Bruce Lacey: The Preservation Man

Filmed by Ken Russell in 1962, one of the 21 films he made for the BBC arts programme, 'Monitor', 'The Preservation Man' is an affectionate short about the artist, performer and great British eccentric, Bruce Lacey.

Lacey was a techno-pagan shaman; a painter; a film-maker; a creator of kinetic sculptures; a performance artist (before the phrase was even coined); a member of the surrealist comedy troupe, 'The Alberts'; collaborator with the likes of Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Michael Bentine and Ivor Cutler; inspiration to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band; George Harrison's flautist gardener in 'Help!'; the subject of the Fairport Convention song that bears his name and which features the sounds of some of his creations, and improvising avant-garde electronic musician as documented on the Trunk Records release, 'The Spacey Bruce Lacey'.  

'The Preservation Man' captures Lacey in full creative flow and it's not a stretch to view this as almost a companion piece to 'The Lonely Shore'.  In that earlier 'Monitor' film the post-apocalypse archeologists make conjectures about the ephemera of our day to day world whilst here, one rejects work-a-day knowledge and instead reappropriates, reconfigures and reinterprets with an infectious abandon.

NOTE:  The film is muted, from 8:15 to 9:06. a transcript of the missing section where Lacey discusses dressing as a policeman and crashing parties can be found in the comments of the video. 

 

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Brion Gysin - FLicKeR: The Dreamachine

Artist, author, sound poet, and inventor Brion Gysin was born to British Canadian parents on 19th January 1916 in Taplow, Buckinghamshire.  A member of the Paris Surrealist group in the 1930s, part owner of a restaurant in Tangiers through the 1950s where he hired the Master Musicians of Jajouka as the house band, and resident of the 'Beat Hotel' in Paris through the 1960s, he is now perhaps best  remembered as the creator of the 'Cut-up technique' that he further deveoped with his close friend William S. Burroughs, who described Gysin as "...the only man I've ever respected."  

It is, of course, an utter shame that this astonishing artist's work should be so reduced, but his story is perhaps all too common of those wishing to push boundaries.  His Souk inspired calligraphic art is often sublime, as is his grid work created in Paris using a carved out paint roller at the same time as he was developing a whole new language of sonic poetry with his 'Permutation Poems'. 

Here though we are focussing on another key invention of the Paris years, that of 'The Dreamachine', a spinning, stroboscopic, flickering light machine that, when stared at through closed eyes, produces vivid eidetic images.  Developed with the assistance  of fellow Beat Hotel residents, Ian Sommerville, Gysin's plans for 'The Dreamachine' were bold  and many but ultimately doomed to failure. 

The documetary below by Canadian film-maker Nik Sheehan, tells the story of the machine, and by extension of it's creator and his cohort of friends, and features along the way archive and new footage of the likes of Genesis P-Orridge, Lee Ranaldo, Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithfull, Ira Cohen, Richard Metzger, John Giorno, DJ Spooky and Kenneth Anger.  It's an entrely fascinating story of an entirely fascinating man who for many is, at best, a peripheral figure in the life of his much more famous writer friend but who is deserving of being apprecited entirely on his own merits.

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Borley Rectory: The Most Haunted House in England

Made famous by ghost hunter Harry Price, Borley Rectory in Essex which he described as 'the most haunted house in England' was an 1862 Gothic style rectory that he investigated and wrote two books about after various inabitants reported ghostly sightings including a phantom coach complete with headless coachman and a ghostly nun.

This documentary film, made by animator Ashley Thorpe, narrated by Julian Sands and featuring Reece Shearsmith as Daily Mirror reporter 'V.C. Wall' and Jonathan Rigby as 'Harry Price', is a stylish melding of actor and animator with the cast playing their parts before a green screen with the house and it's associated shenanigans build around them later.  It's a bit too long and as a result a tad dull and the cast, being filmed out of context, often engage in some pretty hammy acting with everything feeling quite static, but it looks stunning and is an obvious labour of love and as such, well worth a watch.  

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Psychedelic Britannia

Presented by Nigel Planer - who also did the Prog and Metal episodes of this series - Psychedelic Britannia tells the story of the years 1965 to 1970 as a group of bohemians led the charge to slowly psychedelicise Britain.  

Obviously, it's the musicians that are prioritised here and there's some great old footage of, and new and archive interviews with members of Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Small Faces, Procol Harum, Soft Machine, The Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan, Arthur Brown and a host of others.  The story tells of the move from R&B into more expansive territory, in part, due to the arrival of LSD and, in part due to a break from the rigid strictures of post-war Britain where the return to normality had begun to feel decidely restrictive and many were looking for new ways of life.

Beyond the musicians there's some fabulous old footage here of the likes of Granny Take a Trip, International Times, the UFO Club and the Alexandra Palace 14 Hour Technicolour Dream with commentary by those who were behind them and patronising them.  It makes for a rather lovely glimpse of a unique and brief moment in British life before the optimism tarnished and the colours faded.

