Dead of Night is described (by the BFI, no less) as a “legendary BBC horror anthology series.” I’m not quite sure what qualifies a TV show to be legendary, perhaps it’s something to do with how a series is remembered—shocking, controversial, scary, disturbing—rather than any association with mythical status.

I recall when Dead of Night was first screened, I wasn’t allowed to sit up late to watch its first episode “The Exorcism,” as my superstitious father believed its occult subject matter might lead an impressionable mind into devil-worship. Personally, I never considered that an option for my god-fearing father, no matter how impressionable his mind.

If I had watched it, I would most likely have been a tad disappointed in my childish hope for some Hammer Horror/Dennis Wheatley thrills, as Don Taylor’s drama is not really about the occult, or even an exorcism, but rather it uses the supernatural as a metaphor reflecting the collective responsibility for poverty and social inequality.

Taylor was a political film-maker, who was best known for his early collaborative work with the playwright David Mercer, author of Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, amongst others. Both men were dedicated socialists, who produced topical (and there’s the reason some of their work has not lasted) political plays that questioned the role of political action within everyday life.

Taylor was inexplicably placed on a “blacklist” for seven years by the BBC’s James MacTaggart, which stopped Taylor making plays for the BBC’s Drama Department. He moved to the Arts Department, where he wrote and directed documentaries on Sean O’Casey, Wordsworth, the Liverpool Poets, and Milton.

In 1972, Taylor returned to the BBC’s Drama Department to work on Dead of NIght. His contribution to the series was The Exorcism, which tells the story of two comfortable, middle class couples haunted by the ghosts of the past. It’s not exactly directed with any visual flair, Taylor has focused on the dialog and getting his point across in-between some chilling, supernatural horror, but it’s certainly effective and memorable.

The Exorcism proved so successful it was revived on London’s West End with the actress Mary Ure in the cast.

Ure was famed for her roles in the films The MInd Benders with Dirk Bogarde, and Where Eagles Dare, alongside Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. Ure was married to the actor Robert Shaw. They had a passionate and tempestuous relationship, but its most damaging effect was that Ure had gradually become an alcoholic. Having taken time-off from film-making to raise a family, Ure returned to the theater in the early 1970s.

In 1975, Mary Ure was starring in The Exorcism, when she mysteriously died. It was claimed by the more sensationalist tabloids that Ms. Ure had committed suicide after being traumatized by the play’s occult subject matter (or worse, possessed by evil spirits). Good copy, but not true. Mary Ure had suffered from depression, and was on prescription dugs. It was the accidental mix of these drugs with alcohol that killed the actress known as the “Scottish Marilyn.”
 

 
Two more chilling episodes from ‘Dead of Night’ after the jump…

“I think of myself as somebody who is reporting from a world of dreams.”
-Clive Barker

Although primarily known as an author of dark fantasy, and as the creator of the “Hellraiser” and “Candyman” horror movie franchises, Clive Barker is also a prolific visual artist. Barker will often paint a character into existence before fleshing it out on the page:

“I’m painting these pictures in the expectation that… interesting, strange characters and landscapes will come into my mind and into my mind’s eye and appear on the canvas through the brush. There is something willfully strange about this process—that you stand back at the end of a night’s work and you look at something and you say, ‘Where did that come from?’ I mean, I’m not the only artist who does that - lots of artists do that, I know. And it’s been wonderful because if I had created Abarat from words—if I’d written Abarat and then illustrated it… it would not be anything like as rich or as complex or as contradictory a world as it is. Because this is a world which has been created from dream visions…  What I’m doing is finding stories that match the shape of my dreams.”

This weekend you can see the art of Clive Barker at LA Art at the Century Guild booth #1216 . You can pre-order the upcoming hardcover Clive Barker art book here.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Before there was Kim and Thurston, there was Poison Ivy Rorschach and Lux Interior, one of the most charming, happiest, long-standing (together thirty-seven years) collaborative couples in music. They gave a recently rediscovered interview to Dutch public radio station VPRO around 1990 during The Cramps’ Stay Sick tour.

