Paranormal Activity

THE OMEGA FACTOR (1979)

Burning ambition: this fondly remembered supernatural series 
ignited the wrath of moral crusader Mary Whitehouse.

BBC Scotland's THE OMEGA FACTOR is a forerunner to THE X-FILES, but without the budget or pretention. Born from the ashes of the cancelled second series of journalist drama THE STANDARD, here the lead protagonist is occult writer Tom Crane (James Hazeldine). Crane's latent psychic abilities lead him into Department 7, a government agency which investigates the paranormal, where he is partnered with family acquaintance Dr Anne Reynolds (Louise Jameson, a recently resigned Leela from DOCTOR WHO). Crane joins the organisation as a means of finding rogue psychic Edward Drexel (Cyril Luckham) and assistant Morag (Natasha Gerson), both involved in the death of his wife; yet, after Drexel is killed, Tom becomes increasingly aware of another shadow enterprise, one which strives to assemble the cream of extrasensory perceptive individuals.

For a programme steeped in otherworldly abilities, THE OMEGA FACTOR feels strangely grounded because of its lack of money and threadbare effects. This enhances Hazeldine's already standout performance, mixing his drive to avenge his wife's death, to come to terms with his own powers, and the vain attempt to assimilate within Department 7 with a secretive superior, namely psychiatrist Dr Roy Martindale (John Carlisle). Like any anthology shows - here with a wide range of writers and directors over ten episodes - there is an inherent unevenness in style and quality, encompassing a heady and diverse set of topics: spectral analogue technology (VISITATIONS), sonic weaponry (NIGHT GAMES), sleep deprivation (AFTER-IMAGE), poltergeists (CHILD'S PLAY), and even astral projection to political means (OUT OF BODY, OUT OF MIND). 

James Hazeldine and Louise Jameson are the Mulder and Scully 
of BBC paranormal drama, with added intimacy. 

POWERS OF DARKNESS is the episode the show is most remembered for, infamously labelled "thoroughly evil [and] one of the most disturbing things I have seen on television" by Mary Whitehouse. History student Jenny (Maggie James) is possessed by a witch, culminating in an altar ritual involving a dead blackbird and a Demon. Mixing a seance, drug use, knife violence and human combustion, this fed into Whitehouse's disgust at any portrayal of Eucharist abstraction, and general distrust of popular entertainment. Two weeks later BBC Scotland Head of Drama Roderick Graham admitted that the BBC's own standards of decency had been breached during ST ANTHONY'S FIRE, where a woman kills her husband with a bread knife. The BBC's Guidance Notes on Violence, which dictated permissible levels, specifically mentioned that dramas were to avoid violent acts that could be easily copied. Graham stated that "the point has been forcibly made to those who were responsible for the programme".

The penultimate entry, DOUBLE VISION, is unnerving because it is so understated. Tom keeps seeing his dead wife Julia (Joanne Tope) in and around Edinburgh; in DON'T LOOK NOW fashion, when running after her, the red-coated figure darts around corners and remains constantly out of touching distance, like the dream sensation of a goal forever out of reach. For the husband to discover this was an elaborate ploy leaves an unsavory taste, as the show leads to its THE PRISONER-like conclusion. The final episode - called ILLUSIONS - ends fittingly on a closed door, leaving further adventures to be picked up in a series of Big Finish audio dramas, where Jameson returns as Reynolds, now head of the department.

True Blue (Part I of II)

MISS BOHRLOCH (1970)

ESKIMO NELL (1975)

Translating the German Bohrlock ('borehole', 'blast-hole') was too difficult for most British porn fans; the film consequently enjoyed a variety of alternative titles such as MISS BAWLOCK and even MISS BOLLOCK.

BRITAIN's sex superstar of the saucy 70s, Mary Millington's girl-next-door demeanor actually encompassed everything from magazine cover girl to hardcore actress. An outspoken opponent of the Obscene Publications Act, she also starred - often fleetingly - in British sex comedies, including COME PLAY WITH ME, which holds the record of the longest-ever theatrical booking in domestic cinema history. Her open bisexuality - she cited Harold Wilson and Diana Dors as lovers - illustrated a genuine love of carnal activity ("the old slogan of 'make love, not war' was a very good one"), before the predictable spiral to prostitution, kleptomania and cocaine abuse. A chance meeting in a Kensington coffee shop with pioneering Scottish pornographer John Lindsay led Mary to play the title role of MISS BOHRLOCH, the first of around twenty hardcore 8mm shorts made in Britain and on the continent over a four-year period.

Filmed in Frankfurt, MISS BOHRLOCH was a huge success in Europe (some 300,000 copies were sold) and created an underground following back home. Millington runs the whole gamut in her initial outing, and is mesmerizingly unrelenting (no wonder it was awarded the Golden Phallus Award at the Wet Dream Festival in Amsterdam). An insatiable and upbeat call girl in a fur coat, stockings and suspenders, Bohrloch welcomes two men to her flat for a "full service," after giving her address over the phone ("6 Pop Street") and dropping a ping pong ball from her vagina. Dubbed back in the UK, Mary becomes a Southern Belle while her clients are Irish-American, which makes the banal dialogue slightly amusing ("yes, we'll have a little music here"). In best British seaside postcard tradition, there is a punchline of sorts: having spent all their money on the activities, the duo cannot pay for the service charge; Bohrlock smiles and leads them off screen, "you've been well fed, now you can wash the dishes".

