RIP Lindsay Kemp

Deeply saddened to hear of the death of Lindsay Kemp at the age of 80.

Kemp was a truly avant garde artist, a groundbreaking dancer, mime and choreographer whose influence cannot be underestimated; he taught Kate Bush to dance, taught David Bowie mime and helped him to create personas such as Ziggy Stardust, and worked with film auteurs such as Ken Russell (Savage Messiah) and Derek Jarman (Sebastiane and Jubilee). He even appeared in the seminal cult horror classic The Wicker Man. 

Born near Liverpool in 1938, Kemp grew up in poverty in a South Shields one-parent family. He discovered his love of performing in the region's working men's clubs but it wasn't until he saw his first ballet at the age of 17, with fellow Bradford College of Art student David Hockney, that he transformed himself, studying dance in London with Hilde Holgar and mime with Marcel Marceau. He formed his own dance company in the 1960s and met the 19-year-old David Bowie in Covent Garden in 1966. He became Bowie's mentor and lover, choreographing the singer's Ziggy Stardust concerts. In 1974 he took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm with his performance of Flowers, based on Jean Genet's Notre Dame des Fleurs, and his fame and success was secured.

He taught Kate Bush to dance finding the future singer 'shy'. She later dedicated her song Moving to him, pushing a copy under the door of his flat. It came as a surprise to Kemp as he had no idea she was a singer. Later, Kemp starred as the enigmatic guide in her film, The Line, The Cross & The Curve (pictured above) Today, Bush paid tribute to her mentor; "To call him a mime artist is like calling Mozart a pianist. He was very brave, very funny and above all, astonishingly inspirational. There was no one quite like Lindsay. I was incredibly lucky to study with him, work with him and spend time with him. I loved him very much and will miss him dearly. Thank you, dear Lindsay"

Kemp died at his home in Italy, aged 80. To pay tribute, here's that Kate Bush track that he was he unwitting inspiration for.

RIP

RIP Robin Hardy

Another sad passing to record today; Robin Hardy, director of acclaimed cult horror The Wicker Man, died yesterday at the age of 86.

Born in October 1929, Hardy commenced his career overseas in Canada making drama for the Esso World Theatre. Returning to the UK in the '60s, Hardy launched the company Hardy Shaffer Ferguson Avery, making commercials and information films. The Shaffer in question was writer Anthony Shaffer, and the partnership would go on to produce the film they are both perhaps best known for, The Wicker Man, in 1973. Hardy would go on to write the subsequent novelisation of the film five years after its release, which began his career as an author too.

Hardy continued to work, exploring similar themes borne from his most famous film. In 1986 he made The Fantasist, a serial killer drama which he also wrote, and three years later he co-wrote and produced the film Forbidden Sun which concerned the world of secret and repressive cults.

In 2006 Hardy's book Cowboys For Christ was published. The novel is considered a semi-sequel to The Wicker Man dealing as it does in similar themes and issues arising from the clash between Christianity and Paganism. This was subsequently turned into a 2011 film, The Wicker Tree, written and directed by Hardy. Critically and commercially mauled, it proved to be his last production. But Hardy takes his rightful place in the history of British film for creating something as distinctive, original and as highly influential as the 1973 classic.

RIP

RIP Aubrey Morris

News of another sad passing, veteran actor Aubrey Morris has died at the age of 89

Born in 1926, of Jewish-Ukranian descent Aubrey Steinberg studied at RADA and made his stage debut in 1944. A versatile and prolific performer, he was the grand master of the sinister and camp, often portraying unctuous and cunning oily types. He is perhaps most famous for his role as the probation officer Mr Deltoid in A Clockwork Orange and Morris the gravedigger in The Wicker Man, two absolute classics of the 1970s.

Further film credits included roles in Up The Junction, The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery, Ken Russell's Lisztomania, Lifeforce, The Rachel Papers, My Girl 2 and the classic Hammer horror Blood From The Mummy's Tomb 

His TV credits included roles in ITC favourites like The Saint, The Prisoner and Danger Man, The Champions and Man In A Suitcase, The Avengers, Space 1999, Lovejoy, The Sweeney and Z Cars, classic serials and period dramas such as Cold Comfort Farm, Disraeli and Oliver Twist, comedies like The Rag Trade, The Fenn Street Gang, Not On Your Nellie, Chance In A Million, and Hot Metal. Moving to the States in later life he also cropped up in Murder She Wrote, Sledgehammer!, Columbo, Boy Meets World, Babylon 5, Alien Nation, Deadwood and his last role this year, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

RIP

Britt

I especially love that top photograph, taken by the brilliant Terry O'Neill

Theme Time : Candidate - Ideal

Ideal was the BBC3 'dark' comedy series written by Graham Duff and starring Johnny Vegas (a native of St Helens, just like me) it ran for seven series from 2005 up until 2011 when some trendy wendy idiot decided to cancel it.