In the hour long interview, Poison Ivy and Lux talk about the gyrations involved in dealing with major and independent labels, overseas distribution deals, their invention of the word “psychobilly,” the ‘80s war on drugs, voodoo, religion, war, sex, B movies, and how they “Crampified” original classics such as “Bop Pills.” Their encyclopedic knowledge of rockabilly and B movies, which they rattle off effortlessly, is incredible. Lux outlines the history of American B movies for the interviewer:

Lux: The thing that’s so great, I think, about B movies is that when you watch a movie like that, they were made so quickly and usually by fairly amateur filmmakers that what you’re seeing is much more of the reality of the time and place where they were made than a motion pictures studio like MGM or Paramount or something like that. You’re actually seeing people who can’t act very well, so you see them as people, and they usually take place in somebody’s real house and on real streets and things, while all the other movies were being made on sets. There’s a slice of reality you don’t get in regular movies with those. I don’t know what it is.  Once you’ve developed a taste for that, you can’t go back somehow.

Poison Ivy: A lot of sexploitation [movies], just even titles, influence our songs. The dialogue from a lot of those movies is in our songs. “Hot Pearl Snatch” is the name of a movie, “All Women Are Bad” is the name of a movie. They’re powerful titles to us enough that we felt like writing songs about them. Also they’re in lines of our songs.

Lux: “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns” could be a B movie. The line in that, “This stuff’ll kill ya,” that’s a title of a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie about moonshine. Our songs are just loaded with B movie titles and lines out of B movies. In “What’s Inside a Girl” I say “In the bottom of the bottomless body pit,” like that, and that’s out of a movie called—

Poison Ivy: “The Love Butcher.” That was actually a line of dialogue out of that movie. It’s hard for us not to use these lines because we’re just kind of submerged in these movies. We think that way. They don’t sound like dialogue to us.

Listen to The Cramps on VPRO radio

 
Below, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy interviewed in Amsterdam, 1990:

 
Thanks to Kogar!

 
The This Ain’t the Summer of Love blog has uncorked a real gem on the Internet—with the help of one of its loyal readers. Four years ago, TATSOL unearthed a 1982 Billboard article describing a CBGB-produced cable access show to “include interviews, comedy skits, and live performances.” A few days ago Stuart Newman, a member of the The Roustabouts, a band that was featured, uploaded a YouTube video of an episode of “TV-CBGB” and passed on the link to TATSOL. Victory! And a coup for a worthy blog.
 

 
The episode is peculiar and mildly riveting. It’s 90% performance but not true concert footage. There’s a bizarre opening sequence hosted by “Jo Thompson” (actually Wendy Walker), although it’s unclear why her MC duties necessitated a fictional character—in her bit, she walks through the club introducing us to a half-dozen CBGB employees, including Hilly, who are obliged to hold a freeze-frame pose for quite a long time while she tells us about them using the third person.

Of the somewhat overpopulated “sitcom” portions, the dialogue is predictably muddy and you never really know who anyone is or if they’re “fictional” or “real”—Hilly does his best playing himself. The bits attempt to portray something of the day-to-day experience of working at CBGBs. It’s completely incompetent as sketch entertainment, but nonetheless touching to watch a typical cross-section of unmistakably downtown fashionista wastoids gamely mimic a smash hit sitcom—there’s even a laugh track! The intermittent scenelets that feel a little SCTV outtakes or perhaps one of those short films shown during the Chevy Chase era of SNL—albeit with cable access production values. Furthermore, the birthday party for a pregnant co-worker feels entirely inauthentic; the brief scene in the scuzzy bathroom in which two women indulge in a bit of gossip feels a lot more true to life.

Here’s the lineup of bands: Idiot Savant, The Roustabouts, The Hard, Jo Marshall, Shrapnel, and Sic Fucks. None of the bands are great, but every single one is peppy and utterly enjoyable; unlike the scripted bits; the music performances feel absolutely like what it must have been like to attend CBGBs on a regular basis—a useful reminder of just how rousing and vital the median CBGB act was. (I was way too young to experience any of this, so my notions of the bands’ “authenticity” are the merest guess at the truth.)
 

 
The episode is an odd glimpse of a CBGB identity that never took shape, as a cable access mainstay; maybe someday it would have migrated to MTV and become a national TV icon. It never happened, but the sturdy format of bands just playing good rock and roll always works.

The only question now is, what else is out there?? The indefatigable TATSOL inquires: “Were there any additional episodes filmed? And if yes, where is the footage of those episodes? Hope we don’t have to wait four more years to find out…” Amen to that!
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Young punk icons at CBGB New Year’s Eve party in 1975
CBGB in its pure raw beautiful nasty self

 
The paintings of the Old Masters come to life in this wonderfully animated video by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro. Imagine a virtual reality version of this in 3-D. (They’re getting there, I tested some pretty amazing VR goggles recently)

I can’t get enough of this jaw-dropping gorgeousness. That seems to be the point.
 