ESKIMO NELL is a British sex comedy about the industry in which Mary Millington would become so deeply entrenched.

Directed by Martin Campbell and produced by Stanley Long, ESKIMO NELL saw Mary's mainstream sex comedy debut, albeit for approximately ten seconds. Then a jobbing actress and model using her married name Mary Maxted, Millington's role as a stripping traffic warden auditioning for a film-within-a-film is speed up for comedic effect. But this is more of a footnote for one of the few genuinely entertaining and funny entries in the much maligned sub-genre, which sees fledgling film auteur Dennis Morrison (Michael Armstrong, who also scripted), producer Clive Potter (Terence Edmond) and screenwriter Harris Tweedle (Christopher Timothy) hired by seedy erotic film linchpin Benny U. Murdoch (Roy Kinnear, in his element) to make a dirty movie based on the bawdy poem 'The Ballad of Eskimo Nell'. When each of the backers request a completely different style - and Murdoch makes off with the money - the budding filmmakers attempt to keep everyone happy by providing the first gay Western/hardcore/kung-fu musical for all the family. With four different versions in the can, the hardcore cut is then mistakenly shown at the Royal Charity premiere.

The triumph of ESKIMO NELL is that it is a thinly veiled critique of the film industry itself, and an illustration of the moral guardians of the day: Lady Longhorn and Lord Coltwind - backers of the wholesome version - are caricatures of Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford; Murdoch is based on Tigon supremo Tony Tenser; and Bick Dick - played by Gordon Tanner - ridicules Louis "Deke" M. Heyward, the London representative of AIP who had previously clashed with Armstrong during the shambles of THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR. Of other interest is DOCTOR WHO's Katy Manning, who appears as Hermione Longhorn; this was Manning second film after leaving the services of UNIT, the first being the screen adaptation of the Whitehall farce DON'T JUST LIE THERE, SAY SOMETHING! (written by Jon Pertwee's brother Michael).

"We Must Adjust the Truth"

DOCTOR WHO - THE DEADLY ASSASSIN (1976)
DOCTOR WHO - THE ROBOTS OF DEATH (1977)

"Only hate keeps me alive"; opera singer/actor Peter Pratt brings a resonant voice to the black-shrouded, decomposing Master in THE DEADLY ASSASSIN.

GOTHIC as entertainment is usually traced back to Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), a novel which kick-started a darker supernatural genre that lived amongst decaying settlements and subterranean crypts. Oscillating between romantic sub-plots and conventional reality, Gothic fiction places heavy emphasis on atmosphere and loss of humanity/identity; women are often cast in distress but typically portrayed as the heroine of the piece, while men struggle with a Jekyll and Hyde-type duality. When Philip Hinchcliffe (producer) and Robert Holmes (script editor) took over DOCTOR WHO in the mid-70's, there was a seismic shift away from what Holmes described as "straightforward, dull, children's stories." In the seasons that followed, the Time Lord would experience more oppressive environments and explorations not just of hauntings and possessions, but also early trappings which would latterly be known as body horror. These tales also effected the Doctor himself, changing from the adventurous dandy of Jon Pertwee to Tom Baker, an actor who embraced the outsider at odds with himself and the galaxy.

Holmes' scripts for THE DEADLY ASSASSIN take on board Richard Condon's bleak brainwashing political novel The Manchurian Candidate. The Doctor (Baker) is accused of the assassination of the Time Lord President, but it is in fact a plot by a dying Master (Peter Pratt). Having used all twelve of his regenerations, the Master aims to control the hierarchy so he can obtain the Sash and Rod of Rassilon, which act as keys to the Eye of Harmony, the source of all the Time Lord's power. When the Doctor links his mind into the virtual reality of Matrix (pretty novel for 1976) - which has accumulated the wisdom of his race - he wins a struggle with a hooded opponent revealed to be Chancellor Goth (Bernard Horsfall), who has been used as a pawn. The Master has now gained access to the Eye of Harmony and aims to give new life to his decaying, putrid husk of a body; but in a climactic fight with the Doctor, the Master falls into a crumbling Citadel chasm...

ROBOTS OF DEATH was fittingly chosen to represent the era of the Fourth Doctor at the BFI's 50th anniversary celebration of the show.

THE DEADLY ASSASSIN provides a number of firsts for Who lore: a regeneration number set at twelve; the absence of a companion for the Doctor; the portrayal of a layered society of ranks and chapters (very different from the glimpses seen in THE WAR GAMES and THE THREE DOCTORS); and trivia such as the TARDIS listed as a Type 40 capsule. But for many this spoilt the mystery of the Time Lord back-story, revealing Gallifrey as a planet akin to the doddering House of Lords, or a crusty Oxbridge society (one Time Lord even complains about hearing and hip problems). But within the Matrix the adventure is an irresistible, surreal experience, giving the show its most notorious and sadistically violent moment: the drowning of the Doctor at the hands of Goth as a cliff-hanger to episode three. Providing such a lingering, powerful image for children to mull over for a week was too much for the National Viewers and Listeners Association linchpin Mary Whitehouse, and the scene was shortened for repeats.

