repetition seems to pervade the whole enterprise.

“This is not what I created Godzilla for”, Honda is reported to have icily stated when he saw the ludicrous / adorable ‘victory dance’ Eiji Tsuburaya and his team devised for The Big G to perform after he dispatches King Ghidorah following some half-hearted inter-planetary pushing and shoving at the film’s conclusion. As such, it is perhaps no surprise that the next entry in the franchise saw the venerable director temporarily stepping aside, allowing Toho to bring in a new broom and a distinct change of emphasis, leading, as I recall, to a considerably more satisfactory movie overall… but we’ll see how well my memory holds up on that score in a couple of weeks.

2018: BEST READS. (Part # 2)

The Virgin of the Seven Daggers: 

Excursions into Fantasy

by Vernon Lee

(Penguin Red Classics, 2008 /

collection originally compiled in 1962)

I think this was from the remaindered bookshop in East Dulwich? Price sticker on the back says £3.

Vernon Lee was the pen name of writer and art historian Violet Paget (1856-1935), and funnily enough, a very strange hardback compiling some of her work was one of the first books I ever scanned and posted on this weblog, way back in 2010. The best part of a decade later, I’ve finally found time to read some more of her work, courtesy of this recent Penguin edition, reprinting a ‘60s anthology of a set of stories originally published between about 1890 and 1910, I believe.

A remarkable personage by any yardstick, Paget/Lee may have been ostensibly English, but she was born in Boulogne and spent the vast majority of her adult life on the continent, eventually settling in Florence. In addition to her fiction, she wrote extensively on European travel, history and culture, and in her day she was considered a leading authority on the Italian Renaissance, as well as an enthusiastic advocate of the Aesthetics movement pioneered by Walter Pater in the late 19th century.

All of this comes across very strongly indeed in her ghost stories, which – in stark contrast to the Anglican parochialism favoured by her near-contemporary M.R. James – are all set in Southern Europe (Italy, and sometimes Spain or Greece), and are chiefly notable for their dense and intoxicating tapestry of esoteric historical detail, blending references to art, architecture, music, geography, aristocratic lineage, religious traditions, local legends and sundry other oddities into such a rich, brooding atmosphere of quasi-fantastical grandeur that it is difficult for an ignoramus such as myself to ascertain where her reportage of authentic period detail ends and her imagination begins.

The opening tale, ‘Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady’, concerns the illegitimate son of one Prince Balthasar Maria of the Red Palace at Luna, who, after incurring the Prince’s disfavour, finds himself exiled to a remote outpost of the kingdom, where he falls victim to the charms of the same predatory female snake spirit who did a number on one of his illustrious ancestors. (Mixing a decadent, fantastical atmosphere with a sardonic sense of humour, this miniature masterpiece was originally published in an 1895 issue of the notorious Yellow Book.)

‘Amour Dure’ meanwhile concerns a highly-strung young Austrian scholar who, whilst undertaking historical research in a mountainous Italian town, develops an unhealthy obsession with a notorious, Lucretia Borgia-like femme fatale who features prominently in the area’s folklore, and – in classic Jamesian fashion – pays dearly for his temporally unsound ardour.

‘A Wicked Voice’ – in which a similarly self-absorbed young composer working in Venice becomes haunted by the voice of an 18th century singer credited with uncannily abilities – has a disturbingly unglued, dream-like feel to it, culminating in a set-piece that feels as if it could have been shot by Dario Argento or Pupi Avati.

Most memorable of all though is probably this collection’s title story, a Spanish number in which the notorious sinner and womaniser Don Juan Gusman del Pulgar, Count of Mirador, uses fiendish necromancy to gain access to a secret subterranean world concealed beneath a tower of the Alhambra at Grenada, there to take possession of the ‘Moorish Infanta’, a Princess Bride who has lain there through the centuries in unholy, magical slumber. It’s quite something.

Needless to say, Vernon Lee’s fiction remains unfairly overlooked, and ripe for rediscovery. Although she began publishing these stories some years before James, they nonetheless represent a series of head-spinning twists on the same basic formula, so, if you’re in search of something a bit different for your Christmas ghost stories this year, look no further.