 
Via Nerdcore

 
While the word “propaganda” has a rather nasty, manipulative connotation, it isn’t necessarily defined as “lies” per se. All that WPA art encouraging people to brush their teeth and get tested for syphilis? Excellent uses of propaganda! And whether you’re trying to organize a community garden or start your own fascist regime, I think the most effective propaganda follows that same model of simple, informative, attractive messaging, easily interpreted by children or the uneducated. Catch ‘em young, and make it pretty, I always say.

Our Lenin, a children’s biography of Vladimir Lenin, does this perfectly. Translated and adapted from a Russian book, the US version of Our Lenin was published in 1934 by the US Communist Party. Although teaching the kiddies to revere Vladimir Lenin uncritically is certainly problematic (to say the least), the book is a beautifully executed piece of messaging, and the illustrations are just exquisite.
 

 

World War 1
 

Would you like a socialist utopia, or capitalist fascism? Pick carefully now, children!
 

Ohhhh, so that’s how it works. Seems easy enough.
 
Via Just Seeds

Women in Afghanistan were not always under house arrest and forbidden by law to leave their homes unchaperoned by a male relative. Once upon a time in pre-Taliban days Afghan women had access to professional careers, university-level education, shops selling non-traditional clothing, public transportation, and public spaces, all of which they happily navigated freely and without supervision.

According to a State Department report from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 2001:

Prior to the rise of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were protected under law and increasingly afforded rights in Afghan society. Women received the right to vote in the 1920s; and as early as the 1960s, the Afghan constitution provided for equality for women. There was a mood of tolerance and openness as the country began moving toward democracy. Women were making important contributions to national development. In 1977, women comprised over 15% of Afghanistan’s highest legislative body. It is estimated that by the early 1990s, 70% of schoolteachers, 50% of government workers and university students, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women. Afghan women had been active in humanitarian relief organizations until the Taliban imposed severe restrictions on their ability to work. These professional women provide a pool of talent and expertise that will be needed in the reconstruction of post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Even under Hamid Karzai’s government, with the recently approved Code of Conduct for women, all of the women shown in these photographs, taken in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s, could still can be faulted with improper behavior, according to clerics and government officials. 

 
A record store in Kabul

 
A co-ed biology class at Kabul University

 
Afghan university students, 1967. Photo credit: Dr. Bill Podlich, Retronaut

 
Public transporation in Kabul

 
University students, early 1970s

 
Women working in one of the labs at the Vaccine Research Center

 
Mothers and children playing at a city park—without male chaperones

Queen Soraya reigned in Afghanistan with her husband King Amanullah Khan from 1919 to 1929. She would be slut-shamed or worse for wearing this dress in modern Afghanistan.

Compilation of vintage amateur footage of Afghanistan:

Via Retronaut and Zilla of the Resistance.

 
Fast on the heels of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency investigation into the dire influence of comic books, innovative and transgressive E.C. Comics released its brief educational, edifying New Direction series. One of the New Direction titles was Psychoanalysis, beginning in May 1955, illustrated by Jack Kamen and depicting psychoanalytic therapy sessions as story lines. It was an unusual idea to present such a realistic, near-clinical drama, and neither readers nor wholesalers knew what to do with it. The comic lasted only four issues before it was cancelled along with other “wholesome” New Direction titles (M.D., Valor, Extra!, Incredible Science Fiction, Aces High, and Impact).
 

 
According to Life Hacks’ Vaughan Bell:

Critics have noted that psychiatry is poorly represented in these stories, although they do give a fascinating insight into 1950s attitudes towards people with mental illness and their treatment. Despite the fact mental illness is a recurring theme in many contemporary comics, few modern titles have attempted to seriously educate their readers about mental health issues.

 

 
Each issue followed the stories of three patients’ psychological issues and how they were quickly cured through traditional Freudian psychoanalysis. Polite Dissent‘s Polite Scott described the basic concepts behind the plots: “First, everything is the parents’ fault. Second, any mental problem can be cured by psychoanalysis. Granted, this is before there were any effective medications for such problems, but several of these patients would benefit from medication.”
 

 
Here is a summary of one of the nameless psychoanalyst’s patients and her rapid progress:

Issue #1: Ellen is clearly a very anxious person. She is also troubled by a recurring dream. This dream, which is incredibly detailed, recounts young Ellen trying to get into a walled garden. A kilted Scotsman bars the way and won’t let her enter until she passes a written exam. She fails the exam, but sneaks into the garden anyway, only to find it is dead and barren.