Written by Chris Boucher, THE ROBOTS OF DEATH is another tale of duality and deception ("nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained"). Mixing Dune and Ten Little Indians as well as inverting Asimov's First Law of Robots, the TARDIS materialises on a sandminer combing an alien world for minerals. The massive vehicle is run by a small human crew aided by three classes of robots (Dums, Vocs and a Super Voc), and the Doctor (Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson) come under suspicion when the crew are killed by an unseen assailant. With the aid of undercover agents Poul (David Collings) and robot associate D84 (Gregory de Polnay), the real culprit is revealed as Dask (David Bailie), a scientist raised by robots who has been reprogramming the automatons to murder and to consequently form a superior order ("I see; you're one of those boring maniacs who's going to gloat, hmm? You going to tell me your plan for running the Universe?").

Social activist Mary Whitehouse CBE frequently singled out mid-70's DOCTOR WHO as particularly damaging to young minds. Yet the celebrated "fear factor" and "hiding behind the sofa" mainstays of the programme acted as a liberating and engaging emotion for viewers, who always had the reassurance of the Doctor to guide them through.

Developed under the titles PLANET OF THE ROBOTS and THE STORM-MINE MURDERS, the programme raises above its "people killed off in an enclosed environment" foundation by adopting a highly distinctive art deco production design, a tight script, earnest performances, and effective, lethal robots. Of all the influences listed for Ridley Scott's ALIEN over the years - from the B-movie theatrics of IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE to the otherworldliness of Mario Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES - don't forget that Boucher's serial has a claustrophobic mining setting and an undercover robot.

Planets of Doom

DOCTOR WHO - PLANET OF EVIL (1975)
DOCTOR WHO - THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS (1976)
DOCTOR WHO - THE SEEDS OF DOOM (1976)

The Doctor and Sarah are engulfed by the PLANET OF EVIL.

PRODUCER Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes used many classic horror/SF motifs as a springboard for their stories on DOCTOR WHO, creating a greater appreciation of alien concepts and otherworldly environments. PLANET OF EVIL sees The Doctor (Tom Baker) and Sarah (Elisabeth Sladen) arrive on Zeta Minor - a planet "at the very edge of the known universe" - where they discover that a Morestran geological expedition has fallen prey to an unseen killer and only the leader, Professor Sorenson (Frederick Jaeger), remains alive. A military mission from Morestra has arrived to investigate - at first suspecting the Doctor and Sarah - but the culprit is revealed to be a creature from a universe of antimatter, retaliating for the removal by Sorenson of some samples from around a pit that acts as an interface between two universes.

PLANET OF EVIL is an effective fusing of FORBIDDEN PLANET and The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, brought to life by a robust performance from Jaeger and Roger Murray-Leach's extraordinary jungle set, a vividly successful illustration of Hinchcliffe's desires to create more believable elseworlds. Not only do we have Sorenson as a transforming character, Zeta Minor itself is a living contradiction, as is the unscientific (but suitably dramatic) plot mechanism of matter versus anti-matter. Television sci-fi writers have had a long love affair with anti-matter, which they have used to illustrate that well-known dictum do not tamper. Thankfully, there are usually safety valves between the two states (as in STAR TREK - THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR), or a lonely sentinel warning against matter-mixing (SPACE: 1999 - MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH).

THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS features a monster so absurdly weird it challenges Japanese kaiju. Morbius’ brain is eventually encased inside a fish-tank with eye-stalks, on a patchwork body with one arm being a giant lobster claw.

Originally written by Terrance Dicks, THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS was extensively re-written in his absence by Holmes to up the horror quotient and remove the technically challenging notion of a scavenger robot. By Dicks' chagrined request, the show is given the pseudonymous writing credit "Robin Bland". The final version is a messy mix of Frankenstein and She set on Karn, a home world for both The Sisterhood – whose sacred flame produces the elixir of life – and Solon (Philip Madoc) – a mad scientist who is putting together a body for the still-living brain of an executed Time Lord. When the Doctor (Baker) and Sarah (Sladen) arrive, The Sisterhood think they have been sent to steal the last drops of elixir produced by a dying flame, and Solon is after the Doctor’s head to complete his work (though it is left unclear why the scientist doesn’t just use the Doctor’s body rather than the unwieldy mutant he has created).

The ritualistic Sisterhood are laughable with their endless arm-waving, yet the serial’s most ridiculous moment comes when the Doctor solves their extinguishing life-force ("the impossible dream of a thousand alchemists, dripping like tea from an urn") by removing some soot. Thankfully the scenes with Solon and his Igoresque assistant Condo (Colin Fay) are wonderful galactic Hammer Horror, and the moment where Condo is repeatedly shot predictably caused Mary Whitehouse to stir, claiming the story "contained some of the sickest and most horrific material seen on children’s television." The graphic nature is indeed memorable, but the lasting talking point is the climactic mind-bending contest between Morbius and the Doctor, mainly because it seemed to contradict WHO lore by indicating that there had been eight previous incarnations before William Hartnell (although an equally viable explanation would have been the faces that appear – which include Hinchcliffe and Holmes in stock costume – where actually Morbius' former selves).