Maigret Travels South by Georges Simenon

(Penguin Crime, 1963 / 

originally published 1940)

No idea where this one came from. All those Penguin crime purchases blur into one, especially the Maigrets. I’d buy ‘em by the kilogram if I could. (The cover shows Rupert Davies as Maigret, from the BBC TV series.)

For some reason, my favourite Maigrets always seem to be the ones that take him outside of Paris. With typical Simenon wit, this particular short novel sees the Chief Inspector “travelling south” in more ways than one as he arrives in Cannes to investigate the case of a dilettante Australian wool millionaire found stabbed to death on his own doorstep.

Routine sleuthing soon leads Maigret to the backroom of the ‘Liberty Bar’, a commercially redundant, essentially closed establishment where the food is good and the landlady accomodating, but where the air is also heavy, with a persistent atmosphere of fated, self-indulgent melancholy hanging over the handful of down at heel, demi-monde denizens who congregate there.

Like all of the best Simenon stories, this is one in which Maigret’s personal inclinations and human sympathies find themselves directly at odds with his obligations as a detective, and in which he thus finds himself weighed down by the guilt of knowing that his intrusion into the small, self-contained world of the story’s characters – so beautifully drawn by Simenon – has led, inevitably, to its destruction.

Though perhaps no great shakes as a mystery, these hundred-and-something pages pack a considerable emotional punch, knotting up some of the same bits of your insides as the best literary noir. Highly recommended.

MW by Osamu Tezuka

(Vertical Inc hardback, translated by Camillia Nieh, 2007 /

originally serialised in Biggu Komikku manga, 1976-78)

This was a birthday present – thank you Satori.

Osamu Tezuka (1928-89) exercised such a profound influence over the development of Japanese manga as we know it today that some subsequent fans and creators have gone so far as to treat him as an actual, literal God – a claim that begins to make a certain amount of sense when one considers both his staggeringly prolific work-rate and the consistently high quality of his precise, impactful artwork and conceptually innovative storytelling.

Although Tezuka remains best known in the West as the creator of the iconic Astro-Boy, and for his epic, multi-volume biography of the Buddha, his later years saw him expanding into darker, more adult-orientated territory, drawing somewhat on the Taisho-era Ero-Guro tradition of writers like Edogawa Rampo, but blending this influence with his own stark, modernist aesthetic, pushing the limits of his imagination in ever more extreme directions.

Sprawling across over 500 densely-packed pages, ‘MW’ arguably represents the culmination of this particular strain of Tezuka’s work, and describing its contents as “dark” feels woefully inadequate.

Though impossible to summarise in full, the story here centres on the intertwined fate of a grown man and a young boy who – for reasons too convoluted to go into here – find themselves spending the night in a cave on the coast of a remote island. Venturing out the following morning, they discover that the entire population of the island has been exterminated by what is later revealed to have been a deadly experimental nerve gas named MW, stored there by the American military.

Years later, the older man has become a Catholic priest, but he is still driven to tormented, soul-endangering distraction by his continued association with the young boy, who – after nearly dying from his exposure to MW on the island - has rather inconveniently grown up to become an androgynous, Fantomas-style super-criminal and master of disguise. Seemingly devoid of human empathy, as if his “soul” had been surgically removed, he commits all manner of terrible and perverse outrages, seemingly for no reason other than his own cruel enjoyment.

In the course of the story that follows, Tezuka pulls no punches in depicting a range of subject matter that takes in genocide, paedophilia, serial murder, rape, bestiality, torture and familial suicide, but does so with a sense of carefully honed, story-driven artistry that pushes the work way beyond the level of mere “transgressive” button-pushing.

Indeed, the obsessive precision of Tezuka’s artwork provides an unsettling contrast to the outrageous, frequently melodramatic, nature of the events he depicts, adding a genuinely psychopathic edge to proceedings that leaves the author’s actual intentions feeling strangely ambiguous.

Should we read ‘MW’ as a meditation on Catholic guilt and the essential nature of evil, or as a bitter commentary (both allegorical and literal) on the malign effects of America’s post-war dominance of Japan? Was Tezuka deliberately setting out to shock and appall his readers, perhaps using extreme imagery to detract attention from the tale’s uncomfortable political sub-text? Or was he simply concocting a vast ‘shaggy dog story’; a needlessly convoluted saga whose pleasures arise simply from the wickedly unlikely contrivances of its surface level story-telling..?