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Mervyn Peake documentary

Author, illustrator, poet, playwright and artist Mervyn Peake, the celebrated author of the 'Gormenghast' series, was born on this day in 1911.

The 1998 documentary below features family, friends, and contemporaries such as Quentin Crisp and celebrates his work and a life cut short by illness.

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Don’t Knock Yourself Out: The Making of the Prisoner

From 29 September 1967 to 1 February 1968 ITV bewildered their audience with 17 episodes of Kafkaesque sci-fi brilliance in the form of 'The Prisoner'.  Created by actor Patrick McGoohan following his exit from the successful spy drama 'Danger Man', that he'd starred in for four series, 'The Prisoner' is the story of a former spy, known only, much to his chagrin, as 'Number Six' who, following his resignation, is drugged and imprisoned in 'The Village', a surreal, seaside holiday camp from which he cannot escape and where he's subjected to repeated psychedelic, surgical and psychological manipulation in the pursuit of information.

Made by the folks at Century 21 Films with not a marionette - super or otherwise - in sight it offers a comprehensive and fascinating, if slightly dry, overview of the making of this most enigmatic of TV shows featuring contributions, both archive and new, from the likes of Peter Wyngarde, Fennella Fielding, Darren Nesbitt, Leo McKern and, of course, McGoohan alongside various members of the production team including ITC head Lew Grade, producer David Tomblin, script editor (and possible series co-creator) George Markstein and writers Vincent Tilsley and Roger Parkes.

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How TV Ruined Your Life

Before he found world wide fame with 'Black Mirror', Charlie Brooker had long been a mainstay of British comedy through his Guardian newspaper columns (later collected in several books) and various TV review shows such as 'Screenwipe' (and the subsequent 'News', 'Games', 'Weekly' and 'Antiviral' wipes) as well as writing for shows like 'Brass Eye' and creating the 'Big Brother' zombie series, 'Dead Set'.

Shown in 2011 and following the Screenwipe format of commentary, clips and skits, 'How TV Ruined Your Life', over 6 episodes on: Fear, The Life Cycle, Aspiration, Love, Progress, Knowledge Brooker explores the ways in which TV programmes twist our expectations and warp reality to serve their own ends.

It isn't as savagely satirical as some of Brooker's work, could probably have done with pruning an episode or two and, 14 years on, feels slightly quaint in an age of micro targeted social media disinformation but it's still a funny, informative and occasionally depressing look at how we got where we are.

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The Kneale Tapes

First shown on October 15th 2003 this episode of Timeshift explores (some of) the work of legendary screenwriter Nigel Kneale.

There're some serious omissions - 'Beasts', 'Murrain' - that need to be discussed in a future more comprehensive exploration of his work but with contributions from fans like Mark Gatiss, Jeremy Dyson, Kim Newman along with some great archive footage of Kneale and his wife, the writer and illustrator, Judith Kerr, it's an easy and affectionate tribute to one of the people who defined what we think of as Wyrd Britain.

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Parallel Worlds: A User's Guide

Taken from the BBC Four Timeshift documentary series and narrated by Richard Ayoade with contributions from, the perhaps inevitable, Stuart Maconie, author Kim Newman, critic Roz Kaveney and various others this is a playful look at the phenomenon of the parallel world.  

 

Originally screened in 2007 it is somewhat dated by many of it's reference points with the likes of 'Sliders'  - which even at that point was 7 years forgotten by most folks - getting far more mentions than necesssary, as well as 'Buffy', 'Red Dwarf' and 'Futurama'.  It's essentialy a piece of fluff but some interesting points are made and in our current MCU dominated world it's interesting to see how many of the identified tropes have proven to be so resilient.

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Don't Get Me Started: What's Wrong With Blasphemy?

This documentary was made by comedian Stewart Lee after far-right fundamentalist Christian groups whipped up a frenzy of protests about 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' that he co-wrote and produced organising protests at theatres, against the BBC showing and against Maggie's Centres, a cancer charity providing palliative care, to which the production had made a donation.  Lee's documentary takes these protests as his starting point to present a fascinating and funny investigation into religious intolerance and its impact on the arts via interviews with folks like Alan Moore and Polly Toynbee.

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Hammer: The Studio That Dripped Blood

Made in 1987 a long time after the studio's heyday this is an affectionate look at the golden years of Hammer Film Productions - the later TV work is ignored.  

Featuring some of Hammer's greats alongside the behind the scenes folks who made them so and lots of rare footage of them all working at Bray studios it makes for an engagingly nostalgic watch.