Wonderfully trippy and surreal yet with a marked dry northern wit that helped ground the material, Ideal told the story of Moz (Vegas) a small time cannabis dealer and possible agoraphobic who operated from his dingy flat in Salford which he shared with long term girlfriend Nikki (Human Traffic's Nicola Reynolds) and later, slow witted Jenny played by Sinead Matthews. Each episode was set in and around the flat and saw Moz deal to the various larger than life customers who drop by including Cartoon Head, a bizarre mute and menacing gangster who habitually wears a cartoon mouse mask, his associate Psycho Paul who resembles a missing Gallagher brother, Brian, the outwardly flamboyant and deeply promiscuous homosexual (played by the series writer Graham Duff) and PC, a police constable who manages to secure most of Moz's stock for him from raids. Known only as PC in the first four series, the audience presume it is because of his job, but it is subsequently revealed he has the misfortune of sharing his name with the singer Phil Collins!

In series 6, Hollywood actress and comedienne Janeane Garofalo joined the cast to play Tilly, a new age designer type, whilst guest spots have been filled by Graham Fellows (Jilted John/John Shuttleworth) comedian Sean Lock, Paul Weller, Magazine's Barry Adamson as a hitman, radio DJ, writer and musician Mark Radcliffe, Rula Lenska, Alan Yentob and The Fall's Mark E Smith as Jesus!

Prior to movie stardom, Ben Wheatley (Kill List, Sightseers, A Field In England) directed several episodes between 2009-10.

Following the announcement of the show's cancellation in 2011, writer and creator Graham Duff wrote to fans: "As some of you may have heard, the BBC have decided against commissioning an 8th series of Ideal. The reason given was that the new channel controller wanted to make a clean sweep.  It is a source of both pride and frustration that, at the point of cancellation, Ideal was attracting its biggest ever audiences, its highest profile guest stars and its best ever reviews. And the show is now being screened in more countries than ever before - from America to Finland and beyond." 

One of the most striking components of the show was its ear for music with a number of obscure but quality tracks notably from the alternative or club scene appearing on the soundtrack. But it was Candidate, a folk rock indie band from the UK, who provided the show's theme tune Song of the Oss, which was taken from their 2002 Wicker Man inspired album Nuada

Vamps

"Being the anti-hero is great, they are always roles you can get your teeth into"

- The inimitable Ingrid Pitt

Born Ingoushka Petrov in Warsaw, Poland 1937, she survived harsh internment in a concentration camp to become a horror movie legend, starring in a raft of Hammer and Amicus productions as well as cult and classic films like The Wicker Man, Where Eagles Dare, The Wild Geese II and Who Dares Wins

Married three times, and rumoured to have enjoyed an affair with Elvis (something she would not be drawn on) Pitt led quite the active and globetrotting life, having resided in Berlin, the US (including a stint living with a tribe of Native Americans in Colorado) Argentina and of course the UK. 

She had a passion for flying, holding a student's pilot licence, with a keen interest in WWII aircraft and held a black belt in Karate. An author, journalist and novelist, Pitt wrote in genres as diverse as her autobiography, spy fiction, politics, the tenure of the Perons and, perhaps naturally, factual books on the paranormal and horror fiction. She even tried her hand at screenwriting, drafting a submission with her third and final husband (Tony Rudlin) to the Doctor Who production team in the 1980s, following her second appearance on the show as Prof Solow in the story Warriors of the Deep (she had first appeared as Queen Galleia of Atlantis in the 1972 story The Time Monster) Sadly the story, The Macros, never came to fruition on TV, but it was subsequently adapted for Big Finish audio, starring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Sixth Doctor and Peri in 2010, just months before Pitt's death at the age of 73. Also in production and completed before her untimely demise was the narration for a short animated film Ingrid Pitt: Beyond The Forest, detailing her life as a child during the Holocaust.

Theme Time : Jack Trombey/Jan Stoeckart - Callan

Callan started out life as a one off TV play from 1967 entitled A Magnum For Schneider, from the pen of James Mitchell. It starred Edward Woodward as David Callan, a former soldier, miniature war games enthusiast and a dead shot, albeit reluctant, professional assassin for The Section, a branch of the Intelligence Service. ITV, quick to see they had a hit on their hands, ordered a series for later that year and the show ran for a total of four series until 1972. A film was made in 1974 and a one off TV special entitled Wet Job aired in 1981.

The theme tune, entitled 'Girl In The Dark', was written by Jack Trombey aka the Dutch composer Jan Stoeckart

It was subsequently covered by Chaquito and his orchestra and, with lyrics, by Edward Woodward himself - retitled 'This Man Alone' 

The reverberations from ITV's successful spy drama would continue down the decades; Edward Woodward would go on to play a similar role in the US TV drama The Equalizer (Previously 'Theme Timed' here) whilst less savoury, the Cypriot Greek and former Corporal with the British Paras (alleged to have fired 26 shots on 'Bloody Sunday' in Derry, NI 1972) Costas Georgiou, was so enamoured with the series that he took the alias Callan (and the rank of Colonel) when he became a professional mercenary in Angola. He can be seen in the centre background in the photograph below. He was subsequently executed in the Luanda Trial of 1976 for killing 14 of his own men for 'desertion', 2 Angolan civilians and for various claims of torture. 