Somewhat inevitably, the best answer is probably “all of the above and much more besides”, but, whatever you end up taking from it, ‘MW’ remains a dangerous, multi-faceted hydra of words and pictures in which we see a master craftsman pushing the metaphorical envelope about as far as it can possibly go, making for an experience not easily forgotten.

UFO Drawings from the National Archives 

by David Clarke

(Four Corners Irregulars hardback, 2017)

I bought this directly from Four Corners.

Between 1952 (when Winston Churchill demanded to know “..what all this flying saucer stuff amounts to”) and 2009 (when its operations were quietly shut down, having been deemed to have collected absolutely no useful intelligence whatsoever), The Ministry of Defense’s UFO Desk diligently collected and assessed untold thousands of reported UFO sightings across the British Isles.

Since 2007, when the desk’s files began to be declassified and incorporated into the National Archives, writer and academic David Clarke has been going through them with equal diligence, and as a result has compiled this attractive book, presenting a carefully curated selection of the drawings of alien spacecraft submitted to the MOD by members of the public during the years of the UFO desk’s operation.

As well as providing a wealth of rather splendid examples of quote-unquote ‘outsider art’, these drawings, accompanied by Clarke’s concise and non-judgemental summaries of circumstances surrounding their creation, provide an intriguing insight, not only into some very obscure corners of the 20th century British psyche, but also into what I have always considered to be the essential paradox underlying the UFO phenomenon.

Namely, the fact that, on the one hand, the vast majority of UFO reports are absolutely ludicrous - clearly beholden to the whims of popular culture and so completely lacking in plausibility, consistency or verifiable evidence that the possibility of their literal truth seems extremely unlikely.

But, on the other hand (and this in particular is highlighted by Clarke’s book), there is the fact that many of the people who make these reports do not seem to be the fantasists and attention-seekers that determined sceptics tend to assume, but quote-unquote ‘normal’, ‘sensible’ individuals with no prior interest in the subject, who in fact often seem embarrassed and upset by what they have witnessed, and beg the MOD not to publish their names or risk generating any publicity.

(Perhaps reflecting the demographic most likely to report their experiences directly to the government, a curious number of the witnesses featured in the book seem to have had a connection to the military or aerospace industries, and are apt to provide extremely detailed drawings of the craft they claim to have seen, complete with measurements and notes on construction materials, etc.)

Between these two impressions, something clearly doesn’t add up -- and it is this strange disjuncture which continues to fascinate, even as the fact that most first world citizens now essentially carry a HD video camera around in their pocket seems to have largely relegated UFOs to the status of a nostalgic, 20th century phenomenon.


Non-fiction-wise, I also read a great Pelican book about the history of Latin America this year, but I had to get rid of it because it had bookworm and was falling apart as I read it, so no review.

Mysterious Britain at the BFI.

BFI Flipside’s “Mysterious Britain” evening last week got off to an odd start in not quite the manner the organisers had anticipated, when Bruce Springsteen apparently announced a surprise public appearance to promote a documentary about himself, and claimed NFT Screen # 1, where the Flipside screening was due to take place, for that purpose.

I would have loved to witness the meeting between The Boss’s people and the soft-spoken British cinema archivist types, but needless to say, we’re now devoid of leg room, crammed into the substantially smaller NFT # 2. I don’t know whether or not late-arriving ticket-holders had to be turned away and given a refund, but I’m glad I got in early.

After a brief apology/explanation from curators Vic Pratt and William Fowler, it’s on with the show, the general gist of which is a collection of brief TV extracts dredged up from the BFI vaults, illustrating the British media’s approach to investigation of ‘strange goings on’ throughout the mid 20th century.

Proceedings begin with a 1973 broadcast on behalf of The Aetherius Society, a supremely weird religious sect based around the “sixty miles of audio tape” recorded by one Dr. George King, who claimed to be channelling the pronouncements of a holy being from Mars, who urged earth’s major religions to combine into some kind of benevolent mind-meld, turning back the tide of evil and atomic destruction. The footage of a young altar boy earnestly charging a battery with ‘prayer power’, backed up by an ethnically diverse congregation of four, was pricelessly eerie, as was the thought of an era in which BBC ‘community outreach’ funding could filter down to letting dubious outfits like this lot spread their message of hope via late night BBC2.