Issue #2: Ellen Lyman was an anxious young woman who had a recurring dream of a empty garden. The psychiatrist explained that the dream meant that she was jealous of her older sister and wished her harm. In this issue, Ellen comes to the office complaining that her life is hopeless. She knocked over the water cooler at work and her boss yelled at her. This reminded her of her father. Digging deeper, the psychiatrist discovers that her father often yelled at Ellen, and her mother routinely ignored her in favor of her older sister. During childhood, Ellen had a couple of accidents that landed her in the hospital. Much like Freddy’s psychosomatic asthma, the doctor informs Ellen that she caused these accidents herself trying to gain the attention of her parents. Furthermore, her other symptoms are due to the fact that she feels guilty because she blames herself for the fact that her parents always fought. The psychiatrist informs her that this is all nonsense, her parents simply did not love each other and it was never her fault. “Oh doctor!” says Ellen. “I feel as if a great weight has suddenly been lifted from my shoulders!”

Issue #3: Ellen Lyman believes that she is ugly and unlikable despite the fact that she is quite beautiful and friendly. By interpreting her dream of standing before a hallway of full length mirrors in a prom dress, the psychiatrist is able to deduce that the only person who considers Ellen ugly is herself. The reason Ellen is unable to have a meaningful relationship is that she does not like or love herself. This revelation strikes Ellen like a thunderbolt and thanks to the doctor’s insight, Ellen announce that she is ready to love herself and start dating. The doctor pronounces her cured.

Comic books are evil: ‘50s anti-comics propaganda:

 
In the ten zillionth instance of Japan provoking a “Why didn’t anyone else think of this before now?” reaction, the aptly named Robot Restaurant in Tokyo’s well-known Kabukichō entertainment district has adopted what might be considered the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach. With an aesthetic vaguely reminiscent of Kaiju Big Battel (itself a goof on the excesses of Japanese culture) as orchestrated in the style of, say, Gaspar Noé‘s Enter the Void, Robot Restaurant features (in what is surely not an exhaustive list) endless flickering lights, pterodactyls, glow sticks, robot dogs, animatronic sharks, a blinking army tank, a bunch of people wearing African masks, go-go girls wearing fairy outfits, go-go girls in hyperbolic pretend battle with each other, go-go girls playing rock music, and go-go girls driving around giant animatronic fembot amusement park cars. The fembots have “pneumatic busts,” in the reliable verbiage of Time Out Japan.

I keep calling them “go-go girls,” but the proper term is “para-para dancers.” The price tag for a couple of hours of this madness is 5000 yen (about $50). The joint’s website gives a vivid impression of the batshit craziness that goes on there.

It all sounds utterly awesome.
 

 

 

 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Bikini-clad go-go girls do The Jellyfish
Ode to Der Musikladen’s Teutonic go-go girls, the worst disco dancers the world has ever seen

I cannot convey to you the balls it took to dress like that in Indiana in the early 80’s
 
As a Hoosier, I will always have a special place in my heart for Indiana punks, but I’d love The Zero Boys if they were from Park Avenue. Formed in the late 70’s in that vibrant renaissance town of Indianapolis, Indiana (big dose of sarcasm there), the band released their full-length album, Vicious Circle, in 1982. Though your casual punk may not know the name, the Zero Boys shared bills with Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat, and their petulant hooks and irresistibly sleazy melodies have always been a favorite of your more esoteric record collectors

You can hear their EP, Livin’ in the 80’s here, but I highly recommend you check out the fantastic live footage below, from their 1981 performance at Indianapolis’ own Pizza Castle. The audio is expertly restored, and you can hear the boys perform such underground classics as “Livin’ in the 80’s” and “Civilization’s Dying,” which was later covered by The Hives. There’s something just so absolutely perfect about the lyrics of “Livin’ in the 80’s”—“I have no heroes, just having a good time, don’t remember The Beatles, I don’t like the Stones,” delivered with such youthful contrarian snot. I can’t imagine a better venue for a show like this than a pizza joint, either.

You can actually buy a DVD of the entire performance here, which contains most of Vicious Circle. I had a friend who used to play it non-stop in the background at parties, and I vouch for the performance—it’s not often you find 1980’s ephemera that still feels fresh and mean. At one point, singer Paul Mahern hypes the album, cordially urging the audience to buy the EP for two dollars, and a button for seventy-five cents. He’s not too snotty about it though—we midwesterners value good manners, even in our punk legends.