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Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD

Established at the same time as the nascent punk movement in the UK, 2000AD tapped into the same anti-authoritan zeitgeist. It was big, bold, bloody, beautiful and bonkers and for the best part of five decades this weekly anthology comic (and it's various spin offs) has been providing us with work from some of the worlds top comic creators. The role call of contributors is mind blowing, Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill, John Wagner, Pat Mills, Alan Grant, Brian Bolland, Bryan Talbot, Simon Bisley, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Dan Abnett, Grant Morrison, Mike McMahon, Dave Gibbons and so many more. All of these guys - and it was almost exclusively guys, women creators have always been horrendously under-represented in comics generally and 2000AD in particular  - would go on to define how comics looked and what they said from the late 20th century on.

Between them they gave life to hordes of classic characters, future teen Halo Jones, dystopian cop Judge Dredd, alien freedom fighter Nemesis, mutant bounty hunter Strontium Dog, Celtic warrior Slaine, genetic soldier Rogue Trooper, alien teenage delinquents DR & Quinch,  pop culture superhero Zenith, the list goes on.

It also provided us with the single greatest panel in comics...

Not forgetting two Dredd films of varying quality (we heartily recommend the Karl Urban one) and an upcoming Rogue Trooper animated movie.

Over the years I've been an occasional reader of the weekly comic but am an avid reader of the graphic novels.  Many of the classic 2000AD stories have been collected together in phone book (anyone remember phone books?) sized collections and the publisher - Rebellion - continues to issue nicely produced collections of more recent stories. 

This documentary was released in 2014 - so it's a bit out of date now - and features contributions from many of those mentioned above, some of whom are sadly no longer with us, as well as fans such as Geoff Barrow, Alex Garland, Scott Ian and Karl Urban, and is a fascinating and informative watch that tells much of the creation of a great British cultural institution.

 
Available to watch here (with ads)

https://youtu.be/cFY5AoduIJ0?si=CjJHzUEKjmZiZUfe
 

(In the interest of clarity, a version of this post has appeared here before celebrating the 40th anniversary of the comic, but I wanted to update it to include this excellent documentary.)

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The Unsettled Dust - The Strange Stories of Robert Aickman

Jeremy Dyson, the off camera 'League of Gentleman' member, has long been known in these pages as a devotee of author and conservationist Robert Aickman being responsible for both a short film, 'The Cicerones', and a radio play, 'Ringing the Changes', based on Aickman's stories. 

Aickman was the author of, to use his term, "strange stories", stories that often defy easy categorisation or even easy reading and here Dyson presents a light hearted and engaging exploration of the appeal of the man's literary endeavours, with help from author Ramsey Campbell, TVs Mark Gatiss, Tartarus Press' Ray Russell and others, and makes the case for the man to be given his place among the first rank of writers of the weird and the supernatural.

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A History of Horror

Mark Gatiss' wide ranging and fascinating three part 2010 documentary on the history of horror cinema.

The three episodes, "Frankenstein Goes To Hollywood", "Home Counties Horror" and "The American Scream" take us from the 1920's to the 1970s taking in the likes of Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, George Romero, John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper and exploring key movies such as the 1931 Dracula and the 1958 one, Blood on Satan's Claw, The Wicker Man, Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist.

There is, perhaps, little new information here for horror devotees but as an introduction and an overview to the genre it's hard to beat and Gatiss is always an engaging host.

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The Dracula Business

This fabulously bonkers documentary was made in 1974 by the BBC for their "Tuesday Documentary' strand and follows the entertainingly pompous Daniel Farson, the great nephew of Bram Stoker, as he takes us on a rambling examination of the impact of his great uncle's creation.

Farson indulges in a roaming exploration of the various ways Stoker's story has been monetised from Dracula ice lollies and Hammer Studios via naked bisexual Vampyres and school teachers on Romanian package tours through Denholm Elliot and homicidal divorcee fantasists to two bonkers exorcising priests and a wonderfully straight talking Benedictine monk.

With the exception of the lolly buying schoolkids and the Highgate Cemetery keeper most everyone here is fantastically and almost comedically posh and the documentary wanders completely off the point about three quarters of the way through and never finds it's way back but it's great fun and a real time capsule brimming with unlikely treasure like the footage of the London bookshop with it's spinners full of paperback treasures.

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Who is David Tibet?

Today I'd like to share with you this lovely little film made in the run up to the opening of musician, poet, publisher and painter David Tibet's first US art exhibition at the California State University, Fullerton, Begovich Gallery titled 'Invocation of Almost'.

The film, made by Reypak Creative and commissioned by the university to, I assume introduce Tibet to a wider audience likely unfamiliar with him and his work in all it's many forms, features contributions from Tibet himself along with exhibition curators Jacqueline Bunge and Shaun Richards along with various fans of Tibet's work and provides a tantalising glimpse of what looked to have been a fantastic and lovingly assembled exhibition of his work.

