Just a note before we start on today’s recordings. We’ve jumped almost an entire week. That’s the biggest gap I think I’ve seen so far, and it’s annoying, as it means, for example, that I’ve missed the Last Night of the Proms, among other things. I wonder if these might be on one of the hard drives that I couldn’t start. I do need to extract the drives from their enclosures and see if they can be read in a caddy, but I haven’t yet been brave enough to crack them open. One day, maybe.
The first programme today has the start missing. It’s another episode in the Masters of Horror series – Pro-Life. This one is directed by John Carpenter.
This recording starts out a bit glitchy, but about half an hour in, it becomes almost unwatchable. But I could glean that a young woman (well, a 15 year old girl, technically, although the actress looks over 20) is almost run over on a road, so the driver takes her to the clinic where he works. It’s an abortion clinic. But the girl’s father is lurking outside the clinic in a big van, and they know all about him, because he’s not supposed to come within 500 yards of the clinic. He’s played very menacingly by Ron Perlman.
However, this is no ordinary pregnancy – they try to do an ultrasound, but it starts to move a lot, and even breaks the ultrasound scanner.
There’s a nasty bit of gore as the guard gets killed.
Perlman and his three sons get into the clinic with a lot of guns, and get to work torturing one of the doctors with various medical tools.
Whatever the young girl is having, it’s not a baby.
This shot definitely reminded me of The Thing.
Elsewhere in the clinic, the floor is opening, and a guard is pulled down.
It looks like the baby’s father has arrived. Nice animatronics.
Perlman eventually realises that it wasn’t God telling him to protect the baby.
Typical. It’s always the mother who has to do everything. “Time to sleep.”
Well, this was better than some of these have been. I think Carpenter’s last one was good too. Would have been nice to have it without all the glitching.
Media Centre Description: A series of one-hour horror films directed by the masters of the genre. John Carpenter presents a tale of a young girl in an abortion clinic trying terminate a most unusual pregnancy. Outside, her pro-life father battles to protect the life of his unborn grandchild.
Recorded from f tn on Wednesday 12th September 2007 22:05
The other recording today is from BBC Four, so I’m hoping it doesn’t suffer like the last one. I think the BBC channels tended to have more bandwidth so they shouldn’t suffer as badly.
This is Comics Britannia – The Fun Factory.
Armando Iannucci narrates the story of The Beano and The Dandy, created in the 30s by Dundee publisher D. C. Thomson.
Wouldn’t you love to have “Comics Braniac” as your job description?
David Roach explains the appeal of word balloons.
Malcolm Phillips shows off his Dandy issue 1.
Michael Rosen liked Desperate Dan.
Kevin O’Neill was also a fan.
We get to hear about the artists, who were rarely, if ever credited in the comic. Their big star was Dudley Watkins, who was considered so important that he was never called up for the war, and instead kept working on the comics, because of their propaganda potential.
Leo Baxendale, who would later become an important Beano artist, was a big fan of Watkins. “Each week I turned to look at Dudley Watkins stuff and somehow what Dudley did was technically perfect, wondrously so. There was a kind of intensity of focus that went into each drawing and there was that intensity and passion is necessary to reach out and hold readers.”
Morris Heggie thinks that being created in Dundee definitely had an effect on the style of the comics.
Euan Kerr talks about the launch of the Beano, less than a year after the Dandy was launched.
The programme addresses the racist aspect of some of the early strips.
But at the same time, the comics were definitely anti-nazi.
Ian Gray talks about the post-war baby boom which really helped the comics’ circulation.
Dennis the Menace arrived in the 50s.
Dennis was created by artist Davy Law.
Jacqueline Wilson discusses corporal punishment.
The newly arrived Leo Baxendale joined the Beano, and created Little Plum, much loved by Steve Bell.
He also created the Bash Street Kids.
Nick Park remembers getting the Beano every Saturday. I think we used to get it in a Thursday or Friday. Mum used to walk down to the local newsagent where we had it on order. My big sister had Mandy (which I also read) and my little sister had Twinkle which wasn’t very interesting to me.
The last great Beano artist the programme looks at is Ken Reid.
Tony Reid, his son, talks about his father’s style. “The ships were always quite accurately drawn but I know that he had reference books – The Boy’s Book of Ships or something and so he’d be able to know what was a trawler and a tug.”
The workload was so much for Reid that he had a breakdown, and could barely pick up a pen for some time.
New comics arrived in the 60s, like Wham!
Leo Baxendale would create new characters for these comics, like Grimley Fiendish.
He poached Ken Reid from The Beano to draw Frankie Stein.
Here’s the whole thing.
Media Centre Description: Armando Iannucci presents a series which explores the history of British comics. Here, he looks back to a golden age when children’s humour comics sold in their millions and reveals the artists and writers behind magical worlds where grown ups were terrorised and kids ruled. Oscar-winning animator Nick Park, cartoonist Steve Bell, children’s laureate Michael Rosen and writer Jacqueline Wilson confess to their own life long passion for the comic strips of their childhood.
Recorded from BBC FOUR on Thursday 13th September 2007 02:23
BBC Genome: BBC FOUR Thursday 13th September 2007 02:25