In THE SEEDS OF DOOM, the humanoid Krynoid suit was recycled from a surviving costume from THE CLAWS OF AXOS, and sprayed green.

Robert Banks Stewart's script for THE SEEDS OF DOOM draws on THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and The Day of the Triffids. Two alien seed pods are found buried in the Antarctic permafrost and the Doctor (Baker) realises that they are Krynoids; "I suppose you could call it a galactic weed," begins the Time Lord, "though its deadlier than any weed you know. On most planets the animals eat the vegetation. On planets where the Krynoid gets established, the vegetation eats the animals." After an act of sabotage, one of the pods is delivered to plant collector Harrison Chase (Tony Beckley) at his mansion, where assistant Keeler (Mark Jones) is infected. Keeler - whose transformation is accelerated by Chase feeding him raw meat - goes on a rampage, rapidly growing to gigantic proportions before being destroyed by the RAF.

THE SEEDS OF DOOM is a strange WHO because it could be played out without the Doctor and Sarah (Sladen). Behind Douglas Camfield's action-orientated direction, the show is easily one of the consistently entertaining six-parters. Baker and Sladen often lapse into self-parody, but Beckley is chilling as Chase, portraying a level of Masteresque authority even down to wearing black leather gloves, and it is fun to see John Challis playing a "heavy" like Scorby, far from his future in Peckham for ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES. The model work holds up well, and the various stages of Krynoid transformation are handled with aplomb, but the serial suffers from an antiseptic handling of UNIT and a perplexing final scene; after the TARDIS materialises at the South Pole, Sarah states that the Doctor "...forgot to reprogram the coordinates," yet our dynamic duo initially landed at the Antarctic base by helicopter.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Elisabeth Sladen (1/2/1946 - 19/4/2011).

A Warning from History

VIDEO NASTIES: MORAL PANIC, CENSORSHIP AND VIDEOTAPE (2010)

Italian Lucio Fulci could boast three titles on the DPP Video Nasties list: ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS (released in 1979 and on the list from October 1983 to December 1985), THE BEYOND (1981, November 1983 to April 1985) and THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981, November 1983 to December 1985).

IN early 1980s Britain, Margaret Thatcher found an escape clause for broken public spirit in the twisted world of VHS horror. These often poorly made features - mostly from America and Italy - could hardly raise to the expectations of their own garish box art, but there was no censorship, classification or regulation for the home video market, and items could be bought or rented from almost anywhere: newsagents, garages, even butchers and barbers. The Daily Mail published comment headers with such lurid headlines as "Rape of our children's minds", and the Daily Mirror printed a report of sexual attacks on ponies where the Police stated that the acts "could have been caused by video nasties or a new moon." Not surprisingly, the country's social problems didn't disappear with the removal of these films, and the BBFC eventually allowed them to be presented either uncut or in more complete forms.

The hysteria over the Video Nasty scare was a melting pot of patronising lobbyists, tabloid sensationalism, clueless politicians and an out-of-their-depths Scotland Yard (who seized by mistake titles like THE BIG RED ONE and THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS). The mere act of selling or owning a suspected video on the infamous Director of Public Prosecutions banned list(s) became a dangerous business, and this convoluted debacle is expertly portrayed in Jake West's documentary, which was first shown at FrightFest 2010. In no way is this piece merely for horror fans; it is required viewing for every politician, policeman, lawyer, sociologist and media studies student in the land, and should act as both a lesson and a warning on the very nature of censorship and civil liberty. Especially revelatory here is that the Video Recordings Act 1984 was never officially presented to the European Commission, therefore it was not enforceable in law: a particular hard pill to swallow for the people who suffered jail sentences, fines, or had their collections or stock incinerated in an event that was the 1980s equivalent of a Nazi book burning.

The self-appointed Guardian of National Morals - Mary Whitehouse - was particularly thankful for the Video Nasties panic, as it gave her a topic which people knew even less about than she did. Whitehouse never felt the need to investigate material she deplored: "I have never seen a Video Nasty. I wouldn't ... I actually don't need to see visually what I know is in that film."

West may be better known as a director, but he also has a prolific concurrent career in promotional and featurette material, having been responsible for many of the extras on Region 2 DVDs. As such, he’s on familiar ground getting people talking about horror movies; contemporary directors like Neil Marshall and Christopher Smith alternate comments with genre critics such as Alan Jones, Kim Newman and Stephen Thrower. The most remarkable and powerful contribution, however, comes from lecturer and author Martin Barker, who recalls in moving detail the widespread condemnation he received for standing up to the charade, and even more notably, illustrates the magnitude of exaggerations and lies on which the campaign was built.