Next up, a 1972 edition of “The Sky At Night” which sees Sir Patrick Moore mixing it up with the druids during their midsummer rituals at Stonehenge. Sir Patrick says he found the druids to be pleasant and genuine bunch, before politely informing them that their veneration of the stones is clearly a load of bunk in the face of new research which reveals the Henge’s true function as a “primitive astral calculator”. “Well, there’s always 1973”, he cheerfully announces as the druids shuffle off at the end of their ceremony, disappointed that the overcast sky denied them a glimpse of the dawn. Words to live by indeed.

Sticking with standing stones and knighthood, Sir John Betjeman turns up next, narrating a short subject on the earthworks and stone circle at Avebury for a 1950s Shell Motor Oil travelogue series. Betjeman’s observations on the subject, though interesting, are strictly by the book, but the film is beautifully photographed. Black & white footage of the mysterious monoliths standing alone in a field of daisies and long grass with the scattered brick cottages on either side, is incredibly evocative, expressing the very heart of ‘weird England’ as it quietly thrived in the days of our parents and grandparents, almost too perfectly for words.


Next we have a full edition of an absolute genius ITV series from the late ‘50s entitled Out of Step, in which Daniel Farson, a sort of bullish proto-Boris Johnson figure, tracks down people who hold unusual views, and proceeds to antagonise and mock them. This week: people who believe in flying saucers! Are they cranks, frauds, or simply misguided? Farson’s first stop is the roof garden of the Rt. Hon. Brindsley Le Poer Trench, whose crumbling UFO paperbacks and inherently hilarious name certainly played a role in my childhood. Lord Trench gets bonus points for beginning his answer to the question ‘why do you believe in flying saucers’ with “well, speaking as the editor of Flying Saucer Review…”, and for repeatedly stressing that his sighting reports come from “serious, highly trained observers”, as opposed to, I dunno, some random bozos who just like wandering around staring at the sky. We get straight to camera statements from various of these observers, my favourite of which was a man who looked like a Dan Clowes caricature come to life, whose evidence of strange lights in the sky is somewhat undermined by the fact that his sightings have all taken place “in the area between two aerodromes”. If the aliens were to set up a base-camp on earth, he reasons, it would probably be in Stafford.

Subsequently, Farson seeks an opposing view from the retired Astronomer Royal, who sits in his drawing room absent-mindedly pondering the weight of the supplies these space-fellows would need to bring them to our solar system, and interviews a dentist who claims he was taken for a ride to Mars and Venus by interplanetary visitors (“if I may say so sir, it certainly sounds like one of us is being taken for a ride..”), and who states that the women on Venus were very beautiful indeed.

Looking back after subsequent decades in which the whole UFO mythos has taken on an increasingly dark and troubling tone, this programme’s light-hearted approach to the subject was a wonderful reminder of how simple and wholesome the whole business seemed prior to the arrival of cattle mutilation, recovered memory syndrome, suicidal cultists and the ever-present intimations of child abuse. I don’t know whether any other episodes of “Out of Step” have survived, but if so I’d love to see them – this one was a hoot.


Sixteen years into a darker future, and a queasy orange glow of deteriorated video tape colour hangs over a short news item about a young Birmingham couple sitting meekly whilst an exorcist (Church of England, apparently !?) banishes a poltergeist from their chilly-looking council house. The ghost has been doing terrible things, like turning the cooker off and hiding the husband’s wallet under the bed. The vicar conducts the ceremony from a little xeroxed booklet entitled “Exorcism”. I don’t know who wrote it, but it all sounds a bit fishy to me. Whilst we may be tempted here to focus our ghoulish retromancy on the kitchen’s lurid bad-trip flock wallpaper or the husband’s Tony Iommi approach to personal grooming, the truly notable thing in this case I feel is the way the parents leave their toddler to play unaccompanied on the front lawn for an extended period of time as they dutifully accompany the priest in his somewhat questionable business.