PS; It's easy to forget how huge Edward Woodward was in his heyday. Callan was a national phenomenon. When one series ended on a cliffhanger, a graffiti campaign spread across the land to get the show back on air! He was the lead in cult favourite The Wicker Man as well as the lead in one of Australia's finest films, the anti war classic Breaker Morant. In the 80s with The Equalizer he was just as big, albeit internationally. He was the only white man to be allowed to walk unaccompanied in the downtown dangerous areas of New York's Harlem because of the good work his character did for minorities and he would always carry a card with details of helplines and support groups as he was inevitably asked for help by people confusing fact with fiction. The US, eager to keep a hold of him after The Equalizer wrapped in 1990, placed him in another thriller vehicle - albeit one in a very light hearted, naturally comedic vein - entitled Over My Dead Body, in which he starred as Maxwell Beckett a crime writer who is roped into solving the real thing by a young journalist played by Jessica Lundy. Despite it doing relatively well in France and here in the UK, it was a flop and cancelled after just three months. As a bonus, here's the theme/opening credits to that...

Ultimately Woodward returned to the UK and starred as a northern binman of all things in the excellent drama Common As Muck as well as a host of other great dramas and films (including Hot Fuzz) until his death aged 79 in 2009.

Southern Comfort (1981)

Spencer: "Why d'ya paint the cross on your chest?"
Coach: "It's part of the joke"
Spencer: "What joke?"
Coach: "It's a Corporal joke, Private"

BBC2 treated us last night/this morning to an all too rare screening of this classic, a survival film, which has always been overshadowed by the inferior Deliverance in my opinion.

The 70s really was a golden age of uncompromising film making from Hollywood, and Southern Comfort is perhaps that era's last gasp, before the style over substance aesthetic of the Simpson and Bruckheimer 80s. It's a simple premise on the surface; a deeply unsettling and murderous game of cat and mouse plays out between some indigenous Cajun settlers and a small unit of National Guard, who have foolishly taken their canoes to cross the Louisiana bayou whilst on maneuvers. Underneath the surface, I guess its a fairly plain allegory of Vietnam and the US foreign policy, a theme that is further exemplified by setting the action in 1973.

Walter Hill, Michael Kane and David Giler's script may occasionally feel a little heavy handed and clunky at times but it pretty much has to be when dealing with such heightened situations. Where the film truly excels is in Walter Hill's masterly direction. Hill, a natural protege of Peckinpah, builds tension and suspense so expertly that your eyes drift to the treelines in the background, just knowing that something awful lurks there and is likely to jump out and ambush our 'heroes' any second. Indeed, their are several jump out of your seat scenes and, as to be expected from his Peckinpah tradition, when the violence comes, it is bloody and matter of fact. That Hill keeps the unit's hunters largely hidden throughout - save for Blade Runner's Brion James as a one armed trapper they take captive - is further testament to his sure grasp of menace and tension. But perhaps the best testament to his ability, is the fact that you barely notice that the plot is essentially the same as the one from his previous film The Warriors, albeit with a US folk horror/American Gothic spin. Both films focus on a small band of 'warriors' must travel through unfamiliar and dangerous territory, avoiding attack from pursuers, to reach home. Literary scholars may find these themes originate from Greece's Anabasis of Xenophon, which told the story of the Greek mercenaries The Ten Thousand who, after fighting the battle of Cunaxa, were forced to cross the territories of modern day Iraq and Turkey facing attacks from the local tribes as they passed. Clearly, Hill knows his Greek mythology and history!

Southern Comfort has a great and utterly convincing ensemble cast of at the time relatively fresh faced American talent including Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe, Fred Ward and Peter Coyote to name but a few. It also has a brilliantly atmospheric score from Ry Cooder and the final gripping scenes, played out to the accompanying Cajun folk song Parlez Nois à Boire amidst scenes of revelry and animal slaughter in the village, put me in mind of The Wicker Man in terms of its queasy mix of tradition, joviality and violence.

As I said, it's better than Deliverance and well worth catching. BBC2 appear to be spoiling us on Fri nights/the small hours as next week they'll be showing the excellent They Shoot Horses Don't They? Do not miss it!

Out On Blue Six : Candidate

Merry Meet! I bring you Pagan goodness! 

Namely in the form of three tracks from Candidate's album Nuada, which was inspired by The Wicker Man. Indeed the band actually visited the location of that cult classic and recorded songs on site. I've long since loved this album, but sadly the band are seldom known, though fans of the Johnny Vegas BBC3 sitcom Ideal may be familiar with the third track Song Of The OSS as it was that show's theme tune. Thankfully someone has uploaded tracks to youtube, so here they are on Out On Blue Six.

PS Check out the new Out On Blue Six gif!

End Transmission