The documentary is not a loaded argument in favour of the nasties - it doesn't need to be. Peter Kruger - head of the Obscene Publications Squad at Scotland Yard between 1981-84 - and MP for Luton South Graham Bright - whose Private Members Bill directly lead to the VRA - are afforded equal screen time to showcase their ignorance. Bright is an absolute goldmine; not only does he condemn the movies as "evil" (at which point the documentary mutates into a wonderful faux Public Information Film where Emily Booth is bound, gagged and consumed by videotape), he acknowledges the whole snuff movie concept as fact, having "no doubt ... that was exactly what was happening." And in the jaw-dropping highlight, Bright is seen championing unfinished research that "will show that these films not only affect young people but I believe they affect dogs as well." 



One of the most notorious titles on the DPP's list, Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, was pre-cut by Go prior to its February 1982 video debut. The film still contained enough on-screen carnage (and marketing to match) to make sure this cover adorned most of the press outrage against the nasties. Go were not shy of promoting their release, even issuing free beer mats featuring this artwork to public houses.

As the documentary clearly shows, the early 1980s were not engulfed in the corporate mentality of today. The distribution of the nasties was viewed with suspicion by major studios, who rather than seeing the home market as an avenue for their product, instead treated the medium as a threat to their box office and TV revenue. Consequently, the majority of titles being released in the video explosion were low-budget exploitation, simply because they were the only titles most of the companies could afford to acquire. The intense competition was increased by the number of black market bootlegs, and the fight for shelf space equated to a blood-red marketing war: release your films under the most lurid packaging possible, regardless of accuracy to the film itself. Whatever happened with the whole video nasty phenomenon, it can be said that with such demented designs, the distributors should have seen it coming.

In a by-product to the VRA, the Video Packaging Review Committee was introduced in 1987. Formed as the result of another overblown reaction - Michael Ryan's gun spree in Hungerford - the VPRC's brief was to ensure that such gaudy video covers would never be seen in Britain again. Problems with such marketing had been alerted by a May 1982 report by The Advertising Standards Authority - who specifically cited Go Video's full-page ads for SS EXPERIMENT CAMP and CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST in Television and Video Retailer and Music & Video Week - and it is ironic that the eye-popping artwork that had been so detrimental in the success of the videos would prove to be the initiator of their downfall. 

Gallifrey Gothic

The Philip Hinchcliffe/Robert Holmes DOCTOR WHO (1975 - 77)

Emaciated Master makeup for THE DEADLY ASSASSIN.

THE gothic tradition in DOCTOR WHO’s mid 1970s serials runs deep through the British science fantasy tradition, placing the exotic into our stoic world. Most fans of the original DOCTOR WHO believe this period to be the golden era, when Tom Baker's goggle-eyed eccentricity was married with chilling horror stories. Producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes plundered Universal, Hammer and 1950s science fiction movies for their inspiration, as murderous dummies and disembodied hands kept Mary Whitehouse busy filing letters to the BBC. DOCTOR WHO’s take on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus - THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS - summoned the wrath of the self appointed moral guardian, with Whitehouse proclaiming the story "contained some of the sickest and most horrific material seen on children’s television." When the Corporation issued an apology to Whitehouse over a drowning sequence at the end of episode three of THE DEADLY ASSASSIN, the show would never be as consistently absorbing again.

A criticism levelled at Hinchcliffe and Holmes was that they were making these stories for themselves. But it's the fear factor in DOCTOR WHO that holds a special significance for many people, the "hiding behind the sofa" mentality that in itself has entered the British psyche. Their debut season saw them tackle a set of scripts already commissioned during Barry Letts’ time as producer, and although the serials featured reassuringly traditional elements, there was also a clear indication that the show was undergoing significant change, particularly the phasing out of UNIT. The classic GENESIS OF THE DALEKS - with its themes of racial hatred and war - was one example of a more horrific yet realistic quality. But calling Hinchcliffe’s tenure simply "the horror era" detracts from the ingenuity and intelligence channelled into the programme during this time. Writers, designers and directors were specifically briefed and consulted prior to production, and assigned to their strengths (budget willing) to bring Hinchcliffe and Holmes’s serial thrillers to life: each story had to have a power, a mix of rounded characterisation and sense of atmosphere to adhere to the required adult scientific concepts and convincing worlds.

A major factor in the success of DOCTOR WHO in the mid 70s was the on-screen performances of Elisabeth Sladen and Tom Baker. Here, Sarah Jane and The Doctor appear in THE ARK IN SPACE.

Holmes - perhaps the greatest original series writer - was in his element, injecting a more black, sardonic humour. But in addition to the more mature and macabre approach, a great deal of the success was the chemistry between The Doctor and his assistant Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen). Baker was also creating a Doctor more overtly and fittingly alien; you need only look at his homo sapiens speech from THE ARK IN SPACE to see that he was taking things seriously, unlike later seasons when the actor’s impulse to fool around was not held in check.

In THE PYRAMIDS OF MARS, the gothic horror style is given its fullest expression; the TARDIS materialises on Earth inside an old priory owned by Egyptologist Marcus Scarman (Bernard Archard), who is possessed by the god-like Sutekh (Gabriel Woolf). With its entombed ancient evil and walking Mummies (in fact servicer robots), there is a genuine feel of dread, with the Mummies particularly effective in their simple yet hulking appearance. As Sutekh, Woolf creates a classic WHO villain, and it is noticeable how many such roles are voice parts - think Michael Wisher’s untouchable turn as Davros.