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Tom Chantrell

Whilst his work has never been properly acknowledged in the hallowed halls and his name is missing from books detailing the works of the great artists of 20th century Britain here at Wyrd Britain we would like to take a moment to acknowledge and tip our hats to a man who's art thrills me as much as an adult as it did as a child, Tom Chantrell.

If, like me, you grew up watching horror and science fiction movies then there's every chance you are as familiar with Chantrell's work as with any other artist you could care to name.  

In a career as a graphic designer and poster artist that spanned some six decades Chantrell was responsible for painting many of the most iconic images in movie history, from the 'Carry on...'films, to 'One Million Years BC', from 'Death Race 2000' to 'Come Play With Me', from 'Dawn of the Dead' to that film with the annoying robots and the shiny sword things as well as producing unforgettable book covers like the one that adorns Dennis Gifford's 'A Pictorial History of Horror Movies' and album covers for the various Geoff Love movie theme collections.

His long standing relationship with the Hammer studio meant that they would often sell a movie to potential investors based solely on a title and a Tom Chantrell poster design before even a word of the script had been written.

We at Wyrd Britain think it's high time that the work of this amazing artist was celebrated more widely and we are very happy to able to share with you this rather lovely documentary made at the end of last year featuring his family and various fans that celebrates an artist of rare talent.

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John Peel's Record Box

This lovely little documentary from 2005, a year after his death, tells the story of of the life of legendary British DJ John Peel via the contents of a box of 130 7" singles that he kept under his desk separate from the thousands of other records and CDs that made up the collection.  You can find a list of the contents of the box here.

Featuring contributions from his family, fellow DJs and a host of music luminaries such as Pete Shelley (Buzzcocks), Billy Bragg, Jack White (The White Stripes), Tsungi Rai & Poko (Misty in Roots), Mark E. & Brix Smith (The Fall), Laurie Anderson, Feargal Sharkey and Damian & John O'Neill (The Undertones) and loads more.

It's a nice tribute to the man and of a life lived in music.

We miss you John.



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Future Tense - The Story of H.G. Wells

This very short documentary was made by the BBC in 2016 to commemorate 150th anniversary of Wells' birth.  Long regarded (along with Jules Verne) as the father of science fiction Herbert George Wells was a novellist, social commentator and futurist who contributed key works to the sci-fi canon - 'The War of the Worlds',  'The Time Machine', 'The Invisible Man' to name just three - and also, inadvertently, to the creation of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was based on his 1940 progressive, humanitarian manifesto 'The Rights of Man'.

I love a documentary but I'm not going to lie to you, it looks like they knocked this one out in a hurry.  It's a ridiculously brief overview of a career that lasted some 60 odd years and produced so many pivotal works.  Its brief to the point that unless I blinked and missed it they didn't even talk about 'The Invisible Man' which you'd imagine would rate a mention or two but, much like the ghost story documentary I posted here the other week, as a quick fix it does the job and if you've no more than a passing knowledge of the life of this most important of authors then this will add a detail or two.



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Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods

Grant Morrison is a Scottish writer most well known for his work in comics where he has written some of the biggest selling titles - Superman, Batman, Justice League and X-Men -from the big two companies. Here in the UK he made his name writing the pop star superhero Zenith (UK / US) for 2000AD.

Over the last three and a bit decades he has amassed both an impressive body of work and a fearsome reputation within his field both for rejuvenating tired old titles and providing innovative new creations of his own.

I remember first reading Morrison when he appeared in 2000AD where the work he was producing immediately marked him out as a writer to watch.  With his move to the US based publishers his output inevitably slewed towards the superhero genre that is those companies' bread and butter.  Happily his take on the spandex botherers was altogether new and he immediately hit the ground running with the post modern hi-jinx of Animal Man (UK / US) and the gloriously strange Doom Patrol (UK / US) which I read in my late teens and early twenties as a newly psychedelicised young fella and which perfectly complemented my other reading of things like Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (UK / US), provided me with my first exposure to David Rudkin's Penda's Fen (UK / US) when he quoted it - “Child be strange, dark, true, impure, and dissonant. Cherish our flame. Our dawn shall come.” - at the end of the 'Brotherhood of Dada / Magic Bus' storyline and which has recently become an enjoyably daft TV show.  Morrison's creator owned work has, for a superhero ambivalent like me, been a source of reliable enjoyment with titles such as WE3 (UK / US), St. Swithin's Day (UK) & the Moorcockian magical anarchists of The Invisibles (UK / US) a series I've returned to again and again over the years.

The documentary below was produced by the Sequart Organisation who also made the Warren Ellis documentary 'Captured Ghosts' and as you'd expect provides a thorough overview of Morrison's life and career with contributions from a cavalcade of comic luminaries and along the way investigates his key work, his parents, his alien abduction and his interests in chaos magic and psychedelics.




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