Back to the comforts of the black & white era, and next we have a delightfully baleful short programme from 1964, in which a BBC reporter recruits a cheerfully imaginative local historian to help interpret the remnants of several apparent folk magic ceremonies conducted in ruined churches in East Anglia. The presenter gives us a right mouthful in his introduction, automatically linking these rather generic magical talismans with a survival of pre-Christian Celtic tradition, which he then defines as “..the worship of Pan, or Lucifer”. Hmm. Anyway, he gets the biggest laugh of the night when he announces “it may be shocking to us to learn of the survival of these dark traditions, over fifteen hundred years since Christianity was accepted as the sole religion of the British Isles. But then… this is Norfolk.”

Perhaps my favourite item of the evening was a contemporary news investigation of the infamous Highgate Vampire flap, a sequence of events sparked by a spate of grave desecrations which took place in Highgate Cemetery through 1970. As The Sun reported on 19 August 1970; “A man armed with a wooden stake and a cross went on a vampire hunt in a cemetery. But all he found was the police. And they arrested him. Alan Farrant, aged 24, told magistrates at Clerkenwell, London yesterday: ‘my intention was to search out the supernatural being and destroy it by plunging the stake in its heart’”.


Farrant, a “former tobacconist of no fixed abode” according to this news item, was subsequently acquitted in court, and when we join him here he’s up to his old tricks again, clambering over the wall of the cemetery after-hours for his regular anti-Vampire patrol. Farrant insists he has seen Satanists at work in the cemetery at night, consorting with the figure of a glowing eight foot high vampire, and that it is up to him to try to stop them.

Meanwhile, the supremely Garth Marenghi-like Mr. Sean Manchester, self-styled president of the British Occult Society, considers Farrant a rank amateur, going about his own unauthorised nocturnal vigils with a more sombre demeanour and an altogether more expensive-looking crucifix and stake combo. The British Occult Society appears to consist largely of Manchester presiding over counterfeit Golden Dawn rituals in his darkened bedsit (WHITE MAGIC, he insists). When he illustrates the best methods of destroying a vampire for our reporter, he speaks with the authority of a man who has seen Peter Cushing’s performance in ‘Dracula’ more than once.

The view of the long-suffering Highgate Cemetery caretaker on the impending occult battle transpiring on his territory? “Well they’re a load of bloody nutcases, aren’t they” he sighs, sweeping up the broken glass of another nocturnal trespasser. It is notable I think that many of the incidents that inspired this vigilante action in the first place (a body dragged from it’s grave and beheaded, another staked with an iron spike, etc) seem perhaps to have been the result of some similarly misguided anti-vampire activity; if not the work of morbid schoolkids, then possibly of Farrant himself, or some other sorry soul who’d taken all those Hammer flicks a bit too much to heart..?

From the ridiculous back to the sublime, the screenings conclude with “The Living Grave”, a half-hour TV drama from 1980, scripted by Penda’s Fen writer David Rudkin, based around the premise that a young woman under hypnosis is channelling the spirit of Kitty Jay, tragic subject of a well known Dartmoor folk tale, whose grave is apparently marked with fresh flowers to this day. Mixing highly convincing hypnosis scenes, in which we witness a psychologist slowly guiding ‘Kitty’ back through the details of her life, with documentary-like footage of a some guys visiting the locations she is describing, “The Living Grave” is an extremely effective work, using its paranormal conceit to draw us completely into the short, sad life of a rural orphan girl in 18th century England.

Although far more straight-forward than “Penda’s Fen”, “The Living Grave” is no less poignant in its forceful demonstration of the way in which the past can live on in the present, not through the contrivances of spooks and hauntings, but through the continuation of stone and wood and landscape, like the oak beam in the barn where Kitty Jay’s tale ends, holding the memory of a disgraced 18th century teenager kicking away a bail of hay and hanging herself, as we see a 20th century farmer beneath it, messing around with some fertilizer sacks. It’s all happening at once, after all. Certainly the most chilling moment I experienced over the course of this 21st century Halloween, and a fitting end to another exquisite evening of retromancy from BFI’s Flipside strand.

Outside the auditorium, it looks like someone has knocked over some of those rope cordon thingys, and torn some posters off the wall. By the back entrance, some heavy looking security types are loading gitar flight-cases into a Transit van, saying stuff like “Ok, we’re all done” and “go, go!” Boy, it sure woulda been cool to see Bruce Springsteen.