Following the success of the British Museum’s exhibition of relics from Tutenkhamen’s tomb, Ancient Egypt was big in the 1970s, a mythology embraced by THE PYRAMIDS OF MARS.

THE TALONS OF WENG-CHIANG was Hinchcliffe’s swansong. Widely regarded as one of the best ever serials, magician Li H’sen Chang (John Bennett) procures young girls for Magnus Greel (Michael Spice), a 51st Century war criminal who has come to 19th Century London to retrieve his lost time cabinet. The fog-laden streets, amateur sleuthing, oriental mystery and sinister doll Mr Sin (Deep Roy) make the story an entertaining romp, despite the major flaw of the giant sewer rats, which Greel uses to keep people away from his Palace Theatre lair. But THE TALONS OF WENG-CHIANG is also one of the most controversial: it was the first DOCTOR WHO that showed the taking of illicit drugs, and its use of nunchucks in one fight scene led to trouble with the censor for its first release on VHS. The most dominant controversy, however, was its uniformly bleak portrayal of the Chinese ("inscrutable chinks"), which lead to a rebroadcast ban in Ontario after complaints from the Chinese-Canadian community.

A Bit of Mischief

HOUSE OF WHIPCORD (1973)

FRIGHTMARE (1974)

HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN (1975)

FRIGHTMARE’s iconic poster art depicts Sheila Keith’s pre-Abel Ferrara use of power drills as an implement of murder, and is the film that best illustrates Pete Walker and David McGillivray’s distinctive brand of grot guignol.

FOR a regrettably brief period, Pete Walker made some of the most striking movies to come out of 1970s British cinema, at a time when the country’s film industry was in serious decline. Segued from sexploitation, Walker’s pictures tend to be downers (even his sex films are depressing), often featuring sadistic authority figures punishing anyone (but usually young women) who don’t conform to their strict codes. He has denied there being any political subtext to his work; however, HOUSE OF WHIPCORD is dedicated to "...those who are disturbed by today's lax moral codes and who eagerly await the return of corporal and capital punishment," suggesting Walker isn't entirely unsympathetic towards his villains. Although never undergone a critical reappraisal in the same way as American contemporaries Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven, the producer/director maintains an avid cult following, commenting on his filmography “…all I wanted to do was create a bit of mischief." Walker is an auteur: his films are technically competent, if declining to indulge in grandstanding displays of technique that might have won him more recognition in the manner of Ken Russell.

By directing films set in the Home Counties, Walker bucked the trend of English Gothic; instead of mad scientists and cloaked vampires, his films dwell on old ladies and teenage tearaways. In HOUSE OF WHIPCORD - the first of four collaborations with critic-scriptwriter David McGillivray - Walker delivers a deliciously raw view of what happens when individuals decide to mete out justice in their own backyard. Ann-Marie de Vernay (Penny Irving) - a naïve French model living in London - is enticed by playboy Mark E. Desade (Robert Tayman) into spending some time at his parent's house. But Julia finds herself imprisoned in a corrective institute run by Mark's mother Mrs Wakehurst (Barbara Markham), and senile Justice Bailey (Patrick Barr). Overseen by sadistic warders Walker (the filmmaker’s illuminus, Sheila Keith) and Bates (Dorothy Gordon), she exists in a living hell where minor infractions are punished by whipping, and subsequent misdemeanours result in hanging. As the prison’s intractable sergeant-at-arms, Keith delivers her lecherous lines (“I’m going to make you ashamed of your body di Vernay … I’m going to see to that personally”) with venomous aplomb. Less admirably, Irving is possibly the most irritating Gallic damsel-in-distress (“zees cannot be!”), and the film does suffer from a too tidy resolution, and a bundle of day-for-night scenes.

Censor Stephen Murphy’s fanciful conviction that HOUSE OF WHIPCORD’s self-appointed governors Wakehurst and Bailey were savage lampoons of Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford led him to pass the film with only the deletion of a single whiplash effect.

Although Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM is far superior in an artistic sense, HOUSE OF WHIPCORD shares that film's troubling evocation of the agony brought by imminent death and the way in which the viewer responds to it; Peter Jessop's deliberately dark lighting suggests all manner of depravities which aren't directly on screen. Indeed, one of the defining features of Walker's style is that the overwhelming impression of brutal violence is often much more disturbing than anything which is shown. The torture scenes aren’t in the same league as Ilsa, yet the forced haircuts, sham legalities and ghastly institutional food are far more credibly appalling; instead of titillating shower scenes or lesbian gropings, we have unerotic nudity in uncomfortable surroundings.

Another facet of Walker is an extraordinary sense of the impotence of men to do anything to protect the women they care about. Time and again, the male characters who should be heroic are pleasant types, but totally ineffectual. When the battered heroine escapes, lorry driver Mr Kind (Ivor Salter) hands her back to Wakehurst under the impression that the prison is a clinic where she will be treated for her wounds, and the apparent hero (Ray Brooks) arrives too late. Walker seems to find women much more interesting, and this immediately marks out his work in a world - exploitation horror - which, at the time, tended to have women as purely victims. Walker's heroines may often be victimised but they are also vivid, tough and proactive. If they fail, it's not for lack of trying.

Despite her long and varied career on stage and television, Sheila Keith is best remembered for her collaborations with Walker, FRIGHTMARE being the only time she had a lead role.

Arguably Walker's best film, FRIGHTMARE turns the concept of the family unit upside down. In a black and white prologue, Dorothy Yates (Keith) is sentenced to rehabilitation in a psychiatric ward for her uncontrollable taste for human flesh. Her husband - Edmund (Rupert Davies) - is sentenced along with her, leaving their daughter, Debbie (an alarmingly credible Kim Butcher), in the care of Jackie (Deborah Fairfax), Edmund's child from a previous marriage. Years later, both Dorothy and Edmund have been released and live an isolated life out in the country. In London, Debbie has become an embittered juvenile delinquent, much to the dismay of Jackie and her psychiatrist boyfriend, Graham (Paul Greenwood). Unfortunately Dorothy's bloodlust continues unabated, with people falling prey to power drills, pokers and pitchforks.

Although Davies brings a complex pathos in his fine performance as Edmund, this is unquestionably Keith's show. FRIGHTMARE allows her to run the gamut from a tremulous and confused aging woman to a crazed, bloodthirsty maniac in the span of a few seconds, and her attacks are explicit and intense. Although Walker clearly sees her as a threat to society, he gives her enough quiet moments - made genuinely touching by Keith's performance. Walker cleverly subverts expectations by pointing out that corruption stems not from the swinging lifestyle shown at the beginning of the film, but rather from barbaric familial practices spread down from one generation to another which fester under the noses of polite society. From a technical standpoint this is also one of Walker's most accomplished features, creating an oppressive atmosphere as he contrasts the bustling city life with the dark, damp, lonely country locations, all enhanced by a chilling Stanley Myers score. FRIGHTMARE is a tightly constructed piece from McGillivray which invites the viewer to decide who amongst the Yateses is the biggest monster.

Influenced by Walker’s Catholic school background, HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN (released in America as THE CONFESSIONAL) is another enduring classic.

Not as condemned for its assault on the Catholic church as Walker would have liked, HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN was made in an era when priests were good press in genre movies as exorcists and advisers. This melodrama taps into abuses of power, and the channelling of repressed sexuality into ultra-violence, as Father Xavier Meldrum (Anthony Sharp) secretly tapes confessions and develops obsessions with young women. In McGillivray’s intricate script, the writer packs in several Walkeresque murders by flaming censer, poisoned communion wafers and a string of rosary beads, while a more distinguished cast bring to life an interesting array of characters: Susan Penhaligon and Stephanie Beacham as sleuthing sisters, Sheila Keith as a one-eyed lovelorn housekeeper, Hilda Barry’s bedridden mother and Norman Eshley as the more approachable Father Cutler.

But Sharp is simply spellbinding as Meldrum, at once frighteningly mad and genuinely tragic. Like several other cast members, Sharp was apparently dismayed by the subject matter, and its impossible to tell from his feverish performance whether we are watching Meldrum’s or Sharp’s self-disgust. Meldrum approaches his victims Dracula-like, achieving a brilliant role reversal as his glimmering crucifix becomes an object of terror rather than reassurance. The eruption of violence within such a genteel actor more accustomed to playing minor civil servants or stooging for Morecambe and Wise, makes them all the more unsettling.

He's Not the Messiah

MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)

He’s got a very good friend in Rome...
Michael Palin’s star turn as Pontius Pilate.

IN July 1977, Mary Whitehouse – self-appointed guardian of national morals – won a blasphemy libel case against Gay News for publishing James Kirkup’s The Love that Dares to Speak Its Name, a poem which detailed a Roman Centurion’s homo-erotic meditations towards the crucified Christ. This had a personal resonance within the Monty Python camp, as Graham Chapman had helped launch the publication; yet both parties could never have foreseen the deluge when their paths would meet under similar circumstances two years later. The foulest-spoken yet best humoured Biblical epic ever, LIFE OF BRIAN shows that any subject can survive a sardonic tweaking, as long as it is done with intelligence and wit. Religion may be comedy’s last taboo, but the film does not lampoon Jesus Christ, his teachings or his importance as an icon. Less an attack on the Bible itself, it's more a scathing satire on mob mentality and cult ideology.

LIFE OF BRIAN captures the period in Python’s life when the group were at their happiest and most creative. Under the firm helm of Terry Jones, the picture is much more structurally sound compared to the troupe’s first "proper" theatrical release, MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, and therefore less faithful to the stream of consciousness spirit of their TV series. It isn't littered with Terry Gilliam animation or plot line tangents, and is a more serious attempt at linear comedy painted on a much broader canvas, with Gilliam’s inventive set design providing a constantly interesting backdrop. Brian Cohen (Chapman), the reluctant prophet, is a simple man constantly mistaken for the King of the Jews. From his birth in a manger right next door to Christ’s, to his unexplained rise as a spiritual emblem for Judea, Brian remains an incorruptible innocent; he is bemused by his contrasting Roman/Jewish ties, confused in love, and foiled by the very spirit of individuality he advocates.

Always look on the bright side of life;
the scene that cemented LIFE OF BRIAN’s infamy.

When LIFE OF BRIAN premiered in New York, the opening salvo in what would become a surreal war of words came from Rabbi Abraham Hecht, who said that the release was "produced in Hell." Hecht’s fear was that the film would weave a corrupting spell over the impressionable minds of young cinema-goers, leaving them with a contaminated view of religion. After the Rabbi’s denunciation, outraged religious leaders in America queued up to vent their spleen, from the Lutheran Council to the reactionary politics in the southern states of the Bible Belt. In Britain, the war against LIFE OF BRIAN was fought a little differently. The Nationwide Festival of Light - a watchdog association working in league with Whitehouse - lobbied the BBFC to refuse a certificate. When the film was passed, the Festival of Light, supported by the Church of England Board for Social Responsibility, began an insidious campaign, circulating anti-BRIAN literature and encouraging Christians to pray for the film’s downfall. When it opened across Britain, local authorities even exploited a loophole in the law through health regulations. Consequently, the film ended up being banned in Surrey, Swansea, Cornwall and East Devon (where councillors refused to even watch it, arguing that "you don’t have to see a pigsty to know that it stinks.")

Despite the uproar, the work is anything but blasphemous; on the contrary, it is a statement which reduces the religious beliefs of our society on the hearsay of people two thousand years ago, and argues that freedom of thought is rare and precious. Above all, LIFE OF BRIAN is very much Pro-Christ, but anti-Church, standing as a beacon for the right to criticise religion. Whether it’s Brian’s unwanted disciples arguing over whether to follow the shoe or the gourd he’s left behind as he runs away, or the anti-Roman factions who do more damage to each other than the Empire, the film stabs at the heart of comedy’s favourite target, conformity. What's endearing about the Pythons is their irreverence; LIFE OF BRIAN is so cheerfully inoffensive that it's blasphemous to take it seriously.

Daleks and the Nazis

DOCTOR WHO - THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH (1964)
DOCTOR WHO – GENESIS OF THE DALEKS (1975)

THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH mirrors the Nazi Britain of Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's IT HAPPENED HERE.

THE arrival of the Daleks has often been cited, with some justification, as the development that sealed DOCTOR WHO’s success. Malicious mutants encased in armoured machinery, Daleks are perfect little Hitler’s, ordering, exterminating and ranting in unison. Strictly cyborgs, the Daleks blend opposite extremes of science fiction menace: a regimented, hard outer shell, with a seething, tentacled inner creature. The most fundamental feature of Dalek psychology is an unquestioned belief in their superiority; other species are either to be killed immediately, or enslaved and then destroyed later once they are no longer necessary.

In their debut story THE MUTANTS, the Daleks were portrayed as a paranoid yet complex race. In THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH, The Doctor (William Hartnell) must now face a full-blown galactic menace, the Daleks establishing a huge mine in Bedfordshire, in order to remove the Earth’s core and replace it with a drive system to pilot the planet around the galaxy. More a ‘Dalek Invasion of the Home Counties’, the story is still one of the most nihilistic and iconic of the Time Lord’s tales. This six-parter also signalled the start of Dalekmania, but arguably may well have been the point where DOCTOR WHO turned from a limited-run children’s tea-time series with educational intent, into a national institution. The images of a shattered London and its environs are stark, and the collapse of civilisation is portrayed like the result of a World War II air raid. To further the WWII slant, the story can be seen as a "what if…" depiction of Nazi occupation, an appropriate re-emphasis for a race of xenophobes like the Daleks. With the resistance group clearly modelled on the patriots who resisted the Wehrmacht in occupied Europe, Terry Nation’s scripts essentially equate the story with this notion. The black Dalek of the mining camp is referred to as the ‘commandant’, and the extermination of all humans is their ‘final solution’. As if to ensure that nobody misses the point, one scene has the Daleks raise their sucker arms in a Nazi salute.

Davros and his creations. GENESIS OF THE DALEKS showed that the series was developing an appreciation of moral issues, reflecting Baker’s Doctor being more liberal and indecisive. Yet the intensity of the violence and high body count prompted angry letters to the Radio Times, and attracted the attention of clean-up TV campaigner Mary Whitehouse.

In GENESIS OF THE DALEKS, Nation revisits early Dalek history, elaborating (and contradicting) backstory in THE MUTANTS. Gritty and uncompromising, it pushed the show to its creative boundaries in every sphere of production, as well as introducing Davros (Michael Wisher), the deranged and disfigured chief scientist whose genetic experiments gave rise to the Daleks. A megalomaniac who demonstrates a cruel eloquence and cunning lacking from the belligerent creatures he spawned, rarely has a DOCTOR WHO villain been given such depth, and been played with such bravado. Obsessed with the racial supremacy of his creations, Davros takes the Darwinian idea that evolution favours the strongest, modifying embryos to eliminate the weaknesses of conscience and pity. The Doctor (Tom Baker)’s dilemma is whether destroying the Daleks – an act of genocide – makes him as immoral as the Daleks themselves.